Friday, October 2, 2009

My Other Shirt Has a Popped Collar


The popped collar is one of the first cultural anomalies I've been old enough to follow through a couple cycles. I've been able to draw on a personal history of watching a trend rise and fall and then rise and fall again. I don't remember when the trend became cool back in my childhood, but I remember thinking that maybe it was time to start folding my collar down after seeing the last clip of Murder, She Wrote where they guy rips the sheet out of his typewriter while wearing a red polo with a popped collar. I'm not really sure when popping a collar became cool the second time around, but I can say that its eventual usurpation and propagation by guys with spiked hair and spray-on tans was its downfall. What's most interesting to me is how the popped collar trend has shifted so quickly from fashion forward to the branding tag of a major loser so quickly. It's similar to the way scientists will breed very simple organisms with short lifespans when they're trying to study evolution. Based on my observations, we should see popped collars jump back in to popular culture in about 2036.

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