I once heard a definition of fashion (or maybe I made it up, I don't know) as seeing how much you can dress like a kindergartner and get away with it. For the most part: I think this is true. But I was thinking about it today, just before slipping into a nap, with tumblr-images of vice-type fashionistas running through my head, and it occurred to me that a lot of what passes as fashionable today mirrors the distinct apparel of retarded people. In fact: it's the one guarantee in fashion: when in doubt, dress like a retard. If you can't imagine a retard wearing it, it's not fashionable.

I'm not just talking about tween-wave fashion (see: the Bieb-machine) which seems to be a mentally-challenged attempt at combining hip-hop and punk styles and succeeding at neither. I'm talking about the things you see models wearing in Vice--in the grainy-on-purpose tumblroids (tumblr/poloaroids...did I seriously just make that up?) I alluded to earlier. Probably because a lot of what these models wear is bought at second-hand stores and at some point was worn unironically by the mentally less-capable: weird t-shirts sporting causes and bands and things in general only retarded people can legitimately appreciate (a Ghostbusters sweater, say, which retarded people wear because they like to wear things with pictures of things they like on them but hipsters wear because: "ohmuhgawd. this sweater is so lame. but i love bill murray and nostalgia's awesome." ); ripped or acid-wash jeans (because they're so unfashionable that they're now fashionable) and ugly sweaters (which anorexic brooklyn-ites wear like heroin shrouds over their skeletal frames but retards wear in earnest--as earnestly as you can wear a sweater). And this rule isn't solely limited to clothes: it also applies to accessories, especially eyewear. There's a certain stock selection of glasses which all retarded people and hipsters seem to choose from: the bigger the frames--the more ostensibly "unstylish"--the more it signals to people that you are either a.) really fucking cool or b.) the kind of guy who angrily shits himself because you don't know any better.

So...new rule for 2012. If I'm about to go out and I can't decide if what I'm wearing is fashionable or not: I'll just ask myself: "Can I imagine a retarded person or a really bratty kindergartener who insists on dressing himself wearing this?"

Or something.

I should also clarify something. It's perfectly acceptable to appreciate Ghostbusters. I appreciate Ghostbusters. The point I was trying to make is that: it's no longer cool to wear anything unironically. Even if I appreciate Ghostbusters, I can't just go out and buy any old Ghostbusters t-shirt. It has to be vintage. And I can't like it that much. It have to have a whatever attitude about it. Otherwise: I look like a fanboy. And liking something in earnest, like a fanboy, isn't cool--which is how retarded people like things. They truly appreciate things in earnest.

A hipster might like something but they'd never actively look for a t-shirt with something they like on it (this is the reason those made-to-look-vintage shirts at Target with bands people actually like on them don't sell--also because they're bands everybody knows and they're not lame enough to be worn ironically). Whereas: a retarded person would wear the Ghostbusters sweater long after the initial Ghostbusters hype to the present day: when it's suddenly cool again to wear a Ghostbusters sweater--or any piece of clothing that smacks of eighties ephemera.