Men’s Paris Fashion Week just concluded. What were some of the trends for men this fall? According to GQ, bias-cut tailoring, the color teal, and oversized shearling jackets. While all this is fine and dandy, there was one show that made fashion reporters and bloggers lose their minds. Y/Project, an avant-garde streetwear brand, debuted thigh-high slouchy UGG boots at their runway show.
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Y/Project Fall 2018 Ready-to-Wear Men’s Collection (Vogue)
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My first thought? “These are hilariously awesome! I love UGG boots! They are my lounging ugly shoe of choice! Cover my whole body in UGG boots!”
I posted a picture of the runway shot to my Instagram stories and wrote “If thigh-high UGG boots are wrong, then I don’t want to be right.”
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I had about 10 people message me within the next half hour with mixed responses. I had a few friends in agreement, sending “Yaaasss” or the ~raise the roof~ emoji, but more friends messaged me to express outrage. One of my best friends asked, “…you really like these?” as if she was reconsidering our friendship because of my poor taste.
This is not the first Y/Project piece that has received a love/hate response. They are also the designers behind exaggerated denim silhouettes, like this jean jacket with an extra foot of sleeve and the pants with an extra two feet of length. Some of our more petite readers will be excited to know they can stop hemming their jeans and just cuff them up to their knees. (Just kidding!)
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Or if you ever wanted your jeans to detach and become hot shorts, you are now in luck! Below you’ll find supermodels Gigi Hadid and Hailey Baldwin showing off their Y/Project pants. When I told Lani about it, she truly didn’t even believe that this was a real thing.
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This new trend of avant-garde streetwear has been blowing up, and in my opinion, it has been an interesting one to watch. Demna Gvasalia is probably the man at the forefront of the movement, as the founder and head designer of Vetements and the current creative director of Balenciaga. In the past few years, Gvasalia has taken “ugly” looks and made them “fashionable.” See Vetements’ DHL t-shirts and Balenciaga’s $2,000 Ikea bag and “dad sneakers.” Y/Project’s UGG boots have also taken something seen as pedestrian and pushed them back into this particular sub-culture of fashion. I’m not going to be surprised when we see Rihanna wearing this outfit next month!
To clarify, no I would not wear thigh-high UGG boots. Would you? However, I can definitely appreciate their eccentricity, irreverence, and coziness.
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Kyle Dunphy is a personal stylist at Real Life Style. She has been helping RLS clients look their best for over five years. You can find Kyle Dunphy and Real Life Style on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
