A message to fashion sweats: Cantstandya!

A famous comedian once remarked (on his namesake show that ran to critical acclaim for eight years) to his short, stout and unemployed friend (who never really made it anywhere after the show ended and is now fronting a new Jenny Craig campaign presumably so that the weight loss company can start duping chubby, insecure men, because as another fading comedic actress known for her role as a sexy, smart-talking business woman on another defunct but equally relevant television sitcom already proved, the diet don't work!): "You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'"

 "My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents."   

I firmly believe this is what designers were thinking when they put "fashion sweats" on the runways two years ago. It started with Isabel Marant and Alexander Wang, and quickly spread like an STD to the design studios of Michael Kors, Thakoon, Bottega Veneta, Jean Paul Gaultier and Rag & Bone. It would seem that Seinfeld's summation was right on the money, as it were, especially when you consider the aforementioned sweatpants slouched down the runway around the same time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost their shirts. The luxury market took a fairly serious blow — a setback so dramatic it sent even the most fastidious fashion plates to seek comfort in fleece-lined pants. And, presumably, a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. (Remember how in Mean Girls one of their rules was they could only wear sweatpants on Fridays and then Rachel McAdams shows up in sweats on a Monday and when one of the other mean girls tells her she can't sit with them she says that they're the only thing that fits? Because, of course, Lindsay Lohan was tricking her into eating these high calorie bars her mother used to feed to starving kids in Africa.) I rest my case. Convoluted though that last point may be.

 Alexander Wang and Rag & Bone s/s 2010

Well, not quite. It may be that I'm getting old or that I'm alone too much engaging in existential discussions with my dog or that as a writer I spend far too much time in my head versus, say, interacting with society and people and stuff, but I swear this is a conspiracy fronted by the fashion industry and secretly financed by beauty companies and celebrity hairstylists to make us wear shit that we'll look back on in six months and cringe (or what my brilliant friend Lindsay once called shameafreude) and be forced to run out and buy new clothes and, naturally, get a new haircut and new makeup because if What Not To Wear has taught us anything it's that no one who wears sweatpants to work can possibly have good hair and be aware of their amazing bone structure and eyebrows most girls would kill for. And I'm SO ON TO THEM.  

And for the record, much as I may resemble George Costanza these days — short, stout, unemployed — and the cliché of the freelance writer means my gainfully employed friends always picture me in sweatpants scarfing cookies as we chat on the phone about global warming and Robert Pattinson's hair on any given morning, I don't even own sweatpants. Fashion-y or otherwise. And as God is my witness (and boy, has God ever witnessed pathetic shit over at my house) I will never, ever wear fashion sweats!

The prosecution rests.