I get you.

Before I begin, please don’t laugh at me.

I’ve harbored this weird obsession with fake glasses for the past year. I know they go against my anti-hipster bent, but what can I say? I want in on the cult.

It all began in London. While studying abroad, I spent nearly every Friday morning perusing Portobello Market — a huge outdoor cluster of street vendors in Notting Hill. At the market, there was a sunglass stand owned by this hilarious vendor who always wore giant plastic clown glasses. He’d help everyone figure out exactly which pair they should buy — throwing frames around the tent and giving customers a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Once, I put on a pair of square fake glasses and peered into one of the stand’s tiny mirrors. I loved them, and I waved down the owner for a second opinion.

“No, no,” he said. “You look too serious in those. You look like my doctor.”

“Oh,” I said. Reluctantly, I put them down, bought a pair of huge tortoiseshell sunglasses and tried to forget about my craving for fake specs.

I had all but given up on my dream of looking like a bookish young coed until a few weeks ago, when I borrowed my friend Justin’s pair of plastic glasses for a day.

Immediately, I became re-infatuated and went out to buy a pair for myself. But thus far, they’ve been sitting on top of my dresser with the price tag still attached ($6 at Forever 21, if anyone’s interested). I’m chickening out — I’m too afraid of people making fun of me when I wear them.

Fashion, after all, is the most basic form of nonverbal communication — without a word, your dress can convey your personality. So what would fake glasses say about me? Either that I’m an extroverted attention craver or quiet and reclusive. You take your pick.

And it’s not just glasses. A few weeks ago, New York Magazine’s fashion blog, The Cut, posted an entry about the slowly evolving sweatpants trend.

But before any of you late sleepers get too excited, these aren’t the kind of sweatpants with “PITT” screen-printed down the leg. These are made of cashmere or high quality jersey and cut to look like much trendier pants.

The Cut’s article detailed how the trend started (with designers Alexander Wang and Isabel Marant) before explaining its paradox: To the untrained eye, they look sloppy and ridiculous, but to those in the fashion know, they look ahead of the curve. For all we know, everyone will be wearing harem sweatpants two years from now.

Despite my constant outcries against dressing like a slob, I actually kind of like the new iteration of sweatpants. But here’s the thing: Even if I did muster the courage to buy a pair, I’d be worried about how other people would perceive them — always fearing someone would cast me one glance and say, “Oh look, you’re a slob too.”

That’s the thing about fashion: For every person who praises your bravery to rock something different, there’s going to be someone who laughs hysterically at you the second you walk by. It’s up to you to decide who’s worth listening to.

As for me, I’m still trying to put on my brave face and wear my fake glasses in public. If and when I do muster enough confidence to head outdoors, please, I beg of you, be kind.

Top 10 of Fashion Week 2010

It’s New York Fashion Week, ladies and gentleman — which means the fashion world’s glitterati (redundant?) have congregated in New York for eight crazy days and nights to celebrate and preview the completion of the Fall/Winter 2010 lines. Tomorrow the festivities will end, and legions of editors will jump on a plane and head over to England for London Fashion Week. It’s a rough life, keeping up with all this fashion, but somebody’s got to do it.

Attempting to summarize everything that’s happened thus far at New York Fashion Week in this modest corner of The Pitt News is essentially an impossible task, but sometimes a girl has to put on her lipstick and try, right? So here we go, my top 10 of Fashion Week 2010.

1. Alexander McQueen, R.I.P.: In one of the most tragic starts to NYFW possibly ever, Alexander McQueen, maker of all the things elegantly edgy, was found dead in his home last Thursday. Reports say it was suicide. Why is it that the most brilliant minds are also the most tortured? McQueen, you are a legend and will be forever missed.

2. Relocation, relocation, relocation: Sadly, this will be the last year the Fashion Week tents will be pitched in Bryant Park. Starting in December, the shows will venture over to Lincoln Center. Guess the designers on “Project Runway” can’t repeat, “I just want to make it to Bryant Park” anymore. “I just want to make it to Lincoln Center” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

3. Who invited you?: Generally, Fashion Week is for the editorial elite and die-hard fans of fashion. This year, however, a new demographic attempted to slip its way past the velvet ropes. Everyone’s favorite pop cultural phenomenon (but really, aren’t they a little two months ago?), the cast of the Jersey Shore, was rumored to have requested fashion show tickets. Newsflash, my Seaside Heights darlings, unless Carolina Herrera decides that Bumpits are the next vision of elegance, you aren’t getting in anywhere that matters.

4. Beyond the clothes: Anyone who’s managed to catch an episode of “Kell on Earth,” Bravo’s brilliant new series about fashion public relations mogul Kelly Cutrone, knows that it takes a whole lot more than clothes to make a fashion show work. The presentations have to create an atmosphere — the lights, the runway, the goodie bags — all have to be on-point. One of the week’s big production winners for me was Erin Wasson x RVCA, who showed in a carpet and furniture store. The models were serenaded by a live performance from Yeasayer, whose quirky international-tinged sounds were the perfect pairing for Wasson’s hip beret-topped T-shirt and legging looks. If you haven’t listened to Yeasayer, and you’re looking for something new, I highly recommend checking out their new album appropriately titled Odd Blood.

5. Velvet Revolver: Fashionista blogger Britt Aboutaleb wrote “A Rant on the Proliferation of Velvet” yesterday and I couldn’t agree more. Velvet, unfortunately, has become one of the runaway trends of Fall 2010. Now, I haven’t worn the stuff since my days of Tuesday night cotillion back in middle school, and I hadn’t really planned on purchasing any swathes of the unflattering fabric anytime soon. Aboutaleb says the fabric “looks cheap — and I don’t mean inexpensive,” and I’m right there with her. While I frequently have a softening toward trends I hate in the beginning, I’m not sure if my opinion will budge on this one.

6. Fashionably early: Perhaps the most shocking move of NYFW was Marc Jacobs’ show starting five minutes early. Known for sending his models down the runway up to two hours late, Marc pulled it together and got things going in record time. There was a slew of fur-trimmed coats, a penchant for cutouts and a shimmery cardigan that I absolutely must have.

7. Alexander Wang: If you’ve ever worn an oversized grey T-shirt, torn jeans and a black beanie, you have Alexander Wang to thank. The designer revolutionized casual-hipster-cool, but this season he did something a little different. To largely mixed reviews, Wang debuted a line of uncharacteristically buttoned-up suit fabrics. He made some peculiar proportion choices, showing cropped blazers over corsets and velvet boots. While the risk factor is admirable, his best strides were when he stuck to monochromatic knits and leather pieces.

8. Haiti Relief: Because the fashion world never turns down an opportunity to do something charitable on a big scale, Naomi Campbell hosted “Fashion for Relief Haiti,” a show that benefited the earthquake relief efforts. Model Agyness Deyn got a little too excited about the endeavor because she fell not once but twice during her stroll down the runway. Oops.

9. High buns, matte nails and nude faces: Good news girls. If you don’t plan on having time to put top coat on your nails or wash your hair next semester, don’t worry about it! Hit those snooze buttons because low-maintenance beauty is here to stay. Rag & Bone and BCBG models walked with clean faces. Ruffian, Behnaz Sarafpour and Catherine Malandrino pulled hair into super-high knots, and matte nails were all over the place. Rest up, ladies.

10. Alice Ritter: After clicking through more shows than I’d like to admit (God bless Style.com and its commitment to posting every show faster than you can click your Louboutin heels), I’ve settled on French-born Alice Ritter as one of my favorites. Her blend of plaid, stripes and tweeds are exactly what I want to turn to every fall.

To all the magazine editors teetering around New York’s icy sidewalks, I commend you. Nina Garcia, I hear you wiped out on the way to a show. Don’t worry about it, girlfriend. I haven’t been a vision of grace in the midst of Snowpocalype 2010, either. I’d much rather be trying to crash Charlotte Ronson’s fashion show than pulling on my decidedly unglamorous snow boots and trudging to class. I guess we can’t have everything.

Sending a decade of fashion off in style

As the decade comes to an end, I find myself thinking about what will be the characterizing trends of the first decade of the new millennium. The ’90s had grunge, the ’80s had harsh blush and side ponytails, and the ’70s had bell-bottoms.

Years from now, what will our descendants wear when they have an “Early Years of the Millennium” party? Will it be leggings? Oversized sunglasses? Lady Gaga leotards? Crocs? Uggs? Trucker hats? Heavy eyeliner?

Somehow, a whole mess of ugly crept its way into fashion over the last 10 years — but there were also high notes. The dreadful pleather and general sartorial harshness of the ’90s segued into edgy femininity. There was a resurgence of prettiness.

Sadly, the day of “Mad Men”-era formality is long gone, but with its loss comes a new kind of casual-cool. People might not wear heels to do their daily errands anymore, but if you’re going to be comfortable, at least look good doing it. And no, I don’t mean by throwing on a Juicy Couture tracksuit.

New York-based designer Alexander Wang revolutionized laidback-luxe in 2007, with knitwear that made just about every fashion editor and assistant salivate. He created pieces that were meant to be worn fashionably every day, emphasizing that the way you dressed down meant more than the way you dressed up.

American Apparel was founded in 1989 as a wholesale T-shirt company, but since the beginning of the millennium it has re-focused its efforts on retail and became the Starbucks of the clothing business. It started pumping out a rainbow of cotton basics that let fashion and function hold hands and skip down the streets of Brooklyn.

Designer denim became a multi-billion-dollar industry with a new “it” brand debuting more frequently than re-inventions of the Facebook homepage. Finally, it was OK to dress up jeans.

If there’s one thing to be thankful for about living in this past decade, it’s that it is 100 percent possible to be comfortable as well as fashion-forward. It is for this reason I am constantly flabbergasted by people’s inability to put a marginal amount of effort toward getting dressed. So I’m signing off the semester with the following PSA:

I’m going to make this short and sweet since I know you have loads of studying to do. Forgive me for sounding like a bit of a broken record here since I’ve said this all before, but I feel like I need to give a few reminders about “The Rules” now that its gotten chilly and sartorial apathy has started to set in.

A quick refresher course in looking pulled together: Sweatpants, with few exceptions, generally do not look good. Especially when paired with a matching sweatshirt and sneakers. Unless you’re en route to a final in the Baierl Rec Center, put on something else.

I know you’re spending long hours in the library and don’t even want to think about fashion, but guess what! It’s just as easy and comfortable to put on leggings and a tunic and a pair of boots. Really. I swear to you, it won’t even take two minutes longer than bundling up in sweats. If you’re cold, put on a scarf. Gloves, maybe too. If you’re really feeling ballsy, try a hat. It’ll make your outfit look even better.

Guys, don’t think you can slip away unscathed. The sweatpants rule is applicable to you, too. You’re already allowed to wear baggier jeans, so don’t try telling me they’re “too uncomfortable.” If you want to wear a sweatshirt, fine. But stash the Pitt Panthers one and try a colored hoodie. Major improvement, I promise you.

So good luck with finals, kids. I hope you manage to survive the week without overdosing on caffeine or completely losing your sanity in the depths of Hillman. Just keep in mind that it’s been statistically proven that you’ll do better on exams if you aren’t wearing sweatpants.

Recession's Roots

OK, so: Refinery 29 had this posting today about ombre hair. As in like, hair that fades from one color to another from root to end. Like this:

Now, as much as I would like to believe that this is the latest in coiffure trendsetting, I'm just not buying it. This is completely, 100% visible proof that we are IN A RECESSION. Just in case you didn't know. Ladies can't afford constant salon visits to keep their roots touched up.

Exhibit A? My own grown out highlights. This picture is embarrassing on all kinds of levels, but because I like you guys, I'll share it with you. Let's not get judgy, ok?

Luckily, I'm getting this little situation taken care of on Thursday after class, just in time for Halloween weekend photo ops. A big thank you in advance to Anthony over at Spa Uptown for saving me from any future embarrassment.

Breaking News: Convertible Zippers Grow Up

Remember that unfortunate phenomenon circa sixth grade when, against all odds, it was a hip thing to turn your pants into shorts with the convenience of a few well placed zippers? If you got too hot running around at recess, you could ditch the bottom half of your pant legs and stay cool.

I was never a participant in that trend, but when I spotted these convertible Michael Kors boots, that zip-zip convenience suddenly seemed cool. While I unfortunately cannot afford the steep $595 price tag, it is a pretty big penny saver if you think about: You're essentially getting three boots in one! It would totally save me the trouble of having to locate and purchase the three boots of varying height I really want.

Who knew the convertible zipper would be like that awkward kid in middle school who managed to become hot in their early 20s?