Nestled in the sleek, upscale shopping avenues of Perkins Rowe is a store unlike the others.
It is a store that stands out among the usual haunts of wealthy women and their well-to-do husbands. It caters to tragically hip young people by selling them an image that goes against the grain of mainstream culture.
Like a music video no one is watching, young people stroll past the foreign palm trees and fake, Disney-esque buildings to a store that deviates from the norm.
It is Urban Outfitters, and it is different.
Or is it?
While it stands in fashionable opposition to stores like Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, in reality, Urban Outfitters is just another corporation trying to make money by charging too much money for poorly-made clothes.
In fact, Urban Outfitters Inc. owns another store in Perkins Rowe. Anthropologie is the adult version of the store, made for grown-ups with real jobs who can afford to pay higher prices for clothes that don’t scream, “I want to be a rock star” quite so loudly.
The genius of Urban Outfitters is its anti-establishment image, which fueled the formation of the company.
The popularity of all things odd, independent and ironic has contributed to the rise of the corporation, an example of capitalistic ambition which so many of the store’s customers claim to oppose.
How can this level of deception have fooled so many?
Let’s take a short trip through my version of how this corporate clothing behemoth came to be cooler than sliced bread.
It started in Seattle, the hot spot for liberal 20-somethings in search of community and identity.
They banded together with a common repulsion for all things mainstream and structured their life around this tenet.
They were hipsters. They formed indie rock bands and chain-smoked Parliaments on their stoops. They consumed nothing but coffee, cigarettes and Pabst Blue Ribbon (commonly known as veganism) and had less than 2 percent body fat.
But they were missing something: a common, unifying physical characteristic.
What could ensure that their image would not be copied by the masses? Who are the people that no one in their right mind would ever want to imitate?
Their parents.
That’s right. Go find any photos of your parents before 1980 and hold them up next to pictures of any generic indie band. They’re both riddled with muted earth tones, old ski vests, tighter-than-comfortable pants and giant sunglasses.
There’s probably even one of your dad in a frilly, powder blue tuxedo and a full mustache.
When thrift stores and Salvation Army ran out of original extra small slacks and graphic tees, independent clothing designers popped up. They took ’70s fashion and added all the kitsch and camp any irony-loving hipster could ever want.
As Seattle was also a music mecca, many of these new fashions were most prominently displayed by musicians.
With the growing national popularity of independent music via the Internet and America’s current obsession with rock stars, these unassuming against-the-grain bands became national fashion models for music-minded folk around the country.
And let’s face it, not everyone wants to shop at Gap or Old Navy. So when this growing subculture of consumers fell through the gap of mainstream retail, corporate America was there to catch them with open arms.
And thus Urban Outfitters was born.
At first a small, neighborhood store, it quickly expanded into a money-making, trend-setting giant. As aforementioned indie bands began to appear on MTV’s TRL, teens began to think, “Sure, I’ll pay $50 of my parent’s money for a poorly made shirt just so I look like that band I saw on TV last night.”
With controversial T-shirt slogans and trendy trinkets, young people were caught hook, line and sinker. I mean, who can’t love a store that sells lunar cactus gardens and flying alarm clocks?
I can’t. I can’t support a corporation that profits off the exploitation of a counter culture.
The real irony here is that the many musicians who scrounge every last dime just so they can play a few house shows would probably not be able to afford the clothes they inspired.
What do people who want to be different wear now? Are fashion trends going to keep escalating to unfathomable levels of ridiculousness? I, for one, don’t want to see where that crazy train is headed.
So do America a favor, and go create your own individuality.
—-Contact Lauren Walck at [email protected]