Fashion is Weird: The 7 Strangest Clothing Items of the Year – Wall Street Journal

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Instagram is now a key medium for discovery and often the engine fueling these new ideas. As I wrote about earlier this year, today’s fashion brands have determined that one way to cut through the clutter of our overloaded lives is to create amusing, meme-worthy clothes that look good in that inescapable square format. Sometimes these clothes rely on vapid slogans (the Zurich fashion label Vetements received much attention this year for a $550 T-shirt that declared “Corporate Magazines Still Suck A Lot”) but the designs that seem to go most viral have an “OMG” element. Below are some of the most peculiar fashion items I collided with this year. Like all new ideas, they’re alien, experimental and perhaps best judged a few years from now with the wisdom of hindsight. Let’s all meet back here in 2022 and see if any of them actually made it into our closets.

1. Dior AirPod case

When models came down the Dior runway in January with microscopic leather boxes dangling around their necks, I first thought they were cases for Tic-Tac mints. The reality was slightly more logical: They were $300-ish AirPod cases. In subsequent months, rival labels like Bottega Venetta and Gucci would also release headphone holsters, fueled by the idea that your AirPods, which already come with a case, deserved a luxe locket as well.

2. 1017 Alyx 9SM derby shoe with a removable sole

In October, New York retailer Opening Ceremony posted an Instagram video of this shoe in action. An otherwise ordinary black lace-up, the Derby shoe from New York label 1017 Alyx 9SM is sold with a removable rubber sole which evokes the Starship Enterprise and, apparently, requires a demonstration video. The clip is amusing enough to watch, but close your eyes and it sounds like someone is peeling industrial strength Saran Wrap off a casserole dish. You might experience footwear-specific ASMR.

3. Beams Japan fanny pack

Crocs

This was a year of curious Crocs. Rapper Post Malone wore a signature yellow pair with a barbed wire pattern, while pre-bankruptcy Barneys New York released a set with spikes (so punk!) emerging from the toe area, to list just two examples. But Japan’s Beams created the oddest Crocs of all when it secured a teeny fanny pack atop the strap of their design. In case you were wondering, yes, it can hold your AirPods.

4. Jambys boxers with pockets

They’re boxers. With pockets. “Isn’t that just like, gym shorts?” you ask. Indeed. In…deeed.

5. 99%is “Gobchang” pants

This year, Billie Eilish, Travis Scott, Lil Yachty and multiple members of Migos have all strutted about in $870 “Gobchang” pants from South Korean label 99%is. Unofficially known as the “bungee pants,” they have dozens of elastic draw pulls affixed to them, and suggest a wrinkly windbreaker caught in a “Matrix” glitch.

6. Prada pocket jacket

In April, Prada revealed a bibbed-jacket that is in effect a five-gallon Ziploc bag with shoulder straps. When Cleveland Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. wore it to the ESPY awards in July, he demonstrated the garment’s ineffable ability to make the wearer look like a cross between a toddler in beige Osh-Kosh overalls and a kangaroo.

7. Moschino oversized baseball caps

Coming in just under the wire! At the New York City fashion show held this month by Italian label Moschino, models wore satellite-dish-scaled baseball caps. To be more precise, the oversize hats aren’t so much worn as docked upon one’s head like an enormous ice cream scoop placed onto a thimble-sized cone.

Write to Jacob Gallagher at Jacob.Gallagher@wsj.com