Professor Bill Broun
Faculty Advisor and Contributing Writer
I like to joke with my students at ESU about how lame my own fashion choices are.
If I’m wearing a new pair of boring khaki Dockers, for example, or some pilly old fleece jacket, or I’m kicking around in a pair of chunky brown “walking shoes” from Rockport or Hush Puppies, I’ll go ahead and point out the uncoolness.
“How about these, folks? Pretty great, huh?”
It makes them laugh in their platform sneakers and their oversized distressed Nirvana t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, and we all revel in the cringefest.
Pointing out my own bad fashion is probably a sort of defense mechanism, but it’s also a way of showing students my limits, and I think, in their own way, they appreciate that. I’m a professor. I know some stuff, and they do, too—a lot more than me at times.
Still, I’ve been interested in Non-Fashion since I myself was in college. I’ve always wanted to know what’s not in. I like counter-trends and anti-cool. And by the way, I think “in,” as a term, may be out, actually, and same with “cool.”
Like quite a few other ESU professors, I’m also this year that most unlikeliest of “new” fashion icons at ESU—a dad.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (where other dads like me also happily live), you may know that dad fashion has been a thing for a few years. This all started about seven or eight years ago when “dadcore” fashion became an improbable rage, but I’m frankly surprised it hasn’t gone away.
Doesn’t boring get old?
It’s still a thing, in 2023. The wearing unstructured dad hats, cargo pants, sandals with socks, relaxed denims are all, for reasons I can’t grasp, still interesting to some young people. I don’t get that. I really don’t.
As an actual dad, I think I can safely say that dadness doesn’t mysteriously confers a style sense. As a matter of fact, I think it may be the opposite.
As my English Department colleague Professor Jeff Hotz told me, “I have no style sense whatsoever and am more grandfatherly than fatherly when it comes to clothes.”
And I know I dress far worse than the always self-deprecating Professor Hotz (who often nails the cool version of “dad fashion” impressively, I’ve observed).
I’m not sure real “dad fashion” is even possible. Asking many dads to show you what’s fashionable is like asking to hear the sound of one hand clapping.
Most magazine and social media “dad fashion” isn’t really worn by many dads. It’s way too loudly daddish. I think real dad fashion is really about finding practical, easily accessible, extremely durable, low-key clothing one can launder often, because being a dad—like being a mom—means dealing in gross stuff and messes almost every day.
Almost any parent of young children who is also faculty or staff at ESU know just what it’s like to discover some child-related mystery stain (from a juice box? peas? a smashed purple Crayon?) on a garment right before teaching.
Dads mostly don’t want to be noticed while they do their dad things in Dadland. In fact, as I often tell my wife, I consider Father’s Day purely ironic.
This week I did buy a new Patagonia Better Sweater Fleece Jacket ($159). It’s basically the only thing I always wear, through fall and winter, and it’s totally on all the “dad fashion” lists this year, but I’d be the last person to know that. It’s an old product, too. It’s unchanging dadness. I’ve been wearing these for about seven or eight years, too, which is pretty much the very definition of not being fashionable.
But the Better Sweater, I tell you, is better, and it hits all the dad notes. It’s tough as hell, stain-resistant, sensible, roomy, low-key (I got my new one in the most unflashy of colors, gray) and easy to order from Patagonia.
I wonder when all this dad fashion stuff will end, and what it means about society. I used to think my dad’s steel-toed black leather work shoes were cool way back in the 1980s. That was dad fashion then. Maybe it’s never gone away. The exact items may evolve, but the appeal of looking very boring is, it seems, timeless.
Professor Bill Broun is the faculty advisor for the Stroud Courier. He teaches writing classes in the English Department.
