I should first of all say that I don’t
think there’s anything wrong with check shirts. They may be a bit boring and
predictable, the kind of thing you might casually throw on if you rush out of
the house without having time to think of anything more interesting to wear, or
something you might wear if you were going painting and decorating, but there’s
nothing intrinsically wrong with them. And, in case you’re wondering, I have
worn them myself, but this was well before their recent revival, at the end of
the ‘90s when they weren’t considered cool, partly due to their ubiquity during
the Grunge Wars.
But whilst considering the history of
the check shirt, I struck upon an revolutionary idea: whilst fashion is largely
random and frequently undergoes Stalinist purges of its own history, I wondered
if it would be possible to undertake a statistical study of a particular
garment, analysing the data and seeing if they can be used to predict its
future fashionability. Has this ever been done before? Well, in order to find
out, here is a graph showing the coolness of check shirts since the end of the
1960s. Don’t worry; I’ve shown my working:
1968-72: Checked shirt pretty cool as
most bands are wearing bizarre hippy clothes; it could be argued that Neil
Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival were proto punk in stripping down their
look in protest of hippy ridiculousness. Although in Neil Young’s case it may
be that, being Canadian, he was a child lumberjack so simply carried the look
on stage.
1972–76: Neil Young’s career goes
mainstream and bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath pioneer proto-metal
alternative ways to challenge hippy looks. Coolness of check shirts declines.
1977-81: Occasional but inconsistent
sightings amongst punk and post punk bands lead to check shirt becoming
slightly more cool.
1982-87: All time high in check shirt
coolness as a result of legendary US alt-rock band the Replacements almost
exclusively wearing them as they challenge mainstream radio sounds, lay the
foundation for alternative rock and date Winona Ryder back when she was young
and not a kleptomaniac (this refers to the band’s singer, Paul Westerberg,
rather than the group as a whole dating her).
1987-1990: Decline in check shirt
coolness apart from brief surge in 1990 as Replacements release their final
album, All Shook Down, seen by many as the first alt-country album.
1991-1996: Check shirt woefully uncool
due to appropriation by grunge fans mistaking their teenage sexual frustration
for existential angst, subsequently dressing like tramps and making check
shirts unwearable by any style conscious person for the next five years.
1997: The end of Grunge; fortunes of
the check shirt rise as alt-country gains pace following the success of Wilco
and Whiskeytown. This continues into the next decade as Whiskeytown’s Ryan Adams
goes solo and continues with the check shirt look.
2007: The Hold Steady wear check
shirts and their coolness is maintained for a bit longer.
2010: Check shirt goes mainstream
again and everyone is seen wearing them.
2011: Disaster. Prepubescent singing
sensation Dustin Beaver is spotted wearing a check shirt, potentially rendering
them uncool for the rest of eternity.
So, from this graph, can we tell if it
will ever be cool to wear check shirts again? The sighting of Dustin Beaver in
a check shirt can be seen as the sartorial equivalent of a devastating stock
market crash but who can say how long lasting its effects will be? The check
shirt has shown its resilience to fluctuations in the market before so I
wouldn’t be surprised to see it make a comeback, even if not for a few decades.
Remember, past performance is no indication of future success…
