Normcore: when boring is trendy

When white Adidas socks become fashionable you have to be a little concerned...

People who see me on a regular basis will know that the one aspect of my personality that you ' immediately take attention of and cannot not ignore is that I live for eccentricity. Superficially speaking, the way I dress fringes on the avant-garde, a certain outre to my clothes that enables me to, quite literally stand out from the crowd. This is the hallmark of the fashion world. Is is a cathartic vessel that enables the shyer of the population to express their suppressed personalities to be let loose, to be free. All you have to do is take a glance at the recent Fashion Weeks to be able to gleam what fashion can curate. A wonderful, glossy veil that covers our flaws as we feel that by wearing a Chanel dress, a Topshop bag, and Benefit make-up, will give us a new lease on life.

So why oh why, is 'Normcore' the latest fashion movement?

Trawling down the muddy, uncouth runway are this years style icons...

The term normcore were first coined by a New York company called K-Hole. The term was designed to describe "...embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for 'difference' or 'authenticity'..." Now, however, the term has changed and been distorted to a fashion curse, one to be laid upon those poor soles who dress to embrace not outre art, but the mundane, the blase and the tedium. Where practicality (in which the term 'luxe sports' need not apply) is proponed and championed. 

This nauseatingly plain facet has evolved into an art form in itself. In a postmodernist age that stresses the near obligation to be an individual, an act that can be comfortably achieved through clothing, this is but the most dramatic movement in recent years. There is no need to dress crazy, even the simplicity of minimalism would be decreed as too ostensible to satisfy the duldrums of normcore. 

The normcore icons come in similar shapes and sizes. Bear Grylss (left) illustrates the limits the followers of the movement can stretch. The flatness of his clothing, whether it be the cheesy slogan t-shirt or tiger-stripe jeans, exude the epitome of what the fad culminates to' a middle aged man with his hands slouchy consumed by ballooning denim. 

Likewise, Samantha Cameron (middle) jogs away from beauty and glamour whilst donnig a suburban housewife expression. Oh how Coco Chanel would revel in her a la mode grave! The faux pas horrors of green fleece zipped up to the neck, loose figure-consuming tracksuits and basic Asics trainers have all reached a once baffling, unthinkable heights; stylish. 

This leaves the *ehem* final style maven to be one Ben Fogle (right) whose bastion of looking presentable is rubber blue training shoes. He captures the raw, incomparable essence of a bored dad out shopping by wearing an olive-coloured gilet. with a white shirt. The rakish scarf and the rugged beard; his desperate attempt to look 'hip' as he'd say. He's really trying here folks, 

The late Steve Jobs epitomises all that normcore stands for. A turtleneck, it's eye-catching, but not eye-catching enough to be noticed. Tucked into washed, deeply unflattering jeans whose cuffs sluggishly grace the tongue of the 'built for comfort' trainers. It's stylised blandness that would make the likes of Blue Harbour or New Balance shoes the most haute couture brands out there. As a man who who champions the legal banning, the thought of even a chance that Crocs being fashionable makes me very scared. Normcore is by far the most strangest fashion trend I've ever seen.