Rein in the Spending? Normcore and a ~

Reining in didn’t work on dievca’s end….she spent her pennies.

dievca’s friend wanted to visit the “American Vintage” store in SoHo because she saw it in Amsterdam and liked their offerings.  This comes after dievca’s Dutch friend mentioned that she really liked the brand and asked dievca if she had heard of it.  It’s not an American brand,  it’s French.  dievca would describe it as a more expensive version of the Gap or something similar to Vince.

The offerings are an example of:

Normcore

Normcore is a unisex fashion trend characterized by unpretentious, average-looking clothing. Normcore fashion includes jeans, t-shirts, sweats, button-downs, and sneakers. Clothing is considered to be normcore when it is attractive and comfortable and is viewed as “normal” by the majority of people.

Normcore is a portmanteau of the words normal and hardcore. The word first appeared in a guest strip by Ryan Estrada for the webcomic Templar, Arizona in 2008 and was later employed by K-HOLE, a trend forecasting group, in an October 2013 report called “Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom”.

As used by K-HOLE, the word normcore referred to an attitude, not a particular code of dress. It was intended to mean “finding liberation in being nothing special.” (Sounds like the Swedish “Langom”) However, a piece in New York magazine by author Fiona Duncan that began popularizing the term in February 2014  conflated it with what K-HOLE referred to as “Acting Basic”, a concept which involved dressing neutrally to avoid standing out. It was this sense of normcore which gained popular usage. The characters featured on the television series Seinfeld are frequently cited as exemplifying the aesthetics and ethos of normcore fashion.

The word normcore was named runner-up for neologism of the year by the Oxford University Press in 2014. It was added to the AP Stylebook in 2016.

Anyways, dievca bought this American Vintage Puffer coat in Bear – honestly, it looks better in person:

American Vintage Nymo Coat in Bear

Normcore wearers are people who do not wish to distinguish themselves from others by their clothing. This is not to mean that they are unfashionable people who wear whatever comes to hand, but that they consciously choose clothes that are functional and undistinguished. The “normcore” trend has been interpreted as a reaction to fashion oversaturation resulting from ever faster-changing fashion trends.

Normcore clothes include everyday items of casual wear such as t-shirts, hoodies, polos, short-sleeved shirts, jeans and chino pants, but not items such as neckties or blouses. These clothes are worn by men and women alike, making normcore a unisex style.

Clothes that meet the “normcore” description are mainly sold by large fashion and retail chains such as The Gap, Jack & Jones, Superdry, Jigsaw, and Esprit. They are generally cheaply produced in East Asian countries. Many other retailers such as Marc O’Polo, Woolrich, Desigual, Closed, and Scotch & Soda produce normcore-like clothes combined with individual design ideas.

Normcore is exactly how Master dresses – He buys excellent quality, but He doesn’t want to stand out.

dievca did get her Normcore “Flourish” piece at LeSportSac, the Floral Camo Helmet Bag: