BACK-TO-SCHOOL DUDS

Has the flared jeans/flip-flop look finally reached its twilight?

Is it going gently — arm in arm with the hip-hugger/lower-back tattoo look — into that good night?

I could have sworn I saw a marked decline today in the number of college kids shuffling around campus in cheap-plastic-thongs-made-in-Malaysia (an old-school word for flip-flops), flared, low-riding jeans and tight, worn-looking $40 T-shirts.

Go figure. Just as I was about to adopt that look it goes out of style. But at least I realized it in time. Not like when I got that bowl cut and started wearing stirrup pants — just as that under-appreciated aesthetic was singing its own swan song.

I wrote a post in April about uber-trendy kids. I was on the verge of adopting the faux-messy look then, and recently I read a phrase in a novel that really sold me on the idea: Looking bad is the new looking good.

Being a philosophy major, I need a theory, or at least a snappy epigram, to go with my praxis. Praxis is an ancient Greek word for practice, for those of you who majored in something more practical than philosophy (God, I miss that old gang of bullshitting megalomaniacs who couldn't content themselves with the million or so words in the English language). Anyway, theory and praxis. I can't just do something for the sake of doing it or because 85.3 percent of all other human beings are doing it. I need some intellectual puffery to persuade me.

Looking bad is the new looking good.

I like that (I'd like it even better if it were written in a dead language). But alas, it's no longer true, if I can judge from the fashion I saw today.

Or maybe the kids who are the chief ambassadors of the flared/flip look were simply too hip to show up for the first day of school. Maybe they won't make an appearance until the third or fourth week. And then everything will be back to normal.

What I saw today — and this may be skewed by an influx of fashion-ingenue freshmen from the far reaches of our state — was a lot more crisp. A lot of squeaky-clean white tennis shoes, freshly pressed shirts, vivid colors. One kid in my class had a bright orange, well-laundered polo shirt and pristine white tennis shoes with orange stripes to match his shirt. I can't wait to see whether he'll have other shirt/shoe combos. He looked clean. And his shoelaces reminded me a tad of the new red-striped ones Benjie was wearing the other day. I consider Benjie to be at the forefront of fashion, as evidenced by the bold statement he recently made by wearing a "Newton, KS" T-shirt in Newton, KS. Can fashion get more daring? Another guy in my class had on a bright, brand-new pink polo with combed hair. Several of them smelled nice. The girls, if I'm not mistaken, were wearing their pants higher on their hips — not above their navel with pleated fronts and severely tapered legs, which is the look I really prefer, but close; they'll be there soon.

Anyway, if any of you have any insights into whether the marvels I saw today are just anomalies or actual harbingers of a new direction in fashion, please share your thoughts. It won't be easy, but I'll hold off on changing my look until we've reached a consensus.

On a semi-related note, I asked my students to jot down all their usual personal-info crap on an index card. One dude is from Hamburg, Germany, a city that's important to European history buffs because it's maybe where the hamburger came from. He's the only kid in the class who, on the General Knowledge portion of the quiz, knew that Angela Merkel was the chancellor of Germany. Everyone else, not living in a country where a gal might actually be in charge, thought she was an actress or "a lady golfer."

The last thing they had to write on the index cards was hobbies/interests. Here are the winners: shopping, myspace, facebook, napping, sleeping, eBay, socializing, going out with friends, scrapbooking, watching TV.

Some wrote: reading, history, journalism, music, but — just between you and me — I don't expect much from those two.