Warriors of Radness’ military inspiration and Made in the USA collection.
Both Warriors of Radness and Acne stand out in that they often create ironic, if not flat-out funny fashion. While youth culture fashion trends, especially in T-shirt graphics, tend to own the market on hilarity in fashion statements, in these two cases, the irony is overwhelmingly on trend, it’s actually bordering a new frontier.
Acne’s iconic city irony.
First, Acne’s latest collection features souvenir sweaters and sweatshirts that play on the concept of how popular, still, such travel iconography is, driving at the inner-tourist in all of us. In this case however, Acne from Sweden is mixing iconic city images such as the Eiffel Tower in the background of the lettering for New York City, then adding Sweden in a smaller font underneath.
Or taking a Los Angeles palm trees and beach sunset scene as the background to cold Montreal and Sweden at the bottom. The effect is a mix of current college/prep trends, especially with their pallets of burgundy and grey, Americana, and the ironic possibility of mixed city themes (and countries). At price tags between 135-153 Euros however, buyers are probably among the elite pool of super ironic fashionistas.
Montreal Sweden.
Warriors of Radness, the surf-inspired brand out of Los Angeles, continues to challenge the status quo in a humorous fashion, but this time, taking the fact that their acronym actually “WOR” obviously sounds like “war” and have made a military-inspired collection that’s all made in the USA.
The military/camo theme in fashion these days is bordering on overkill, but then again, why not take it over the top and mix it with a surf-inspired pattern in a button-down, add it to board shorts, and go back to the classic 80’s cargo pants?
WOR’s statement says it all: “You either surf or fight…” yelled Sargent Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Introducing the WOR collection, reflecting a military vibe, cause hey, that’s our initials. Pieces include a trench coat, a boatneck cotton pullover anorak in marine blues Vietnam era tiger camo, M-65 field jacket in ripstop and camo, a windshirt, jaquard knit pullovers, elastic bottom cargo pants, a Hawaiian print shirt, a striped french terry pullover, a couple of shorts, and some t shirts.”
WOR’s Fight or Surf.
