SlowpokeBlog

Re: this cartoon, in which I suggested hipsters were resorting to extra-large, ironically-huge glasses frames to distinguish themselves from the bourgeoisification of small glasses, I noticed while strolling around the grounds of the University of Virginia yesterday that a startling number of female undergrads are now wearing giant '70s sunglasses -- so many that I would posit the huge glasses trend has officially passed from the hipstersphere into the much larger preppisphere.

[UPDATE: Fellow cartoonist Matt Bors correctly notes that celebrities have been sporting ironically-enormous shades for quite some time. As I said to Matt, they only started showing up en masse among the sorority girls on the ultra-preppy campus of UVA this fall. I would say the preppisphere doesn't necessarily represent the mainstream so much as the ultimate endpoint of a trend; that is, where something that started in the hipstersphere goes to die, much as grunge did in the early '90s, when sorority girls began sprouting flannel shirts.]