Friday, February 16, 2007

I shop at Urban Outfitters, Therefore I am...

I don't know if I hate Urban Outfitters more because of the types of people who shop there exclusively, collectively known as 'hiptards' for the unenlightened, or because of everything they stand for and their ridiculous 3-interview process.

Regardless I have to make a trip there sometime in the near future because the limited edition Adidas slip-ons that I've had my eye on are sold out everywhere else.

Must swallow pride even though their mere presence at UO means that: a) they're really not that limited edition, and b) I'm going to eventually encounter some hiptard with my shoes, however said encounter will probably provide me with some blog fodder so it's a win-win situation I suppose.

7 comments:

S* said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
S* said...

I dislike the contrived hipness that abounds at UO. Plus everything is so ridiculously overpriced.

Nicoel said...

s* - I know what you mean, it's as if everyone who shops there somehow feels validated by the fact that because they have a certain set of leggings and a pseudo-ironic t-shirt dress that they're somehow sorta cool now, no matter what they were like in high school.

Lame.

riese said...

i know that it's lame but i love it and i can't help myself. that might be because there was one in ann arbor michigan where i grew up and i didn't realize it was a national chain (since at first, it had stores in like, a few major american cities and ann arbor randomly) and thought it was a local store. by the time i reached puberty, it was too late, i had already deemed it the mecca of cool.

now i just like it for the sale rack, and by "rack" i mean the piles of crap on the ground that have been ruined by hiptards, which is where you can find cute razor-blade-themed makeup bags for 1.99. it's AWESOME.

Nicoel said...

That's ok riese, I still love you and your sunday top ten...

Annie said...

I have the exact same UO mentality as Riese -- we had a store in Chicago in the late '90s and I thought it was awesome. I think the problem is that in the early '00s it became "cool," but "cool" in the commercial sense, which means gross. So where it was once cool just in our minds because we had brains, now everyone sort of knows UO is "commercial cool" and therefore they should either shop there exclusively OR make fun of it. Totally don't blame you for that though, because hiptards suck. I do wish you'd been to a store in the '90s when they actually were Cool (brain-cool with a capital C) because you would have gotten a much diff vibe

Nicoel said...

@Annie/Riese - No, I totally get what you mean and it's definitely true that UO has a WAY different wibe than it used to, I remember my twelve-year old self thinking it was pretty cool one one of my many stateside basketball tourney weekends.

Like any store, they key is moderation. AS much as I love J.Crew, if I didn't mix and match my pieces from there with much more age-appropriate offerings, I'd look like a douche as well.

UO must be taken with a grain of salt, and I'm more annoyed at my experience there, which will be posted later this weekend or early next week than anything else.