Why are we wearing our snacks?
Food as fashion, fashion as signifier
Why are we wearing our snacks?
When the New York Times published Priya Krishna’s trend piece on Rachel Antonoff’s pasta coat this past winter, I was worried she’d beat me to a grand unified theory of food as fashion. Fortunately, that wasn’t quite the case, but the pasta puffer micro trend was a key moment in the ascendency of food fashion.
Rachel Antonoff is no stranger to meal-adjacent ‘fits. In 2021, she and brother Jack were wearing matching ice cream sundae sweaters, which would give way to bodega coffee, bagel and babka varieties, among others, until she was modeling a full tablecloth-as-dress complete with full seafood dinner while dancing the night away with Bob Ballaban.
Other indie fashion labels have jumped on the same aesthetic, including Lisa Says Gah, where the summer collection is full of food tees and grocery prints.
But while food has been a brand staple at some brands, other designers are making groceries the entire brand. Delicacies Jewelry makes fine necklaces, earrings, and bracelets in the shape of noodles and dumplings and doughnuts. Wear Your Snacks sells hats and t-shirts bearing food-related vocabulary words like “tuna melt” or “rotisserie chicken.” A collaboration with Produce Parties, an event company that throws produce-themed dinner parties, produced a teal baseball cap that reads simply “tomato,” which begs the question: how many indie brands does it take to identify a vegetable?
Would I wear a pair of Lisa Says Gah Robyn Jeans in the Tapas Collection print? Probably. But I can’t help but wonder why there’s such high demand for food in fashion.
In most of these garments there’s an obvious common thread—tomatoes, olives, lemons, seafood and gold-plated noodles all call to mind the languid indulgence of an Italian summer holiday. But plenty of other culinary and social trends have made their way into our closets. Rotisserie chickens and tapas no doubt bubbled-up from internet memes and “girl dinner” TikToks. But it’s perhaps the prevalence of tinned fish—by name and by image—that defines the trend.
I don’t remember who was the first person to call tinned fish “recession-core”—and real heads know the tinned fish craze began with Alison Roman and her shallot pasta well before this recession was a twinkle in our collective eye—but recession-core and millennial-core might as well be the same thing at this point, and tinned fish is decidedly a millennial obsession. It’s a cheap way to signal refined taste and an ability to take pleasure in things previous generations thought below them.
So what’s the difference between eating tinned fish and wearing a t-shirt that says tinned fish? Tinned fish is largely consumed in private, as part of a snacky meal or the afore-mentioned girl dinner. At its most performative, it might be consumed among friends in a trendy restaurant decorated in bold colors and campy checkerboard prints. But a t-shirt can be worn anywhere, telegraphing to the entire world that you know what the cool kids eat.
A tinned fish t-shirt from Wear Your Snacks will run you about $25, less than you’d spend a 3-pack of sardines from Fishwife, so if you want to be known as a tinned fish person, it would be more economical to invest in a public-facing garment that proclaims as much than to shell out on a steady tinned fish diet and hope someone happens upon you in your kitchen at just the right moment to learn this information organically.
The economics become even more compelling when you compare the cost per wear of a pair of New Jersey artist Adrianne’s Original Pasta Pants™️ to the price of week-long Italian vacation. If you can’t afford to travel to Italy for the ‘gram, snagging a pair of coveted pants becomes the next most chic way to tell the world you know what the finer things are, whether or not you can afford to enjoy them.
Is there a world where we all eat Top Ramen over our sinks, then wear oyster shirts out in public? With the return of heroin chic—and what better time to celebrate starvation aesthetics than during a recession aggravated by inflated grocery prices?—I hope we even do that. Have you been priced out of the market for a carton of eggs? Maybe add a pair of fried egg earrings to your cart for a more financially sustainable way to be an “egg person.”
If you spot a ramen t-shirt in the wild, start worrying.
Reading
Rachel Kushner’s latest essay in Harper’s—Kushner might be a new favorite writer of mine, though I haven’t read her fiction yet.
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill US by Hanif Abdurraqib—This was on my TBR for way too long. It’s brilliant.
Listening
Reeling by The Mysterines—A no-skip brit-rock album. England always comes to the rescue when the American rock scene is waning.
The Culture Journalist podcast—Great cultural criticism podcast, with paid episodes worth subscribing to here.
Recommendations
Using Canva to create aesthetically-pleasing meal plans to keep on your fridge.
Following @stoopingnyc. I stooped some gorgeous fabrics this week!
Something & Nothing. God, I love these pricey little sodas. The hibiscus rose flavor is my favorite. I have yet to try the seltzers.
I have also noticed people wearing their snacks at the event Summernats.
They wear avocados and Vegemite and watermelons.