While 2016 was a tumultuous year, it also forged a divide in popular fashion. While many boys moved towards wearing joggers made from cotton or tweed materials in muted, subtle tones, paired with generic shirts from American Eagle and Vineyard Vines and shoes from Nike and Adidas such as the Roshe and NMD, many girls seemed to be wrapping up a phase of fashion that started in early 2015.

The “Tumblr” phase of fashion started earlier in the decade because that was when Twenty One Pilots, The 1975, and Fall Out Boy, all alternative bands, peaked in popularity. With them, they brought ultra-ripped black jeans, oversized t-shirts, dad hats, bleached and ombré hair, and Converse high-tops back into the mainstream. While a handful of boys adopted this aesthetic, it was mainly girls who fielded it through 2016.

But come 2017, individuals who pioneered the Tumblr aesthetic are escaping it in droves, by way of the not new, but improved “skater” aesthetic. The hundreds of thousands of people who want to escape the mainstream through vans, baggy pants, and oversized hoodies in yellow and black, are inadvertently making it mainstream.

Now that it seems everyone, including myself, owns 2 or 3 pairs of vans, the avant-garde has become the typical.