Image via Complex Original
It’s hard not to at least chuckle when a 124-year-old fashion magazine known for its September issue and mercurial editor declares T-shirts bearing the banco-font logo of Thrasher—a 35-year-old skateboarding monthly run by a polarizing figure all its own—”every cool model’s off-duty staple.” But earlier this year, Vogue did precisely that. In a post from January 28, writer Liana Satenstein called the tee “the latest piece to make the street-to-chic crossover from the land of half-pipes and kick flips” and went on to investigate its appeal among models like Lexi Boling and Binx Walton—who, it should be noted, “wore the Blackout hoodie to her agency’s fete in Paris.”
The sheer tone-deafness of the article was dumbfounding. So too is that of the stories comprising Vogue’s Skate Week, an editorial package dedicated to, I suppose, the intersection of skateboarding and high fashion. The posts range from the guileless (“Girls Who Shred: 5 Stylin’ Female Skateboarders to Follow on Instagram Now”) to the perplexing (“All Decked Out! 13 Resort 2017 Looks and the Skateboards to Match”). Nonetheless, we read them. Closely. And, naturally, we noticed some cringe-inducing moments, the best nine of which are below.
We Love Skate
“What draws a person to skate?” Maybe the desire to sell a product to the elusive youth demographic. Skateboarders like skateboarding. Or skating. No actual skater has ever said he or she is into “skate,” a word that describes a marketing category, not an activity.
Ben Nordberg: 27-Year-Old Style Historian
Skate style has a long, storied history, one that begins with the surf-inspired looks of the ‘60s and spans the five decades that follow. Ben Nordberg, while both a skater and a model, is 27 years old. Which means he started skating in the late ‘90s, at the earliest. So let’s chalk the phrase about no one getting “the evolution of skate style quite like Ben Nordberg” up to hyperbole.
Skateboarding and Drugs Are Mutually Exclusive
Those who came of age at the turn of the millennium might remember OPM’s “Heaven Is a Halfpipe,” an apparent ode to skateboarding in which the band noted that “heaven”—which would presumably boast a halfpipe—”would be just kicking back/With Jesus packing my bong.” Nonetheless, as Vogue points out, in 2000, Matthew Meschery (stage name: Shakey Lo the Creation Kid) told Spin that skateboarding has “become a very technical sport. You can’t do a lot of drugs and be really good at it these days,” a statement that ignored the preceding 30 or so years of skating’s progress altogether.
Tony Hawk: Testosterone-Fuelled Madman
In the eyes of Vogue, skateboarding proudly thumbs its nose at authority at every turn. (Which at times may be true.) But, in saying that skating “has certainly drawn its fair share of unruly testosterone,” it offers, among others, Tony Hawk and the Lords of Dogtown as examples. For what it’s worth, Hawk, 48, isn't spitting at cops as he drives his children to school. And Lords of Dogtown is a movie. It came out in 2005.
Hair of the (Mostly White) Skateboarder
Skateboarding has always drawn kids of diverse ethnic backgrounds. But to hear Vogue tell it, in a post bearing the headline “An Ode to Great Skater Hair, From Stacy Peralta to Leticia Bufoni,” flowing flaxen hair is what skating is all about. “Male or female, so many of history’s best sidewalk surfers have been crowned with twinning cascades of bleached strands—the precise fade of pigment acting as a visual marker of hours clocked in abandoned pools, sloping skate parks, and especially daring staircases.” Sorry, everyone else.
Longboarding: More Amusing, More Stylish
As Willy Staley once wrote, “the longboard takes skateboarding back to a past that never quite existed.” That fact hasn’t deterred legions of people from riding oversized skateboards through our cities, though, and from turning Ko Hyojoo into a viral “longboarding sensation.” In two years of skating, a term we use loosely, she’s been able to attract some 270,000 Instagram followers. Longboarding, she says, is “more amusing” and “more stylish” than actual skateboarding. Duly noted.
Skateboarding Is a Contact Sport
Yes, skateboarding can cause injury, usually to your limbs. Depending what you’re skating, you might also hit your head. Vogue sees things otherwise. While model and “Skate Dolly” Sif Agustsdottir’s “high cheekbones and delicate complexion make her an unlikely candidate for a sport in which split lips and broken noses are common occurrences, she’s eager to persuade you otherwise.” Maybe she’s boxing people at the spot.
The "Skaterboarder"
In Tbilisi, Georgia, there lives a guy named Sandro Popkhadze. He wears stylish secondhand clothes, and he skates for the apparent enjoyment of children attending a birthday party. The 18-year-old is said to resemble “nothing so much as a beautiful, bony pirate, complete with hair pulled into a ponytail and a hoop earring.” Truly, he is “Tbilisi’s Coolest Skaterboarder.”
Keep Working on Those Flip Kicks
Hey, look: Some of the highest-profile celebrities on the planet skateboard, including Blake Lively. When they’re not doing famous-people things, they’re out there, like your average skate bro, “trying to nail their ollies and flip kicks everywhere from New York City to Sydney.”