Honor Fashion Week With A Truly Glamorous Sweatsuit [Updated]
Update, September 14, 2020: Did you know that we're squarely in the middle of New York Fashion Week? You'd hardly know it without the usual swarm of celebrities in the front row at packed runway shows and steady stream of paparazzi photos from glitzy galas. The Council of Fashion Designers of America have organized a mostly virtual event this year to comply with COVID-19 safety protocols—a fact that Truly hard seltzer has designed a clever promotion around.
Starting today on Truly's online shop, for $62 you can purchase a colorful sweatsuit from the brand's "Couch Couture" line, featuring four different color schemes designed around each of Truly's four variety packs (Tropical, Berry, Citrus, and Lemonade). The sweatshirts and joggers flow with the same ultrabright gradient, and the Truly logo is small and inoffensive. This outfit is admittedly more intriguing than anything we've ever seen on a high fashion runway.
Update, September 4, 2020: Fall is just around the corner, and it's time to get warm and cozy with cable-knit sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, and candles that smell like meat. Panda Express has brought honey sesame chicken back to its menu, and its brought honey sesame chicken to its official "swag shop," because why simple eat it when you can live it?
The new collection features such must-haves like socks (who couldn't use a few more of those?), a blazer (for when you want to look classy and tasty), and, for some reason, an adult-sized onesie. None of these things smell like chicken, though, so if you're going to fully embrace the sweet style of Panda Express, you may want to buy this candle, which will fill your abode with the flavorful aromas of chicken, string beans, bell peppers, and honey sesame sauce. What a time to be alive!
Update, July 23, 2020: Remember these babies? After months of anticipation—anticipation that we surely helped build with our initial announcement of the collaboration back in February—Crocs is finally releasing its Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket Clog on Tuesday, July 28. The shoe will retail for $59.99 on the Crocs website, and $3 from each purchase will go toward the KFC Foundation's REACH Educational Grant Program, which provides scholarships to KFC employees who wish to pursue college or vocational studies. And may we remind you that the faux drumstick that graces the top of each shoe smells like fried chicken.
Update, July 10th, 2020: Panda Express is now the latest food brand to do a collaboration with a well known streetwear brand. Starting tomorrow morning, hungry hypebeasts can queue up on the Anti Social Social Club website, where a limited collection of Panda Express t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats will go on sale at 11 a.m. Eastern time (8 a.m. Pacific). Those hats would probably look cute with a Red Lobster sweater and some White Castle socks.
Update, March 9, 2020: Now we've got fried chicken footwear, doughnut athletic wear, and whatever you choose to call Wingstop's latest promotion (one man's gimmick is another man's Clio Award). The fast casual chain announced in a press release that it will begin paying fans to wear free branded gear that bills itself transparently as an advertisement for Wingstop. The concept is called Wearable Billboards, and while everything else we've talked about in this article thus far has basically been a wearable billboard in its own right, you have to pay good money for those items. In this case, Wingstop is paying the wearers.
If you're not interested in siphoning Wingstop's billboard budget, you can stop reading now. Meanwhile, if this sounds like just the sort of irony to whet your appetite, head to wingstopwearablebillboards.com to claim your sweatshirt. Once you receive it, post a picture of yourself in the sweatshirt, tag @Wingstop, and include #ThisIsAnAdForWingstop in the caption. You will then be sent $10 via Venmo for your trouble. Optional next step: Keep us posted on what you actually do with that sweatshirt after you get paid to wear it. Does it get donated? Does it find new life inside your gym bag? Extra dog bedding? These are the real questions.
Update, March 3, 2020: Crocs are the blank canvas of the footwear world—setting aside, of course, the actual blank canvas of Converse and Vans. Crocs are customizable in a way that doesn't even require elaborate printing setups like a pair of In-N-Out Burger drink cup shoes might, or the specialty stitching on the back of a Dunkin' track jacket: you just plunk various baubles right into the ventilation holes. And Peeps is currently collaborating with Crocs to plunk some serious baubles down into those holes.
Terence Reilly, chief marketing officer at Crocs, perhaps said it best in the company's press release: "We're thrilled to be chillin' with our PEEPS® this season in a bright and colorful clog that's sure to be our sweetest creation yet." (How do you think Reilly pronounced that registered trademark symbol? I'm guessing it's something like rrrrggghhhh.)
The special edition Crocs start at $49.99, or you can purchase the individual chick and bunny Jibbitz charms for $3.99 each. I recommend going for the bunnies, because they're flatter and face up. The chicks might be hard to identify unless you're looking at them from ground level. Which you very well might be if you see these out in the wild and their majesty sweeps you right off your feet.
Update, February 12, 2020: Donuts and burgers? Bah! The gauntlet has been thrown—by fried chicken. KFC has unveiled its own collaborative fashion statement, the Kentucky Fried Chicken X Crocs Bucket Clog.
The shoes will be available for purchase sometime in Spring 2020 (release date TBD) for $59.99. Not convinced? Well, the strangest among you might be swayed by this: The fried chicken drumstick Jibbitz charm on each shoe is made to smell like fried chicken. A unique addition to any closet, surely.
Original post, February 6, 2020: It's been six whole weeks since the post-Christmas sales and since you had an excuse to buy new clothes. But now two fast food brands want to help separate you from even more of your hard-earned money. Come on, you know you want to.
First up: In-N-Out Burger's drink cup shoes. Yes, it's true In-N-Out is unavailable throughout most of the country. But the people who have it talk about it so much—maybe because so many of them live in Southern California—that everybody knows enough about it to lie and agree that Animal Style is totally the best, even if they can't name any ingredients off the top of their heads. (There's a burger patty in there, right? And a bun?) And for a mere $64.95 (plus tax and shipping), these canvas slip-ons can be yours!
Next: a new streetwear collection based on a three-way collaboration between Dunkin', Beyond Meat, and former Dunkin' Employee of the Month Snoop Dogg. Beyond contributed the bright green color scheme, Dunkin' the doughnut iconography, and Snoop Dogg the slogan "Glazzzed for Days." (Think a certain kind of herb that makes you want to eat a lot after you smoke it.) Prices range from $20 (for a T-shirt or a beanie) to $85 (for a whole tracksuit).
Truly, if you combined all these items into a single outfit, it would be a perfect emblem of our times.