Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 24, 1993                   TAG: 9306250149
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TO THOSE OUT OF STYLE: WE'RE IN!

The good news for fashion-weary consumers is you needn't trudge through a single mall or boutique this fall: What's gonna be hot, you've already got.

Flannel-shirt grunge, cutoff jeans just above the knee (rolled up, exactly twice), suede clogs, colorful Chuck Taylors - all of it bell-bottom groovy, all of it floppy-hat hip-hop.

This news comes courtesy of the latest fashion press kits - which, incidentally, look exactly like my seventh-grade yearbook. If these models had glasses and scowls on their faces, I'd say they lifted my exact photo - mismatched plaids and all.

It's the tomboy, don't-mess-with-me look, perfected from years of beating up boys on the elementary-school playground and being picked first when choosing sides at basketball. (Janis Ian, I could definitely not relate.)

The good thing about this retro-trend is it makes you feel so far ahead of the curve. One trip upstairs to your attic, one stop at the Salvation Army - and you're back in style.

According to fall forecasts, you can look like you're in the seventh grade again without actually having to be there. (Thank you, God . . . and Calvin Klein.)

The key here is layers. Simply layer those old flannel shirts with long-underwear shirts. Layer cutoff shorts with tights and socks. Tie the complete ensemble together with an old sweater or shirt - wrapped around your middle.

And presto! You can hide your tummy, and save money, too. Bonus points if you still have that revered symbol of '70s youth to tie around your waist: the zippered sweatshirt jacket.

Although recycling your old threads is not exactly what the designers have in mind, of course, I have to admit that these are definitely my kind of fashions. Fashions for the anti-fashionable.

I've been keeping my eye out for other notable anti-fashion trends, to bring you the latest news in informal chic (which is French for, "You can wash all these clothes together on WARM, regardless of color," always a plus).

Shorts in the dead-middle of winter. I first recorded this fad during a trip in early January, when I noticed a carload of college boys all wearing shorts, sweat shirts and high-top tennis shoes at a gas station in Ripley, W.Va. Believe it or not, the temperature was 28 degrees.

Shorts in the dead-heat of summer. Really long, really thick, really hot and sticky shorts. To counterbalance the heat factor, go shirtless. Get your shorts four sizes too big and let them hang halfway down your butt - a la Dan Aykroyd as the refrigerator repairman. Bonus points if the top half of the backside of your boxer shorts show, as witnessed last week on two basketball-dribbling youths in the Harris Teeter parking lot.

(Remember when short-short cutoffs used to be risque - the more hangy-down threads, the cooler? Remember how your mom would yell when the threads all got tangled around the washing-machine spinner thing? Wow.)

And finally, designers are realizing that nobody - not even the same three women you see in the ads with the skinny thighs - looks good in French-cut bathing suits, and it is almost possible to buy a pair of regular, non-French-cut underwear again (that is: the kind that don't creep up your butt).

The French-cut trend gave rise to an even more disturbing, rarely discussed trend: the tendency of adult women everywhere to, upon standing up, nonchalantly reach back and retrieve their underwear from the thong position.

The decline of the French cut is perhaps the best news of all for the anti-fashion set, though I personally won't be comfortable in Victoria's Secret until this curse is altogether history.

Fashion trends aside, there's still a lot of bad things being said about the '70s, my generation unfairly taking the brunt of the bashing.

We're the late 20-something/early 30-something crowd who grew up on disco and polyester, and who vaguely remember the Vietnam War as a series of newscast interruptions, irritatingly broadcast during reruns of "Hawaii Five-O."

We may not be big on the causes of the '60s, or the greed of the '80s. But hey, at least we know how to wear our underwear.

Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, was amazed to find a rack of regular-cut Jockey For Her underwear last weekend at Hecht's - on sale, no less. Her column runs Thursdays.