Reading Festival 2012 aka Day-Glo and Camel Toe

Every year at the three-day Reading music festival in England the world gets a glimpse of where fashion is at for the young people. Whatever random trends are going on will be magnified by a million as 87,000 concert goers try to out-do each other in a huge field in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the fads that take root here spread all over the world in just weeks. Be ready.

2012 was no exception, of course. First of all I was very happy to see that the kids have started to abandon the Pete Doherty look. There were still a few Amy Winehouse hair-dos and make up jobs but not enough to annoy me. Thank Christ the Bat for Lashes fantasy fairy unicorn look with mystical hair bands has been completely left behind. It made me feel too old and creepy.

This year we were still onboard with neon face paint. The guys mostly had random smears under their eyes but the girls had elaborate crop circle patterns all over their faces. This was going on last year and I couldn’t notice if this was still warming up or cooling off. Even some of the older patrons would sport a random pink dot on their cheek or forehead.

Of course we had an assortment of band and past-festival shirts. No one dared wear the headliner’s shirt they sold at the official store though quite a few people had the official Reading shirts which included the list of performers on all the stages. Those shirts were very helpful keeping you on track to which bands were playing on the various stages.

Along with music related shirts there were many plain white tees with homemade messages scrawled on the fronts. The best was a mockery of the cliché Spring Break shirt “The Man The Legend” where The Man writing is pointing up to the guy’s head and The Legend is pointing to his junk. I’ve yet to meet a girl who’s been impressed by that shirt, but you still see them all over the place, usually in Cancun on fifteen year old boys. This ginger haired teen with a mohawk had his own take on that infamous shirt. It said The Man with the arrow pointing up at his face but the punchline read The Huge Disappointment. I guarantee that guy got laid. He deserved to at least. I thought it was brilliant.

As always there were many costumes and animal heads. The Mario and Luigi with an extra Luigi team was just lazy. They probably got those outfits off of the clearance rack. Superheroes were aplenty and equally as brainless but the popularity of The Big Bang Theory seemed to legitimize their efforts somewhat.

The more innovated kids were a giant set of crayons, a streak of tigers, a tribe of Indians, the Church lady, and my favorite, a hairy dude that shaved his chest so that it looked like he was wearing a tie. I think I liked him because he actually had enough hair to pull it off. He wasn’t a teenager and that made me feel more at ease.

Lisa and I dressed for the weather rather than to impress. We were about 20 years older than the average festival goer anyways, we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves any more than we already were. There were some other people our age but they were either super weird or there with their kids. I had on a long sleeve western shirt, jeans, and a gray fleece. We had rain ponchos just in case, we got into those just as The Vaccines were half way through their set.

Most of the fashion we experienced was pretty standard. We saw alot of the 80s reincarnated with a modern twist. What I was not expecting was the new obsession with short shorts that show off the ass but go way up the stomach. High-rise shorts are somewhat in right now but these things just looked wrong, especially if they stepped over you as you were sitting on the ground. A random girl walking by with camel toe is humorous but a fleet of underaged ones jumping over you for hours on end is terrifying.

Maybe it was the acid washing, maybe it was that the girls with the wrong body type were wearing them. It was the most unflattering thing I could think of and the most disproportionate girls were trying to pull it off. They failed miserably. The girls that could pull it off were not partaking in this trend.

It will certainly be one of those defining moments in the kids’ lives when they look back at the photos from this weekend in 2012 and realize that they would indeed wear ANYTHING if their friends would as well.

Lisa and I had the ability to see into the future and could see how it’d all play out for them. If I’d asked them yesterday what they thought about their outfits they would swear up and down that they look amazing but in twenty years they’ll be yelling at their parents for allowing them to leave the house like that.

Lastly, as always, were the Wellies. Every color and pattern known to man were represented. I haven’t owned  rainboots since I was four years old but after the deluge we suffered last night, I think I may invest in a pair. My little canvas shoes were no match for the cold puddles and since the sun had gone down, there was zero chance of them getting dry or even warm. Even though the boots will take up half the space in my suitcase, it will be worth it.

My shoes didn’t dry overnight in my hotel and were still damp when I unpacked my suitcase tonight in New York. Now they’re in my locker at the airport stinking up the place. The mud is flaking and infecting everything else in there. It’s madness all around.

The best part about the huge music festivals besides getting to see a shit ton of bands all at once, is the people watching. It’s like Jane Goodall out there. These kids are away from supervision for an entire weekend and they take full advantage. Their actions speak of this just as much as their clothing. It’s like a PG-13 rated Hedonism.

Some of the bold statements will catch on and some will be laughed at as the massive failures that they are. The stuff that does gather steam can go on to influence the world. Things Lisa and I saw these silly kids wearing four years ago is still mainstream in the second-tier cities in the world. It’s amazing.

Next year I’m going to make this a photo blog entry and interview the most innovative and insane culprits. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of doing that this year until we were halfway through the Kasabian show at the end of the night. I can’t wait.

You can order my book by clicking here on this link. If I make enough for a decent camera, next year we’ll have video footage of all the craziness!