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In August, Dennis the Menace, beloved of generations of children and a nightmare to teachers and parents nearly ended up in hoodie. There was a cunning plan to dress him as a graffiti artist complete with spray can and hoodie as part of the Beano makeover and for his appearances as a BBC cartoon. The design agency makeovers didn’t quite get their way. The new Dennis will still have his stripey top and shorts, but a more up-to-date hairstyle. No hoodie, sadly.
And David Cameron seems to have lived down his hug-a-hoodie speech in which he infamously suggested that young criminals needed love rather than punishment.
New Hoody popularity
What’s brought about the rehabilitation of the hoodie? Partly, it’s a gender thing. More women are now wearing hoodys than ever before, and they are being seen on some top girls, like Kate Moss and Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton who wears them to polo-matches. Partly it’s new styling that has made this year’s hoodies tighter and sleeker, less like crime-hoods and more like the sportswear they actually are. And partly it’s colour. Hoodies used to be grey, black and navy, but now they turn up in pink, yellow and this year’s top shade: chocolate brown, and that makes them look like a completely different garment.
How to wear a hoodie
To wear a hoody proudly, make sure that what you have on under it is not too bulky, as that spoils the new clear line of the tighter hoodies, and try to have a contrasting garment so you get two colours where the hoodie neck meets the T-shirt or vest underneath it. That adds interest to the ensemble and makes it clear you’re not wearing a hoodie as camouflage trying to avoid getting caught on CCTV.
A hoodie also spelt hoody, is a mysterious thing. If you’ve never owned one, you view them with deep suspicion, especially if the hoodie wearer is following you up the street on a dark night. On the other hand, once you’ve experienced the comfort, warmth and general usefulness of a hoodie, especially if you work outside or are an athlete, you cannot ever imagine living without one.
While it developed as a piece of warm up gear in the 1930s, it wasn’t until Hip-Hop took hold in New York in the 1970s that the hoodie became a fashion item, helped by the first Rocky film, where Sylvester Stallone single-handedly made the hoodie into the garment de jour. And by the 1990s, the skater or surfer hoodie was ubiquitous. However, in the UK, the hoodie was associated with chavs, criminal activity and out of control youth. It was banned from certain shopping centres and the term hoodie culture was viewed as marking out all that was bad in urban, disenfranchised, delinquent young men.
But since the Millennium, the hoodie has begun a process of rehabilitation, and now that London will host the Olympics 2012, hoodies are becoming not just acceptable but downright popular.
A great hoodie, like those produced by Fruit of the Loom, has a number of features: it will be comfortable, it will be heavy enough to feel warm but loose enough to allow easy movement and it will be soft and comfortable to wear. It may have a drawstring hood and a front pocket, or a zipper and two side pockets, but it will always fit snugly around the face to prevent earache or loss of heat through the head. And it will be easy to wash and wear. Given all its benefits, it’s good that the hoodie, or hoody is undergoing a renaissance, because as far as casual clothing goes, it’s definitely in the top ten for wearability.
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