Is it time to pack up our hoodies?
Not because the crocuses are blooming or because Mr. Blackwell says sweatshirts with hoods are out this year. Nope.
The hoodie’s status as sportswear and street-style staple could perhaps be jeopardized thanks to Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera, who said recently while speaking about Florida’s that wearing a hoodie is tantamount to sticking up a convenience store.
which he has since begrudgingly apologized for: “I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies. I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as (shooter) George Zimmerman was. …
“When you see a kid walking down a street, particularly a dark-skinned kid like my son … who I constantly yell at if he is going out wearing a damn hoodie or those pants around his ankles, ‘Take that hood off!’ People look at you, and what’s the instant identification? What’s the instant association? It’s those crime-scene surveillance tapes. Every time you see someone sticking up a 7-Eleven, the kid’s wearing a hoodie.”
So now, among such weighty issues related to the Martin case as racial profiling, hate-crime law and personal rights, culture watchers must also assess whether or not to shelve our hoodies?
Brandon Peak isn’t worried. The owner of the 11-year-old LoHi skate and snowboard shop says hoodies remain essential to his business. Peak’s customers are so in love with their hoodies, in fact, that he sees skiers and snowboarders “layered up” in multiple hoodies at once. (Wearing five cotton hoodies, Peak adds, is not more warm than wearing just two breathable layers.)
“Most people wear (hoodies) out of necessity for warmth,” says Peak, who dons one daily for his 5-mile bicycle commute, and has been wearing hoodies all of his 38 years.
Contrary to Rivera’s assertion that hoodies reflect “thug life” style, Peak says that these days, skiers and ‘boarders looking to work their swagger on the mountain go with “a tall tee,” not a hoodie. (That’s a way-oversized T-shirt worn over one’s skiing or ‘boarding gear.)
Todd Colletti is baffled by this week’s politicization of the hoodie.
“Everybody wears hoodies, since the 1940s,” says Colletti, the owner of the popular Buffalo Exchange clothing resale stores in Denver and Boulder. “Every sports store, every college campus … built their whole business on hoodies.”
Shoppers may see fewer hoodies at
, but Colletti says that’s only to make room for spring and summer fashions.
“Wearing a hoodie does not make you a good person or a bad person,” Colletti says. “It’s just a piece of clothing.”
