OK, so it suffers a bit from all the usual things that plague most fashion magazines, like a stunning lack of people of color and an overabundance of the same super-skinny “ectomorph”/hungry-looking body type, which I find perplexing for a magazine that’s devoted to surfing. But your love’s gotta go somewhere, and Foam has mine simply because it has some of the few fashion images that have made me go “YAY HEARTS AND STARS” in awhile. On first glance it may be a jazzed-up, beached-up, version of Nylon, but there’s tons of surfing content and it comes by its love for the ocean and surfing honestly — and that informs its editorial and even gives the best moments in its fashion spreads a free-spiritedness and fun. I’m not a surfer girl but I play one in my dreams — and I like that there’s a genuine passion in its pages that goes beyond consumption. Plus, its recent Music Issue (featuring Lykke Li!!) features an editorial devoted to band t-shirts! How can that not be dope? OK, so it skews a little close to the “poor white people” trope that gets a little tired (argh, trucker hat) but moments like pairing a studded black denim jacket with lemon-yellow Converse make it brilliant (which I can’t show you ’cause it was in the fold and a bitch to scan, but trust me, I was like, “I think Liz Barker would dig that outfit pretty fierce.”) AND ALSO THIS MOST BRILLIANT OUTFIT EVER, at least to someone like me who loves gamine-ish schoolgirl stuff mixed with Misfits t-shirts. I will probably never wear an outfit like this (except for the Misfits t-shirt), but I still love it. I think I just love Misfits t-shirts, if only because the hottest skater/werewolf dude in my book wears one and it makes him even more hotter. Maybe Misfits t-shirts make everyone hotter, at least in my book? (Rhetorical book as well as literal one.)
I also really liked its “tribal prints” story. (Le sigh on “tribal,” at least they didn’t say “ethnic,” which is my bigger postcolonial fashion pet peeve.) The pictures made me happy and made me think of the glorious avant-wack aesthetic Laura Jane championed a few seasons back.
Of course, no magazine is complete with a drug-like, hazy 70s-esque fashion spread:
Maybe I’m being overenthused. But I was not bored in the least when I read Foam, and at least I learned that Marnie Stern counted Rocky Balboa as one of her inspirations when she was learning to play. I don’t ask for more from a fashion magazine, other than to stop favoring one physical ideal at the expense of other beautiful women in the world. But I guess we’ll have to wage that battle during the Return of the Jedi installment of fashion-magazine history.
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Tags: avant-wack, brilliant outfits featuring band t-shirts, fashion, fashion is mostly boring, feminism, Foam magazine, Marnie Stern, postcolonialism, skaters, surfing, the Misfits, tribal, werewolves
I like that outfit A LOT
I do too.
It’s totally not just you, Misfits t-shirts are hot. Saw a guy out on the town wearing one the other day- I started singing ‘Hybrid Moments’ at him, but he just looked sort of confused and skulked off. Not cool.
[...] is still my jam as far as fashion magazines go: I totally buy into their cool surfer girl thing, and I’m way [...]
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