I caught Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at the Super Bowl last year. I saw a guy in jeans and a jacket, with backup dancers wearing red, white and blue shirts.

Apparently, I missed a lot. Lamar’s $1200 jeans, design from Celine, triggered a five thousand percent bump in internet searches for “flared jeans.” Meanwhile, Uniglo boasted that the white T-shirts the back-ups wore were their U AIRism Cotton Oversized T-shirts. They retail for $20. Though to me, they look just like the ones at Target that come in a package of three for ten bucks.

Clearly, I know nothing of fashion, or the power of media persuasion. This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me. Paul Fallon’s fashion look is easy to describe. All solid colors. Shorts until Thanksgiving. Skechers Vigor 3.0 on my feet. A hat on my head. Multiple pairs of gloves. Nothing new.

Like most people, my fashion attributes are tied to fundamental parts of my identity. First, I am color blind, so solid colors are easier to coordinate than stripes or patterns. My primary mode of travel is bicycle, and shorts are more accommodating than long pants. Shoes are the bulkiest item to stuff into a pannier, so I found one comfortable shoe that accommodates my wide feet and I wear it everywhere. No matter where I go, I never pack a second pair. I’m balding, so a hat is imperative. The coldest part of any cyclist is his hands, thus a variety of gloves for all conditions. Finally, since I’m the same size I was in college and possess both a big closet and severe eco-frugality, I have clothes from thirty, forty, even fifty years ago that still fit. So why buy anything new?

I’m a poor prospect for as $20 T-shirt, and would never even look at a $1200 pair of jeans. But for some reason, I savor The New Yorker fashion issues. Recently, Lauren Collins’ September 22, 2025 article about Uniqlo made my head spin at the tentacles the world of so-called fashion spreads across our planet.

Ms. Collins writes, “Uniglo is the universal donor of fashion, intended to go with any lifestyle or aesthetic.” The clothes seem innocuous enough to support that statement; they strike me as basic and bland. but we really ought to tack an additional phrase to that assertion, …any lifestyle or aesthetic rooted in consumption. Our world is so consumed with consuming stuff that we take constant consumption as a given.

The ten-page Uniqlo spread, like so much of fashion, is mostly puff. The Japanese company in bald pursuit of global dominance in selling clothes is compared to Ikea in its ubiquity. The article applauds the company for designing for real-size humans, and explains how it only produces clothing in colors that complement a full range of skin ones. A kumbaya spirit cloaks the entire enterprise.

There is one paragraph, however, that reveals the underbelly of all this bonhomie. “The ecological implications of manufacturing at this scale are staggering…more than a decade ago, when the company had less than half the stores it has now, it boasted of producing six hundred million items a year.” These days, Uniqlo won’t even publish that number, so it must be truly damning.

According to Vogue, Americans buy, on average, 53 garments every year. Some estimates go as high as 68 per year. Either number is ridiculously high, given that we buy twice as many clothes annually as we did in 2000, and wear most items no more than three times. The world is awash in clothes, and Uniqlo’s pretty self-portrait as a company that is both sustainable and on a march of ever-expansion is both disingenuous and impossible.

I understand that fashion is one way in which we humans differentiate ourselves (even if that assertion contradicts Uniqlo’s uniformity). My own threadbare preppy look, however drab, accurately reflects how I choose to present myself to the world. But why are most people’s presentation so fleeting?:How many people who purchased $1200 Kendrick-Lamar-wanna-be jeans (or the many lesser priced knockoffs that flooded the market post-Super Bowl) are still parading our city streets?

I didn’t have to succumb to the trend, because I already have a pair of flair-bottom Lucky jeans circa 1970-something, pre-worn, a little tattered. Who knew my wardrobe was so cool?