I love flannel shirts…my inner white trash won’t let me feel any differently. The soft, yet durable material is an excellent wear in cooler temperatures for a slender dude like myself. My love of flannel was instilled in me by my father, a cable-splicer for NYNEX/Bell Atlantic/Verizon, who extolled the virtues of said woolen fabric. Flannel shirts, be it quilted-lined or not, were essential for splicers surviving the brisk autumn days and nights of suburban New York. My father, not one to follow trends, was wearing flannel while Compton gangbangers and Seattle grunge rockers were incubating in their mothers’ vags. He was truly a man of function over fashion. I, myself, have gone back and forth between periods of wearing flannel shirts and not wearing them, as regrettably I at times cared about not looking like a total slob. But these days I am an older gent, a bit more like my father than I ever thought I’d be, and while I will never venture into the land of mock turtlenecks, I do proudly display my flannel colors. I feel a form of ownership of flannel due to the long-term residency of flannel in my family. It’s like a family recipe passed down and I am the one to left to wave the flannel banner and hopefully pass the appreciation down to my illegitimate children offspring.

So now that I have explained the history of flannel in my family, I’m sure you could understand my dismay when approximately a year-and-a-half ago, I heard that flannel was becoming trendy again. I cringed at the thought of the teenage girls, who had already stolen canvas slip-ons from me a couple years prior, rocking lumberjack gear by Juicy Couture or with the words “Fuck My Teenage Butt” and the like printed on it. Being that I work in a high school, I braced myself for the onslaught of flannel, the aural orgy of buffalo check, while I was stuck in a sweater and khakis, upholding the image of a true adult; hiding my true dirtbag identity. I was anticipating rage boiling inside me as some teenybopper strutted the pride of the pacific northwest because she read it was “hott” in Seventeen. Then a funny thing happened–it didn’t really catch on. I saw maybe one student wearing a flannel shirt and not much beyond that. It was a total relief.

So a few fashion seasons have come and gone and nothing really came of the flannel trend. Maybe the Gap carried a couple extra shirts and maybe some dildos with mustaches in Williamsburg stepped up their flannel game, but it didn’t become a prevalent trend, like sweatpants with “Fuck My Teenage Butt” or whatever printed on the ass. Naturally, I came to the conclusion that the flannel trend was just another lame fashion prediction by some turd in an ascot that never came to fruition and I expected to never hear another peep about flannel…until maybe another decade or so. Then, about a week ago, I was doing my daily interwebz searching and I stumbled upon some pics from some GM fashion bullshit. Low and behold, there was Eva “the Diva” Pigford, in some blue buffalo check, dress-type thingy. Yeah, the picture way back up top there. My initial reaction? Damn, she looks kinda fly in that flannel. I thought about how I would love to stroll down the street with a chick like looked like that (sans ‘tude) in some matching flannel. We’d be like a twenty-something version of a retired couple in Florida…you know, the ones with matching swishy suits, like these two. Even though flannel had reared it’s checkered head in the fashion world again, I liked it more than I hated it. Was this closure? Could I see flannel on a someone trendy and not freak out? Maybe so. With that being said, would my thoughts have been the same if it was Rosie O’Donnell in this outfit? Probably not. But remember, Rosie is an ugly person both inside and out.