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This evening at Publix, my favorite grocery superstore, I spotted a vintage Judas Priest “Screaming for Vengeance” colored silkscreen on the back of a denim jacket. My very first thought was that I was witnessing some kind of nostalgic Metal-Kitsch, that this couldn’t possibly be true sentiment, and had to be an ironic homage to the heavy metal parking lot generation, a generation that the young owner of the jacket can only imagine through VH1 specials and tales from his older brothers.

But then I realized something.

There was no irony here. He was also wearing a trucker hat, and was apparently just a metalhead that had wandered into Publix to get some milk. So I began to re-evaluate the whole concept of ironic fashion, from the Members Only jacket wearing dweeb-rockers, to the now ubiquitous trucker hat (an object that has transcended it’s own irony but still manages somehow to hold on to it’s iconic status), to Dickies wearing gas station chic. What made some of these fashions plausible, even likely, and others totally impossible?

Ironic fashion had rules, it seemed. Not very tight, but rules nonetheless. Metal has yet to be ironicized, if you will allow me to create a new word, and perhaps is, entirely un-ironicizable. Upon further reflection it is obvious to me that the degree to which a particular fashion can be ironicized is proportional to the degree which it can be absorbed subtly into an existing modern aesthetic. That’s why faux hawks, spike belts, armbands, etc. work. These aren’t extreme ornaments, like the Big Hair of Metal, or the giant billboard back of a denim jacket. The Screaming For Vengeance jacket isn’t discreet enough to blend in with the new, and subtly mock the old at the same time. It is too bold.

However, paradigm shifts in the course of fashion do occur. This would be the bold usurping of one trend for another, replacing it with a throwback from the past, or a bold look ahead (which inevitably will borrow heavily from the past). This involves many variable conditions being just right, but ultimately a couple of cool, hot kids can change the fashion destiny for all of their peers, if their revolution occurs in the right place at the right time.