4 Fashion Tips For Being Left Alone This Summer

Spirit Hoods

Picture your favorite animal. Now picture wearing your favorite animal's head on top of your head but (and here's where it gets surprising) not like a total badass. Spirit Hooding is the new craze that is positively sweeping at least one male model that they found for this photoshoot.

According to the website, Spirit Hoods "are a way through which we express ourselves and our unique fashion sensibilities, but they also symbolize a shared bond we all have with our wild natures." According to my eyes when they look at that website, Spirit Hoods are itchy-looking hat-scarves with built-in mittens and animal ears. They are available in a variety of awful, depending on what animal you feel more kinship with. They've got Husky ...

... Night Owl (for you "Night Owl" types out there) ...

... and even Nasty Rabbit ...

Buying and wearing a Spirit Hood is a clear and concise way of letting people know that you're the kind of person who buys and wears a Spirit Hood, and there's really no better indication that you hate life and want to be left alone forever. If anyone does approach you to comment on your scarf, you get to correct them and say "Actually, it's called a 'Spirit Hood,' " which guarantees the end of that and all conversations. Nasty Rabbit is my favorite because, while all of these designs scream, "I'm not normally around people," Nasty Rabbit is the only one that adds "and I'm really quite happy about it."

And just in case you ladies out there were worried that you'd have no way to tell the rest of the world that your spirit animal is Accepted Loneliness, don't worry -- they sell Spirit Hoods for women, too.

Spirit Hoods allow you to wordlessly combine your twin loves of discomfort and impracticality. When the rest of society sees you with a delicately-skinned stuffed animal dripping down your back, they'll know at an immediate glance that they should not invite you to a party or engage in conversation with you, as you will be far too busy punishing yourself for being the kind of person who thinks buying a probably-shedding soft cheetah helmet is a good idea.

Dan's Fashion "Do": If you're hoping for a summer of complete solitude while all of your friends abandon you as "too far gone," I'd recommend buying no less than two Spirit Hoods. (They're only $130 each.) Having a variety of Spirit Hoods is like- oh holy shit -- $130, really? Jesus. Anyway, having a variety of Spirit Hoods is like posting a suicide note that also insults all of your friends and loved ones. It shows everyone that you're right on the edge while reminding them that you're not really worth saving.

BONUS: This isn't really a fashion do or don't, but if you look closely, there's an interesting story being told within the men's Spirit Hoods photoshoot. There are 20 different styles of Fancy Animal Scalp Vest, and only one model shows off 19 of them. A number of women show off the women's Spirit Hoods, but only two men display the men's, and the burden is far from equal. If they had one model wear every outfit, or if they got a variety of models and mixed it up, I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. But the split is 1 versus 19. They got this blond white model to put on 19 different ensembles, but not the one called "Black Wolf."

I don't know how this happened. Maybe blondie just couldn't really own the Black Wolf look, at least not in the same way he clearly dominates Nasty Rabbit and Melting Tigress or whatever those other ones are. The Black Wolf ensemble is difficult to pull off, so it's very possible that blondie just didn't have what it takes. Alternately, maybe it was blondie who didn't want to wear the Black Wolf costume for fear that it would stunt his clearly blossoming modeling career. It's possible that he said something to the effect of "Look, I'll wear your fake dead snow leopard hat in a variety of sleeveless shirts, but Black Wolf shoulder head scarf? No thank you, I'd like to leave this shoot with some of my dignity intact. Now hand me the Black Wolf wrap that features Navajo stitching on the inside, that's much less embarrassing."

We may never know why blondie was commissioned for just 19 ridiculous fur neck tarps, but we do know that when it came to Black Wolf, they wanted to bring in a ringer. The most needlessly crazy looking ringer they could find.

According to the Black Wolf description, this particular animal spirit "feels at home within order and chaos," which I'm sure the photographer believes is best represented by the model's use of a normal eye (order) as well as one dead, super crazy eye (chaos, nightmares, so forth).

Embarrassing Photo Protective Sunglasses

What better way to tell your friends that you're not the person you used to be than with a pair of sunglasses that are so shitty you get pinkeye from thinking about purchasing them? (No better way.)Embarrassing Photo Protective Sunglasses, available at the fucking Urban Outfitters, delicately mix a lack of style with a lack of functionality and total absence of shame. You might think these are harmless, as they're clearly a goofy, silly, joke purchase but make no mistake, if you ever put these on in public, absolutely everyone will hate you forever (which is great for you). Because there's no way you think these are actually better at blocking the sun than sunglasses that don't make you look like an asshole, so you're either wearing them because you think you're the kind of person whose eyes should be censored out of photos or because you like them "ironically." It works out perfectly, because both of those character descriptions make you the kind of person no human being would want to photograph anyway.

O'Brien's O'Buyin' Advice:

Jeankini

Coming straight out of Brazil by way of Japan, the Jeankini combines the comfort and familiarity of jeans with the freedom and calm of complete and utter social ostracization. They call it the Jeankini, but don't think for a second that you can actually swim in these. I think they just did it because Jeankini sounds (slightly) better than "Jong" or "Horribly Misguided Trasheans." The Jeankini is really impressive, because it shows off more of a woman's butt than most pants, but not in a way that makes me want to have sex with or even talk to said woman. (Said woman can be you!)

It's so pointedly trashy it's almost offensive. I actually think the only reason it isn't offensive is because I don't know which party would have proper claim to the offense. Women can be angry because it's insulting, it looks uncomfortable and unflattering, and it has a migraine-inducingly stupid name. Men can be angry because it takes something wonderful (trampiness, most of a butt), and turns it into something cold and heartless (manufactured trampiness, not the best parts of a butt). Reserved people can be angry about its overt sexuality, sexual people can be angry about its total misunderstanding and misuse of sexuality. Everyone should want a piece of hating this.

Also it looks like the vagina might slip out as you walk. Seems like something that might bother some organization or another.

DOB's the Fashion the Furious Advice: Buy this product if you just want to go out into the world without having to deal with the hassle of being hit on, talked to or looked at by guys everywhere. The Jeankini, in addition to looking like a Project Runway contestant's attempt to get on a government watch list, forces the wearer to liberally throw around the word "Jeankini" whenever talking about their day. I've done a lot of research into this topic, and I can say without bias that Jeankini is the most retardedly irritating portmanteau that has ever been coined (take that, bromance!). Your former friends will forever be heard talking about how much they liked that girl "before she started saying, wearing and associating herself with Jeankinis."

Those Friggin' Little Baby Hats

Here is who should wear tiny top hats:

-Action Figures;

-Baby Lords;

-Little Dogs Who Think They're Little People;

-A Man's Penis, For His Girlfriend or Wife's Birthday;

-Absolutely No One Else.

That's it. Those were the sacred and hilarious tiny top hat laws handed down to us by dapper hat scientists, and we all followed them until several months ago, when women all over the world decided "Hey, tiny hats! I want attention! Me! I'm an idiot!"

It's not clear what these hats are actually intended for. Are they for women who are self-conscious about their tiny heads? Do they wear super small dick hats so their heads look larger in comparison? Is every woman who wears these hats actually covering up a little horn they don't want me to know about? Is it making some kind of statement? A statement like "I stole this hat from a Cabbage Patch doll in a tux," I guess?

We don't know. We'll never know. We just know that the perceived message is "I was dumb enough to spend real money on a hat that is both hideous and functionless, so I might be the kind of person who accidentally poops herself if you hang around me long enough. Does this tiny hat make my tiny hat look tiny? Hat hat hat!"

Fashianial Advice-brien's Buying Guide For This Clothing: When you wear something that's both hideous and useless, you can ONLY be wearing it for attention. The beautiful irony with tiny top hats, though, is that the quest for attention is so transparent that the rest of the world collectively decides to ignore you. We're not on board with your desire for attention, and we won't entertain it or validate your existence. For a woman who genuinely wears this hat for attention, this is a disaster, but for you, the woman who just wants everyone to get off her ass for a few months, tiny top hats are a golden opportunity. Buy one for every day of the week that you want the world to pretend you don't exist.

Enjoy these summer fashion tips and always remember:

For more bad fashion ideas, check out 6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People). And get more from Dan in What Andrew WK's Twitter Taught Me About Life.