The Rise and Fall of Urban Frump

In 2021 a friend sent me a video of a bizarre fashion show. The models paraded through a dark warehouse while an ominously mechanical remix of Radiohead’s “Creep” played in the background. Their unexpressive faces were decorated with metallic paint, so that they looked like robots. And yet, the clothes themselves looked like something grandma might give you at Christmas: frumpy, bumpy, and lumpy; home-spun, cross-stitched, natural fibers, natural colors, oversized pajamas, albeit with a couple of feathery, store-bought Big Bird costumes thrown in to boot.

At first I was tempted to laugh, but then I looked down at what I was wearing: gray jeans and a charcoal sweater over a yellow, red, and gray plaid shirt. I remembered that I had seen an Armani fashion show, a couple years before, in which all the models came down the runway in tones of gray, but also wearing rhinestone gloves, as if they were knights. Fashion designers think of themselves as artistic prophets, who, like Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses, give us difficult and purist visions for life that we—the weak, the mediocre, the bourgeois—can only partially live up to, and at a much later time. I still don’t wear rhinestone gloves, but the prophets predicted everything else.

And so, when I saw my friend’s video I thought: “Uh oh. Here it comes.” And now I can confirm it. I spent a week in Paris this March to visit the newly opened Notre Dame Cathedral, and I couldn’t help noticing that what was futuristic in 2021 is now the daily bread of Paris 2025.

Of course, there are some ordinary people in Paris. But if you want to be fashion-forward, you have to go all in on the look I call “Urban Frump.” The trick seems to be assembling as many bizarre fabric and color combinations as possible: You can clash patterns, mismatch fabrics, and vary colors. For instance, you could wear dark green corduroy trousers with pink socks, a striped navy-inspired shirt, a floral scarf, and a frumpy, bumpy, and lumpy sweater made from natural textiles. Or lavender corduroys with pink shoes, red socks, a green shirt, and a sheepskin jacket. It’s best if everything looks hand-stitched. 

Then there are the even more bizarre combinations: brown fuzzy boots with white, fluffy leg warmers, fishnet stockings, and a short black onesie. Nevertheless, this is high fashion, as foretold by the visionaries. You can find it in subway ads and in shop windows. Fascinatingly, it’s not sexy or attractive. It’s an atonality of homey, homespun, and frumpy fabrics.

As early as a year ago, I noticed that my most cosmopolitan students, who had lived in Europe, were beginning to show up to class in Urban Frump. While the rest of my students were in joggers, athletic leggings, and hoodies, these students were wearing olive corduroys, homespun sweaters, soft gray jackets. One set of students was, as it were, engaged in a full-time marketing campaign for their young, fit bodies. The other set was opting out by wearing earthy and baggy outfits that swallowed up their bodies. This puzzled me until I came across media theorist Tung-Hui Hu’s book Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an Age of Disconnection. I even wrote in the margins: “The Secret of Urban Frump!” The book opens:

Maybe you’ve glanced down at your phone and caught yourself scrolling mindlessly through a list of friends, rather than choosing to connect with any of them. Maybe you suddenly feel you’ve run out of words in a world where you are free, even expected, to express yourself, and all you can come up with is three letters: “lol.” Maybe a job lead arrives but you find it easier to click away the hours at your current gig than think about your future. There’s a recalcitrant set of feelings here—of being passive, or wanting to disassociate and be anyone but yourself, or avoiding decisions—that I call digital lethargy.

According to Hu, being yourself has become exhausting. Such “lethargy,” he says, is the long-term effect of us having to be “always on as far as technology is concerned, even if you think you’ve logged off.” Digital platforms make money by gathering data, and so they are incentivized to get us to spend as much time as possible scrolling. We can do whatever we want, “as long as [we] continue to click and choose, that is,” Hu writes. And what happens if you slow down? Notifications, alarms, alerts, bells, dings, pop-up ads, banners, and ambient videos clamor for your attention. “Today,” Hu adds, “the disengaged, lethargic user is ‘treated’ by algorithms that prod the user into individuating themselves through a stream of clicks, or by social networks that remind the user of opportunities missed.” You’ve seen the notifications: “A thousand people are currently looking at this property”; “Four people currently have this in their shopping carts”; “There is a faster route available that will let you avoid a slowdown”; “You have five hundred fewer steps than yesterday”; “This post got 30 percent fewer likes than the previous.” Be yourself, but be yourself now, and as fast as possible, and as long as possible.

Fashion is a complicated dialectic. Designers don’t just dictate what people wear: They have to be sensitive to psychic or spiritual needs, even if what they ultimately present to us is a chemically pure version of how we’d like to think of ourselves, or what we’re afraid of. They are artists, which means their designs will have as little in common with our daily needs as a Matisse portrait has in common with the human face. Even so, in light of Hu’s assessment, I think we can say that Urban Frump is the external manifestation of a desire to take oneself off the market. To be left alone, to not be a commodified chooser. The 2021 fashion show foretold that the more we become like robots, the more our faces glow like screens, the more we suffer from digital lethargy, then the more we crave the opposite of the sleek, optimized digital world: frumpy, bumpy, and lumpy natural fibers.

I’m going to miss Urban Frump. I found it endearing, but I’m sorry to say that the industry has moved on, as of spring 2025, from Urban Frump to the LARPer (Live Action Role Playing) look. The latest shows feature huge billowing pants, shoulder pads, black on white, leather shoes, bizarre combinations of long and short, and flowing capes. Trinity and Neo are back. It’s time to get over the fact that you have been uploaded into the world of datafication. It’s time to express your inner emoji, and let your inner avatar come billowing forth. And if that seems daunting, don’t worry: The fashion designers will be there to help you.