The Day They Made Cats Trendy

Crazy cat ladies, it’s finally your time to shine—the fashion world has officially made cats trendy, so you can wear your over the top cat attire without shame. By now anyone who shops regularly will have noticed that cats have made a cozy place for themselves in almost every mainstream retailer. Urban Outfitters and Forever 21 sell anything from cat loafers to cat-themed home accessories, while Popular retailers Top Shop and Nasty Gal both stock a ton of cat sweaters, as well as beanies and bowlers with little cat ears, shirts, socks, scarves, and more.

Nasty Gal

Urban Outfitters
(boys like cats too)

Book-Urban Outfitters
odd...but trendy

Even celebrities like Miley Cyrus, who are popular with younger generations, have been seen sporting everything from cat shirts to a skimpy pair of feline print underwear at the 2013 American Music Awards. Fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and Oscar de la Renta have also drawn inspiration from cats for their collections.

Cat prints emerged on the runway in Mui Mui’s spring 2010 collection. From there, they filtered down into wearable, everyday fashions like the ones commonly found in retail stores. Since then cat fashion has grown in popularity, earning the status of “trendy”. But this is not because the newer generations love cats anymore than older generations. Lots of people like cats. Lots of people have always liked cats. The difference this time is that fashion has provided an outlet for cat lovers to share in and express their love through clothing. Whereas it would have previously been odd to wear cats on your clothes, it is now considered quirky and fun.

“They were unexpected. They were intentionally cutesy, which made them funny”, says Katherine Bernard in her Vogue article, “they flipped the notion of being a “cat lady” from something dumpy and lonely to a source of wit and pride. That moment of playing with expectations is what can make fashion interesting.”

However, as with most things that start out unique and quirky, the cat fad has evolved into a popular trend in mainstream fashion over the past four years. Now we observe hipsters and fashionistas feeling frustration, much in the same way indie music lovers do when everyone starts listening to that song that they’ve been “listening to for like ten years now”. It’s the feeling you have when you like something you feel makes you unique, and because of this you feel a kind of ownership over it.

Being an avid and self-proclaimed cat lover for the better half of my life, I often find myself saying “ugh, everyone’s wearing cat stuff now…cats have always been my thing. I’ve been rocking some kind of a cat shirt since 2^nd grade”. But realistically, anyone who has ever really liked cats can argue the same. 

“I actually like dogs better in real life I think”, says Taylor Reifurth, a girl I saw wearing a black and grey cat sweater from Urban, “I just see a lot of stuff with cats on it in stores and I like the style. The cat clothes are funny to me—it’s like a joke almost”.

We can’t be sure exactly how long with cat fab will endure, but Karl Lagerfeld’s 2014 launch of cat inspired accessories proves that it’s not quite over yet. And I say, let there be cats. I feel like I’ve been wearing over the top cat attire for years now—way back to when I wore tails into the grocery store and any other public place I could swing it. The only difference now is that the clothes for sale are cute and trendy because the fad is widely popular, giving us more options as consumers. It is currently an option to buy “in style” cat clothes, whereas options in the past were not always considered in style. So, while the option to buy trendy cat clothes is real and alive, I’ll be taking advantage. Let the soft-padded paws of feline style tread on.