In the two thousands, gender barriers in sport have been shattered like never before, and the trick skate genre is no exception. More and more female skateboarders, snowboarders, and inline skaters are breaking onto the scene every year, and the pop culture machine is beginning to take notice. Enter: the skater girl fashion craze.
Unlike many other youth fashion trends, skater girl (or sk8ter girl), is almost strictly attached to the pierced, tattooed, and alternative set, making it one of the more unique neo-retro styles to infiltrate popular culture. Beginning in the late nineties and continuing to gain momentum and definition since, the final rise of boardwalk skater chic has really been in the past two years or so, when a group of seemingly unrelated fashion trends arose simultaneously to feed into one larger final product. Several new brands of clothing, accessories, and jewelry have even built their entire image around this aesthetic.
Some of the basic elements of skater girl style are gingham, plaid, stove pipe pants, weathered and faded surfacing, and girly motifs given a dose of attitude. Plaids and pinstripes mostly skirt the retro 60’s and 70’s movement, with color schemes and crossover patterns common to the era. Even retro tattoo art components make an appearance.
The general style can be described as vintage tomboy with a modern edge, and traditional elements of 90’s skater grunge that were initially removed from this newer and more polished aesthetic have slowly crept back into the mix in small doses, like jelly and silicone bracelets, and printed shoelaces.
Along with new era crispness and edge, even the more feminine facets of the trend have taken a gently kitschy spin, as cherries, hearts, and stars become fractured, skewed, chained, winged, and riveted.
One of the biggest rising aspects of the skater girl trend for those who are pierced? Matching the motifs of ear, lip, nose, and tongue studs to a pattern on ties, kicks, or tailored printed shorts and crop pants.
