Way-Out Wednesday: Undone

Today's Way-Out Wednesday's vintage pick is the godawful sweater. We're not talking about the disgusting vomit-of-shapes-and-color-on-acrylic Cosby sweater.



And I'm not talking about the gem sweater, worn by women thinking it was their "fancy goin'-out" sweater named Debbie in the 80's, who wore Lee Press-On Nails with a "higher the hair, close to God" Jersey 'do, acid wash pleated jeans (sometimes accompanied by a denim Poison jean jacket) AKA My Dream Outfit and then in recent years the gem sweater was lovingly made famous again by the Gem Sweater Lady (AKA Leslie Hall).



We're talking about that one hot minute when character sweaters were the fad. They were generally cheaply made, the character portrayed on the front was unidentifiable from being cheaply and sloppily thrown together (what is WITH you Asian sweat shop workers? Slackers.) and the fabric of choice was not found in nature, so you get a wonderful all-day itch and couldn't wait to take it off when you got home from school and add the new Leather Boot and Pickle scratch-and-sniff stickers to your album that you traded some sucker with braces your Skunk sticker and Hairy Mary Garbage Pail card for. These sweaters were fuggo then and are just as fuggo now, yet now at least they've earned their "ironic style" stripes with the modern hipster. (Or dorks like me reliving their youth and no that's totally not at all unhealthy and yes I did notice I've been reminiscing a whole lot lately and have been crushing on stickers, so what.)

And now that the conflicting voices in my head have gone quiet, I present you a few lovely choices for today's Way-Out Wednesday. Each picture is clickable to take you to each Etsy seller's listing, should you too want to wear a vintage character sweater with your converse, hop on your banana seat bike with the new streamers and take off. FTW, adulthood! I said GOOD DAY, good taste!



Thalidomide Louis Armstrong? Sweet jebus that is gross. I'm almost 47% sure it's supposed to be ol' Satchmo...just with a misshapen newborn baby head and rocking an Abe Lincoln beard.



Don't have a cow, man. This looks like the old version of the Simpsons (Tracy Ullman Show era), when they had different voices and their faces were all wrong. Thalidomide Simpsons?



There's something weird about Pee-Wee. I don't remember him being a Rude Boy, but it all makes sense now.





*"Undone-the Sweater Song" by Weezer