Loris "Sunshine" Caplan (1927-2025)

My grandmother, Sunshine died this fall at the ripe old age of 98. She lived a pretty incredible life, and she lived through some very interesting times.

She was born in Detroit at the tail end of the roaring twenties as the second eldest of four and the only girl. The daughter of a foundry foreman she spent her youth on the east side before relocating to the west side. Her house on the west side at 5756 Hamilton Ave. would eventually be torn down as part of the expansion of the Lodge Freeway. She grew up in a Detroit that was booming. It's population would double between 1920 and 1950 as it became the 5th largest and the wealthiest city in the country.

Graduating high school at the end of WWII, she enrolled first in Alma College in Alma, MI, and eventually graduated from Michigan Normal College (now Eastern Michigan) in 1949 after training to be librarian with a minor in spanish, a language which I never heard her speak. She would often tell of hitchhiking between Ypsilanti and Detroit.

Quiet possibly Sunshine in the Bookmobile

After college she began working as a librarian for the Detroit Public Library. She soon began working on the city's bookmobile riding around the city distributing books. She then began working as a research librarian at the GM Research Laboratory where she met my grandfather. She had turned down two marriage proposals from other suitors before eventually accepting my grandfather's hand in marriage. 

She chose wisely. Living first in an apartment near the GM research lab, they eventually moved onto a modest home on Derby road in Birmingham where they would have their children. Sunshine would settle into life as a 1950's housewife. Eventually as my grandfather rose the ranks within the GM research laboratory they would move to a more stately home at 2515 Covington Place. During these years I have to imagine they lived the stereotypical suburban life with sunshine rearing three daughters while my grandfather went off to work each day.

As her children got older she was able to travel more with my grandfather who often traveled for his work as the executive director of the GM research laboratory and as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. 

The only known picture of Sunshine wielding a machete. Taken at my place in Poulsbo, WA.
In the background is a picture of us, and a wooden box she gave me.

After my grandfather's retirement from GM in 1987 they downsized to a condo in The Heathers, less than a mile from when I grew up. This meant they were always around for birthdays and school plays. When my grandfather died in 1998, Sunshine became my only grandparent left, an honor which she would hold for another 27 years.  It was around this time that me and my siblings were getting old enough for our mother to let us ride our bikes alone to her house. In the summer we would often ride over to her house to play rummy, drink Big K pop and eat Drumsticks ice cream cones which I think she always kept in supply just for us. Otherwise her fridge was mostly empty as she would boast about making a Wendy's salad last for two meals. Not that she particularly needed to pinch pennies as the wife of an auto industry executive, but I think as a child of the great depression she always valued frugality. Those are some of my greatest memories of Sunshine.

Sunshine was always a big believer in a quality education. That shows in all three of her children graduating college and two of them getting advanced degrees. I think she was extremely proud when my siblings and I were inducted into the National Honor Society, got accepted into the University of Michigan, and graduated from college. She helped pay for all of her grandchildren's college educations.

She was also quite the traveller. I remember asking her if she was excited about visiting Russia on an upcoming trip and her response was that she'd already been there twice! Even after my grandfather died she travelled extensively with friends through her seventies.

In 2012, after spending her entire 85 years in the state of Michigan she moved to Pacific Palisades in California, right on the beach to be near my aunt. When my aunt moved to Tampa Bay a few years later she followed as well, spending the rest of her life in Florida, near where she and my grandfather had vacationed every winter after his retirement. She lived in a condo looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. When COVID hit, she hunkered down being at higher risk due to her age and being in Florida. It was during this time that her memory began to decline, which was a surprise to me since even in her early nineties she could remember little details of my childhood that I had long forgotten. Whether her memory loss would have happened at that age anyways, or if the prolonged isolation of COVID had something to do with it... who knows. But she spent her last few years in memory care before dying peacefully in her sleep.

Sunshine was a bit particular in some ways. She hated surprises. She also had a strong sense of what was prudent, and if you strayed from that she would tell you. She cared deeply about how she, and by extension her family, presented themselves. In later years she would talk to me often about the legacy of my grandfather, and his work. I think she really wanted us to know what a great man he was. She deeply loved her family, although she could seem ambivalent to her children's and grandchildren's partners. She also loved to tell me how proud she was of me and the person I became. That always meant a lot to me. She was someone I was very close to growing up, and I'll miss her always.

Going Out on Top

Two years ago Michigan won their first National Championship since 1997. I was in 3rd grade when they won in 1997 and not yet a huge college football fan. The 2023 Natty was the culmination of years of ups and downs and a long journey back to the promised land.

It was also the last real national championship before the sport changed forever. The opening floodgates of player payments, unbridled commercialization of the sport, free agency via the transfer portal, NIL collectives, additional TV timeouts, playoff expansion and private equity all have changed the sport to the point where it is vastly different than the sport I fell in love with as a kid. The sport where amateur athletes played for the pride of their school. Some of these changes - player compensation - were needed, however they still changed the sport.

When Michigan won their National Championship two years ago I told friends that I could ride this high for a decade, and even if they were bad for a long time, I could hang my hat on that one special year. I had seen friends who were Alabama fans win the National Championship and immediately start talking about if they could win another one next year. I'm not that greedy, and with that Natty came a deep exhale.

No longer does every game seem of critical importance. I still cheer, I still go to at least 1 game each year, and I still really enjoy us winning, but being a casual fan is so much more enjoyable. I no longer worry each offseason if our coach will leave, or if a player will transfer/go pro.

This step-back timed with the degradation of the sport overall has caused me to care less about the college football. I still watch a ton of college football, but with less intensity.

Tomorrow Michigan will take on Ohio State. The best rivalry in sports. And one that Michigan has won 4 in a row. Each of those wins were special with their own storyline, but this edition is is essentially the same story as last season with Michigan playing a spoiler. It would be fun to upset them again, but if we get beat by the better team it's not going to ruin my day.

We got to the top of the mountain just before it started crumbling. I don't care who is at the top of the rubble. 

Go Blue!

20 Years Since I Went off to College

20 years ago this week I moved into the dorms to begin college. It made me wonder what the 18 year old version of me would think about how my life unfolded over the next 20 years. But I'm not sure I was looking that far ahead at 18. I think my focus was on college and what came immediately after over where I would be at in life at 38. 

What an exciting time that was, and I have many fond memories of living in the dorms. When I lived in the dorms (or anywhere for that matter), I've always wondered about the people who lived there before me. So I decided to write a letter to the current residents and share with them my memories of living in the same 10x11 room 20 years before them.

September 1st, 2025

Dear residents of 4320 Elliot,

Congratulations on your matriculation to the University of Michigan.

20 years ago, I found myself in the same spot you are in today, residing in 4320 Elliot. I had roomed blind, and while my roommate and I soon realized that we wouldn’t be best friends, we got along just fine.

The rooms still had a landline phone in them which was wild even for 2005 since by then everyone had a cell phone. In 2005 only some rooms had modular furniture, so we had a company build a loft, which is what most residents did. Under the loft we had a futon. On the weekends my roommate would typically sleep on the pulled out futon with his girlfriend, while his friend who lived on north campus would sleep in his bed. 4 people in a 10x11 room was a tight squeeze.

My roommate, his girlfriend, and his friend in our room

There were a few events that year that I vividly recall. I was playing NCAA ’05 on Playstation 2 in the room next door and won on a fluke play. My friend who lived in the room ran out and kicked an air vent leaving a big dent. I’ve always wondered if that dent is still there. If so, that dent is my legacy.

In March of that year our RA was unjustly fired. Despite the residents’ efforts to come together and overturn this, we spent the last month without an RA, which certainly led to some chaos amongst the men of the floor.

No amount of Save Forest posters can redeem an RA who gave out their master keycard to a resident

On the weekend of St. Paddy’s Day several us of snuck a keg into the hall lounge that had been converted to a triple due to overcrowding in the dorms. When the RA showed up, instead of shutting it down and writing us up, he joined in for a few beers. I think this is when the hall really started gelling together.

On that topic, winter semester is when friendships started to really solidify. Fall semester was such a blur with meeting so many new people, football season, and then thanksgiving and finals. When I went home for winter break, I remember thinking that I had met tons of people but didn’t really feel like I had made any great friends yet. That all changed during winter semester when the cold & dark days of January and February meant a lot more hanging around Markley. Most people I know tend to agree that friendships were really made during winter semester.

Friendships in progress at 4230 Elliot

Many of the friends I made in Markley I still consider amongst my closest friends. Next weekend I’ll be meeting up with a bunch of them at the Oklahoma game and we’ll reminisce about our days in that crappy dorm. While you should study and make sure you get a good education, don’t forget to enjoy the social aspects of college. The friendships are what I cherish most from my time at Michigan.

Please do not feel the need to respond to this letter. It was mostly a self-serving endeavor.

Go Blue!

Brian Russell

Diversity

I’ve benefited tremendously from diversity throughout my life. I grew up in one town, a relatively affluent suburb of a city that had seen its share of racial conflict. Most of the kids in my Kindergarten class ended up graduating high school with me, and 98% of us went on to college. While my school classes growing up were mostly white, I’d estimate that my classes in school were 80% white, 15% asian and 5% black. Regardless of race, all of my classmate grew up in the same subdivisions, had parents with corporate jobs and had roughly the same experiences that I did. When you're a kid you don't think about racial diversity as much. I remember thinking that the white kid who moved into my neighborhood from Alabama was way more different than me than the black kid who lived in the next subdivision over and also loved the Lions.

It wasn’t until 7th grade when I became friends with Sagar who had just immigrated from India that I really knew someone with a vastly different upbringing than myself. As most would kids do, I peppered him with questions about what life was like in India. I'm sure some of my questions were ignorant, but through that friendship I learned about him, India and Hinduism. I've carried the benefit of that throughout my life whenever I've met someone from India.

 

When I was 15, I decided that I wanted to get a job. Some of my friends had jobs and I wanted some extra money beyond my allowance. My friend Kyle worked at a Quiznos Sub shop and put in a good word for me and got me a job. The staff there was about half high-school kids and half the type of people who had a career in fast food. The assistant manager was from the indigent suburb next to mine. She drove a beater, chain smoked and lived in a trailer. The manager and franchisee was a gay man who was worldly, smart, funny, and I can't leave out handsome. He encouraged me to go out and experience the world and not end up like Ryan, who had graduated from my high school 8 years earlier and was still living at home and working at a sandwich shop. This was really my first foray into spending serious amounts of time with people from a vastly different background than my own, but again I took something away from this. Mostly an empathy for the assistant manager whose close mindedness I attributed to her lack of opportunities for education and a general frustration with her own place in life.

 

In college I got a job as a bus driver. Much like working at Quiznos, the staff was half students and half career bus drivers. But the other drivers now weren’t all people who grew up in the same few towns. My co-workers spanned ages, religions, races and sexual orientations. It wasn't uncommon for the conversations in the break rooms to be about race or sexuality, and I took much away from this as well.

But nothing expanded my worldview as much as the course I took my senior year  called Intergroup Dialog. The point of Intergroup Dialog was to split up into groups of 10-12 students and meet each week to have a very deep discussion – typically about race, gender, or sexuality. The groups were divided up to be as diverse as possible across many different areas like religion, race, urban/rural/suburban, poor/wealthy. It was eye-opening to hear kids who grew up 10 miles from me in Detroit talk about how many of their high school classmates ended up getting shot or joining street gangs.

I think everyone in my group grew as a person during class, but none more so than a freshman who I'm pretty sure was named Kelly. Kelly had grown up in a tiny town in west Michigan. She was a petite blond girl, and in the cold months at the beginning of the winter semester she always wore her little silver cross necklace outside of her sweater. She was one of just a few kids from her graduating class to go to college. During conversations on race she was usually pretty quiet but eventually opened up near the end of the term.

 

She said that before taking this course she had never had a real conversation with a black person. Her only interaction with black people in her 19 years of life were as cashiers or as wait staff at restaurants. There were no black kids at her high school, and everyone she knew told her that she should be wary of black people and that they were dangerous. But as she had listened to the 4 black students in the group talk about their lives and experiences and as she got to know them she said that she realized that the things she had been told were wrong. She realized that the people back home who told her those things had probably never had a real conversation with a black person either. It was amazing to watch the fear that she had been conditioned with disappear over the course of the semester. All it took for her to change her views was getting forced to have a real conversation with someone different.

 

I was left wondering about all of her peers back home who didn’t go to college, and were likely going to spend their whole life on the same path she was on before taking this course. Those people will probably spend their whole life fearing people who are different and never getting the chance to have a conversation that could change that. And if that is the "liberal indoctrination" that some people accuse colleges of doing, I couldn't endorse it enough. I often think back to that course and I hope Kelly kept growing as a person.

 

I think being open to others and their life experiences has helped me tremendously throughout my career. When I worked for the Navy I worked with people from all sorts of backgrounds. The military really draws from a cross section of America, and even beyond. There are a surprising number of foreign born individuals in the Military, and working for the DoD. At one point my 7-person team had people born on 4 different continents. Being able to work successfully with people from different backgrounds and cultures is key, and the diversity of ideas and approaches to problems is a huge boon to the US Military. 

 

One of the best bosses I ever had was a Commander who was a black man from Tennessee. His Naval career had taken him all over the world. I asked him what he thought he would be doing if he hadn't joined the Navy. He said that he assumed that like his siblings he would have stayed in his hometown and probably would have never left the country. If we had each decided to stay within our safety nets or where we grew up, we would have never met.

I sometimes reflect on how common it must be to miss out on that diversity, like Kelly almost did. I think it’s very easy to grow up in a homogenous town, go to a local college made up of kids mostly from similar towns, and then move to the nearest big city and work with people who all went to universities in the surrounding states and all look, talk, think and act just like them. 

I also often think about Daryl Davis, and how through just befriending someone, he was able to convince them that their hate for him was misguided. All it takes is having a good conversation with someone different from you to grow into a more welcoming, better person. If it's that easy, shouldn't we all be doing it?

Different Mindsets I Suppose

My last post was an ode to my college house, and my college years still occupy a significant portion of my thoughts.

Earlier this week I met up with a college acquaintance for a drink and to catch up on life. we were talking a bit about Ann Arbor and what a great town it is. I asked him if he ever gets back to campus. He said he visited once a few years after graduation and hasn't been back in 15 years. I then asked him if he kept in touch with any of our mutual college friends. He said he hasn't talked to anyone from Michigan since he graduated. I was flabbergasted.

For me, college was such a formative and important time in my life that I'll cherish forever. For him, it was just 4 years of something he had to go through and walked away after graduation and never really looked back. Sometimes I wish i could be like him and not carry around this nagging nostalgia for those years, but then I shudder at the thought of just moving through life without the shared experiences to relive with life-long friends until we can't remember them anymore. What a pity that would be.

933 S. State Street

933 South State Street in Ann Arbor was the center of my college experience. This is the story of that house and my time there.
 
The house was built around 1910. For the first few decades of its existence, it looked right over the entrance to Ferry Field. Sitting on the front porch it would have been possible to hear the crowd cheer as Jesse Owens broke 4 world records in the span of 45 minutes in 1935.

This picture would have been from the driveway

1940 Census shows the house was occupied by the famed artist Carleton Angell who created many sculptures on campus and around Ann Arbor, including the famous Pumas flanking the entrance to the Ruthven Museum. He lived in the house with his wife Gladys and their three children.

A parade during WWI turning in front of the house

1950 Census lists Reuben Hartman, a bricklayer tender and his wife Gertrude, a waitress, as the occupants, along with 8 lodgers.
 
Sometime in the decades that followed the house began being rented exclusively to students. One time some guys from the class of 1982 came by and said they had lived there.
 
In 2001 a group of friends who lived there began the infamous BOX house along with some friends in nearby houses. The BOX house was founded on the principals of friendship and novelty. Very soon after the house earned a reputation on campus, which lead to ESPN the magazine including a write-up of the BOX house's famous keg rolling across State St. during football tailgates. The house was then passed down to new generations of BOX house inhabitants along with the traditions, stories and lore.

By the time I encountered the house it had been student-proofed. The original hardwood floors were replaced by white tile on the first floor and berber carpet upstairs. The kitchen had been renovated with builder-grade finishes. What originally was likely a single bathroom on the second floor was split in two and several vanities (pee sinks) added to bedrooms. The siding was white vinyl and the doors were hollow. Any trace of craftmanship was eliminated. The house itself was a dump, but the things that occurred there were the stuff of legend.

My first encounter with the house was at a party during my Freshmen orientation when I got so drunk on the front porch on a warm June night that I slept on a bathroom floor and missed signing up for classes the next day. When I came back to Ann Arbor in the fall I knew exactly where I would tailgate. While my dorm roommate spent his freshmen year football Saturdays as a servant to fraternity brothers that he was desperate to impress, I was immediately accepted in a wide friend circle, no doubt thanks to my older sister who was friends with everyone there.
 

Freshmen Orientation

During my sophomore year I lived in a house 2 blocks away from the BOX house. We would always tailgate at the BOX house, and during that fall the guys living in the house told me I should put together a group to rent the house since they were planning to graduate in the spring. So a few of my roommates and I put together a bit of a ragtag group to rent the house for my Junior year.
 

Tailgates are better with live music

In August 2007 I moved into 933 S. State Street and became part of the next generation to carry on the BOX house tradition. I lived in the back room on the third floor, and upgraded the futon I had my sophomore year for an actual bed. We had 6 guys and 2 girls in the house. Halfway through the year we picked up two more roommates when Brick and Andy were thrown out of their frat and moved into tents in the unfinished basement.

6 of 8 of the 2007 crew before Brick and Andy moved in

The following year was my senior year and the two girls and two of the guys moved out. The two basement dwellers moved into rooms and Paul, Matt and Zola moved in. Zola did a "pledge semester" in the basement, and then moved into a room for winter semester. Matt dropped out of college in the fall and for most of the year we had 9 guys and one hamster inhabiting the house. It was a raucous environment where people would just show up to hang out at any given time. The tailgates that fall were some of the most fun days of my life.

The house oozed patriotism

Living at the BOX House carried with it a certain cachet on campus. Most of the student body was aware of the house and our tailgates. I’d say that more than once I told a girl that I live in the BOX House and she suddenly found me more interesting and/or disgusting. It seemed like everyone had a story about the house.

We may have made this one up

If they hadn’t been there personally they may read about the house as we were mentioned on MGoBlog, College Humor, and a write-up in the Michigan Daily. After I moved out in the summer of 2009 the City Attorney for Ann Arbor sent us a Cease and Desist letter to the house to try and stop the tailgating that they said had gotten out of hand. This lead to some bemoaning in the media and student led protests of the city’s attempts to limit tailgating.
 
While my time in the house had ended, several of the underclassmen roommates continued to live at 933 and then next door at 1001. The BOX house carried on until eventually there was no one left to carry on the tradition and the house reverted back to a regular student house. With that, the BOX house was no more, but the physical house remained.

The house in 2018

When would think about the things I would do if I won the lottery, I always liked to daydream about buying the BOX house and turning it into the most incredible student house. I’d open up the first floor to a big open space with couches and TVs, I’d build bigger porch and 2^nd story deck above, install a great sound system and generally nicer finishes. I’d then rent it out way below market value on the condition that they always host a great tailgate that me and my friends could join in at. That was my dream, but it will never happen.

The house is now fenced off and slated for demolition along with the houses to the north up to Packard. The city has approved a 14-story high-rise between State and Packard and these houses are all being demolished. The front porch where I spent so many hours will be gone, the living room where I watched countless hours of Gettysburg will be no more, the bedroom where I studied and had other significant life experiences will also disappear. In its place only the memories will remain until they too will be forgotten.

The house prior to demolition

 
But I’ll cherish the memories, and wanted to write down some of my favorites since that will leave this on a happier note:
 
Favorite Tailgate Traditions:
Du Hast
We would always start a tailgate Saturday by setting the house sound system (my childhood Gateway computer with WinAmp connected to speakers) to play Du Hast at 5:30 in the morning to wake up the residents, any overnight female guests and half the neighborhood.

Tailgate

Thunderstruck
I think this has gained in popularity in the past 15 years, but the BOX house was well known for circling up when Thunderstruck came on to take turns drinking at each mention of the word “Thunder”.
 
Keg Laps
Typically the Keg was on the porch, so a common game was to drink directly from the key and then run across State St., then across Hoover Ave., and then back across State St before running up the steps and kicking the keg. Miraculously I never saw anyone get hit by a car, but there were some very close calls.

Ann Arbor's finest multi-level tailgate

The Field Goal
Another fun tradition was going out in the street during a tailgate and trying to kick a field over the metal arm holding up the traffic lights. I usually was the holder, and then a few students would be on the other side of the light to return the kick. If it went over the metal arm the whole street would cheer the successful kick. An important thing to note is that we did this in traffic, usually before the cops would come and start directing traffic around 10am.
 
Keg Rolling
Only the most skilled could logroll their keg across State Street, turn it around and roll it back without falling off. I could never do it, but damn if I didn’t try. By the end of tailgate season we would have 20ish empty kegs in the basement so there were plenty of opportunities.
 

Keg Rolling

Favorite non-tailgate traditions:
Fall Foliage Month
During the fall, I think usually in September someone would declare that it was Fall Foliage Month and then we would go out and collect leaves and branches and in one case an entire tree and drag them into the living room. It really spruced up the place for a few weeks.

Fruit in the Street
This was one of the best activities in the house. We would take all the rotten, uneaten fruit from the kitchen/fridge and put it in the middle of State Street. Then we’d sit on the porch and wait for cars to hit it. It was truly joyful game. Eventually the game branched out and the definition of fruit expanded to any food or destroyable items. When the question of “wanna play fruit in the street?” was raised, I never recall anyone ever saying no.
 
Gettysburg
The movie Gettysburg played on constant repeat in the house on a TV dedicated to playing Gettysburg.

Your intrepid author

Hey Ya!
Anytime the song Hey Ya! came on during a party or tailgate everyone in the house would run out to the street for an impromptu street dance party.

Drunkest Man in America
At any given time, someone holds the title of Drunkest Man in America, there was a good chance that man resided in the BOX house, so after a trip to Goodwill there was always someone in possession or challenging for the title of Drunkest Man in America. When the trophy would inevitably get destroyed, we would take another trip to Goodwill.

A typical representation of earning the DMIA title

The Masters/Old Crow Challenge
During the Masters the house would hold an annual beer can golf tournament and try to drink as much Old Crow as possible. There was probably more to it than that, but I was pretty drunk for the whole thing on account of the Old Crow.
 
Friendsgiving
Each fall before departing Ann Arbor to return to our families for Thanksgiving we would host a Thanksgiving dinner for all our friends. We would dress up, and people actually worked hard to prepare a legitimate Thanksgiving feast. It might have been the most “real-life” think we did. But it was always fun and probably the classiest think that we would do.

Christmas Party
The BOX House Christmas Party was always a great way to end the Fall Semester. Besides tailgates, it was probably the most packed the house would get. When Zola lived in the basement he reported that the floor joists would bend and creek with the weight of 100 people on the first floor.
 

All dressed up

Christmas Party

Etcetera
So many little memories. Playing drinking games, Paul’s feud with the street sweeper, watching girls come down the stairs on a Sunday morning looking very confused, Paul’s eating challenges, the house hamster, drinking challenges, and playing through. Many of those small memories are documented by the BOX House blog at https://boxhouse933.blogspot.com/

I'll miss this shithole deeply

A Theory on on Gen Z fashion

Fans of the blog will know I think much of the UC Davis student body is extremely lame. In my first post on UC Davis I declared that the student body were total nerds. In my second post, I posited that perhaps they are lame because their generation as a whole don't know how to party.

The past week I was riding my bike through campus and it was freshmen orientation, so large groups of freshmen were being toured around in groups. It made me remember being a college freshmen and how going to college was a chance at a fresh start with all new people, and wanting to fit in and make friends. I knew that my first impression with my college peers was important in doing so.

However, as I rode past these kids I was a bit amazed that the outfits they were wearing were just all over the place. Like there was no overarching style or even a hipsteresque ironic approach to fashion. It was like they were given a random grab-bag from the thrift store and said "yeah, this looks good on me".

Given how disparate the apparel choices were it made me realize that there doesn't seem to be any style trends that exist in Gen Z. When I was young I think we realized the trends that were in place, and I'd say most people in school generally tried to follow the conventional wisdom of what was stylish at the time, or had defined alternate styles like the goths and hipsters. Gen Z seems to be all over the map, or simply doesn't care about following any trends in fashion. Billie Eilish is probably one of the most famous Gen Zers and her style is so extremely broad that it's almost impossible to define or even mimic.

As I rode I wondered why this might be. When I was a kid we got our style cues from a very homogenized media ecosystem where MTV and The OC told us what was cool. Now media is much more disjointed with a myriad of TV shows, Twitch streamers, indie movies, Tik-Toc trends and influencers. So it makes sense that kids may dress like their favorite influencers or base their fashion choices on an esoteric TV show that very few other people follow. 

I also wonder how much Covid had to do with things. These kids would have missed out on chunks of their freshmen and sophomore years of High School. After a year and a half of virtual learning maybe they came back and what you wore didn't matter anymore.

Every decade seems to have some defined styles associated with it. You can look at a picture of a group of high schoolers and easily tell if it's from the 70s, 80s, 90s or aughts (shoutout to cargo shorts, polo with a popped collar, puka shell necklace and upside down visor). But I wonder if it will still be that obvious for gen Z. It seems like it's not specific trends coming back en masse ala Ugg Boots, but rather every trend ever coming back in a fraction of Gen Z all at the same time. Which honestly must really take the pressure off these kids since everything is cool and everyone looks so uncool.