Wearing Your Band Merch

My mom likes to point out approximately once a month that amount of band merch that I have purchased in my twenty-two years on this planet. And I mean, she's not wrong, I just like to block some of these out. I'm fairly certain that between the years 2007 and 2012, I purchased a piece of merch from every single concert I went to. This might not seem like too much, except for the fact that for two or three years in a row, I went to a concert almost every single month. Yeah, I was that kind of teenager. 

I accumulated a lot of useless band merch fast. Let's be real here: all bands do not have good merch. And since I never quite adopted full-on scene kid style during my very apparent emo child phase, the merch never fit my style. Plus, as we all know, I wore a uniform until 12th grade. So. My merch was virtually useless besides to lounge around my house in.

Some bands, however, do merch well. As you can tell from the frequent appearance of various Cheap Trick shirts on my blog as of late, there's one clear winner in my household full of band merch, both mine and my parents' (okay, an I admittedly like to borrow my brother's Saint Pablo tour hoodie from time to time).

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I think I just prefer simple merch. I'm not a massive graphic t-shirt person, so for someone's merch to fit into my wardrobe for everyday wear, it has to have a few factors: no faces, white or black or maybe grey, and it's just lettering and font with no crazy ink splashes or anything. Basically, I keep it simple. Trust me, I made a lot of mistakes in the past when it came to buying merch and broke every single one of these rules. I don't know where all of these shirts disappeared to, but I know they're still in the house and I can picture them all very vividly in my brain.

I do feel the need to add–though I would assume that this would be obvious because this is my personal blog and I am definitely not the be all end all of fashion related bits–that you can wear whatever kind of band merch you want. Because to be quite honest, every time I see someone wearing one of the Harry Styles' concert tees with his face and the date of the show, I get a little sad I missed out on buying one because some people just style all band merch so well no matter what it is. I just never was one of those people because of the whole "I only wear black, white, and some neutrals" and affinity to more solid colored garments. 

 

Continuously nicking my parents' Cheap Trick shirts wasn't really my plan, but it was either this Cheap Trick shirt or my Burnin' Up Tour Jonas Brothers tour tee, so there was a clear winner in this case. I can't say that my Burnin' Up shirt is going to be making the rounds out in the world anytime soon, but really, let's never say never. It could be vintage in a decade.

I'm also going to state what may or may not be an unpopular opinion. But you can absolutely wear band merch for bands you don't listen to. I'm, quite frankly, always a bit pissed off when people (usually men, let's be real here guys) chastise other people (mainly women, because when aren't we chastised for stupid shit) for wearing, let's say, Nirvana shirts or Rolling Stones tees. And really, all I have to say is...who cares. It's literally a shirt. A shirt. Take a chill pill and let people wear whatever they want and don't try to quiz them on it. It's really not that difficult of a concept.

Do you think I know every single Cheap Trick song these is to know? Hell no. My brain doesn't have enough room for that, it needs to hold onto every single Jonas Brothers lyric for the rest of forever and useless facts about them. I can't waste that precious brain space to learn the entire discography of other artists. Let me enjoy their classic hits in peace!

Shirt: Borrowed from my dad

Sweater (layered underneath): Target

Jeans: Joe's Jeans

Sneakers: Adidas

Coat: Forever21

Sunglasses: Miu Miu