When I lived in the small Northern California community of Nevada City and Grass Valley, trends were not on my radar. It’s interesting that something so prevalent in the southern part of the state can be so absent in the rural areas of the north.
I would come to Orange County to see the grandkids and observe things that seemed downright odd to me, yet were everyday behavior here.
One example is cell phones. I was stunned when I first saw people here walking with their heads down, reading their cell phones. I couldn’t figure it out. What was so important? Everyone couldn’t just be receiving urgent news at the same time, could they? How could they even see where they were going? Did they suffer from neck pain?
In my rural town, cell phones didn’t really work very well five years ago. I had one, but many of my friends didn’t. Sometimes I went a month without using it, and even then it was usually to let my husband know I was running late.
Our community bordered Tahoe National Forest, and most of it resembled a forest. Giant trees were everywhere and cell phone towers were scarce. Many residents didn’t have the Internet because of the landscape and some still used dial-up. Cell phones were a luxury item.
When I moved back here five years ago, I asked my daughter what I needed in Orange County that I didn’t have in Nevada County. Without missing a beat she said, “an iPhone.” And she was right.
While I don’t walk down the street staring at the thing, I have become almost weirdly attached to it. A computer in my pocket? Google at my fingertips? Maps that told me exactly where to go and how long it would take me to get there? As someone who is “directionally challenged,” that was a life-changer.
Now I not only have my iPhone and iPad, I have a Fitbit. For those of you who don’t know, that is a watch that counts my steps, measures my fitness, keeps track of my heart rate, tracks how restless my sleep was, compares my exercise to that of my “Fitbit Friends” and could probably bathe the dog if I understood the instructions better.
But back to trends. I recently posted on Facebook that people in Orange County seem to live in their fitness clothes. Leggings, yoga pants, running shoes, etc. My NorCal friends commented, most saying they wouldn’t go around town in their gym clothes.
Recently on NPR they had a report that sales of jeans have dropped for the first time in 20 years. The reason? Gym clothes and yoga pants.
There is even a name for it now: Athleisure.
So while the stores like Lulu Lemon and Athletica have been selling $100 sweat pants and yoga clothes for years now, everyone else seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. And even walking down Main Street in Seal Beach I see as many people in workout wear as I do wearing jeans.
Of course, the very nature of a trend is that it is cyclic. I remember the “hippie dress” of the 60s – made out of Indian bedspreads. Once an upscale version of that hit Saks Fifth Avenue the hippies had long abandoned them.
So “Athleisure” and the Fitbit may be passing fads, but I’m enjoying them now.
Dixie Redfearn is editor of the Sun Newspapers and the Catalina Islander.
