 Last year I started counted every time I saw one particular thing on campus. No, it wasn't the seemingly hundreds of Badger statues the city put all across campus and the rest of Madison, or even Freshmen clearly too young to drink trying to get into bars only to have their fake taken away at the KK - or worse, Red Shed. It was that one particular oversized faux sherpa bomber, or topcoat, or trucker jacket, in that one particular camel color, or black, or maybe a little darker color, maybe even green. They come in a wide range of forms, but they all have one thing in common, an incredibly soft and fluffy polyester "faux sherpa" fabric.
I put "faux sherpa" in quotations because it doesn't actually approximate sherpa more than maybe 1%. Real sherpa is made from sheepskin and it is not just the fluffy wool these jackets try to approximate but is actually the whole hide of the sheep, with the wool shorn short. But I am not here to shit on faux sherpa. If I were, that would be very hypocritical. Last winter, I constantly had two faux sherpa half-zip fleeces in heavy rotation, and I recently brought the fabric into 2019 with this pair of jogger pants from Nike. The fact that Nike is on the faux-sherpa bandwagon says a lot about how far it has come in the last two years. The fact that everyone still seems to want it despite everybody else already having it says a lot about its potential staying power. We're supposed to make fun of everyone wearing the same thing, even if it's an objectively great thing. Fjallraven makes great quality, stylish backpacks and Canada Goose makes some of the best parkas out there, but we all love to make fun of the packs of students wearing near-identical parkas and the ubiquity of identical-except-for-color canvas backpacks you can't go 2 minutes out on campus without seeing. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to one thing: accessibility. Fjallraven backpacks are way overpriced for what they are compared to what else is on the market and Canada Goose jackets have a prohibitive price tag going up well over $1,000. I just did a quick google search and apparently one of the most popular silhouettes is available in 9 colors from Zaful (whatever that is) for an easily accessible price of $29.99. The fact that people can get in on the trend at any price level, combined with the fact that there is a wide range of options to choose from make faux-sherpa jackets or pants or sweatshirts a trend that could be here for a while. Plus, its soft and warm so no one really has anything to lose. Go out and get yourself something in faux-sherpa. You won't regret it.
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