If Europe is ahead of us on the fashion curve, we have a lot to look forward to.

Now, I don’t claim to be a fashion expert. One look at my extensive collection of rubber flip-flops and you know that. And it’s not like we’re living in the fashion capital of the world. Heck, Chicago’s not even a fashion powerhouse in the States. Trends generally start on either coast and face a long, hard journey to make it to the doughy center of the country.

Case in point: Remember when legwarmers made a brief and ill-fated comeback in 2004? (Cue blank stares and confused silence from the five guys who read this thing.) Well, they did, generally paired with flip-flops and jean skirts. And while they may have gained popularity along the eastern and western seaboard, the trend kind of petered out by the time it reached the Midwest. There’s just a lot of middle America to cover.

That’s not to say you won’t see some of these trends around this great city. They’re starting to pop up on the fashion periphery—both that incredibly savvy girl on the el you really don’t want to stand next to given your current outfit and the ironically mustachioed hipster sipping his Colt 45. But these trends were everywhere in Italy. From the fashionable Florence native to the father of 3 on holiday from France. These are trends that have made it mainstream in Europe, and by all calculations, they’ll be working their way through the Midwest in another 12-18 months. So get excited.

Jorts.
A mere five years after everyone at Illinois joined that Facebook group pledging their undying and ironic love for jorts, jean shorts are back with a vengeance. And they seem to be targeting dudes. The jorts we saw weren’t just the carpenter-style jean shorts we all know and love from 1997. (Remind me why we needed need hammer loops on all of our shorts again? We’re like the least handy generation ever.) These were straight up hipster jeans chopped at the knee or—in some extreme cases of man thigh—above the knee. Some rivaled bike shorts in both length and snugness. It was a lot to see.

Mullets and their less overtly trashy counterpart, the rattail.
There was a lot of business in the front, party in the back walking around the other side of the pond. And yeah, you still see a lot of American mullets at NASCAR events and White Sox games (zing.), but over there, they were everywhere doing everything. Sipping Chianti on the town square. Admiring art in the Uffizi. Touring the Vatican. They weren’t driving around in an El Camino or guzzling cans of Busch at a monster truck rally. These mullets were cultured.

Rattails also appear to be making a strong comeback. You know, for when a mullet is just too obvious.

Genie pants.
They’re like gauchos, but they taper. I imagine they’re extremely comfortable (because seriously, gauchos were almost as comfortable as not wearing pants at all), but I also imagine they’re even less flattering. I mean, look at M.C. Hammer circa 1992. He could have had a great figure, but no one ever looked at him and said, "look at the legs on that guy." Those pants just didn't do him any favors.

They're also called harem pants. Now why in the world would you want to wear anything named after the room where polygynous women hang out?