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The story
A photo posted on X (formerly Twitter) captioned “This is literally every college student’s outfit these days,” showing an oversized T-shirt paired with wide sweatpants, went viral and racked up over 10,000 likes. On a 5ch thread on the “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board, users reacted with comments like “Must be nice being able to go outside in your pajamas” and “I thought wide pants had already gone out of style.” Over why sweats-style outfits have become the norm, opinions split between those who called it “just another swing of a pendulum the fashion industry has always had” or “people simply spending less money on clothes,” and younger posters who countered that “deliberately not dressing up IS the new dressing up” — exposing a generational divide in how the look gets read.
What people said
It's so trendy that basically every college student has turned into this lol
Western countries have been traveling abroad in T-shirts and cargo shorts forever anyway
In sketchy areas, if people think you're rich you get robbed, you know
Apparently the trend now is a skin-tight T-shirt on top with baggy pants on the bottom
Heads up — if you say "sweats are lame" you'll get branded an out-of-touch boomer and get swarmed, so watch yourself
Why are these people so aggressive about it
There have always been people wearing this — like delinquent-type ("yankee") girls who were basically bottom-tier academically (hensachi 30, the lowest ranking bracket)
and older folks who've stopped caring about clothes wear it too
I guess since it's such a familiar sight, people just believed it when told it was "trendy"
Yeah, my impression was always that it was delinquent types wearing this outside
Trends really are strange things
That's just an old man's standards talking
Japanese people can't even come up with their own trends anymore
Sorry to say, but this look's been around forever
That was like 2016, wasn't it
but fashion-clueless college kids hear "sweatpants are trendy" and just grab the elastic-ankle jogger-style ones sold as loungewear at Uniqlo, and then middle-aged men and women see that and start going on about "poverty" and whatnot
Funny seeing someone act all high and mighty without even understanding why the design gets tweaked slightly
Uncool people assume something's new just because it's a bit different
The fashion industry has been doing this forever, how do you not know that
You don't even need magazines to know what I'm talking about here
Bottom line, it's ended up not stylish and people are spending less on clothes
Young people today seriously don't spend money on clothes
Whatever the reason, the fact that students look more like broke students hasn't changed
Back then the Uniqlo ones were sold out everywhere
And having gone through that, it's become a wardrobe staple… 🫢
so there's no point in us butting in
let alone acting like it says something deep about society
Exactly this
Way too many tone-deaf people out there
Just watch young people's trends with a relaxed eye and leave it at that
The times have finally caught up to us
These Gen Z kids actually think this loungewear look is stylish, which makes the outfit even more pathetic
By that logic, shouldn't the top be a shirt or jacket instead of a T-shirt then
Even with a T-shirt it works fine if you throw on a necklace or some accessories
Balancing it out with accessories is a given, but honestly I think this strays from dress-casual theory
since both the top and bottom are full-on casual loungewear
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The habit of wearing sweats and oversized T-shirts — essentially loungewear — as actual outdoor clothing is often described as an extension of the “comfort-wear mindset” that spread after the COVID-19 pandemic, and this thread can be read in that same light. Within it, an older-generation view that “they’re just following a trend with no real agency of their own” collided with the younger generation’s own stance that “deliberately not dressing up IS the stylish choice,” and the two sides talked past each other without ever really meeting. Worth noting: the photo in the original post likely doesn’t represent “college students in general” so much as a cherry-picked image of the kind that spreads easily on X. Some in the thread also pointed out that “there’s always been a segment dressed like this, going back to the delinquent/yankee subculture era,” suggesting this isn’t necessarily a brand-new phenomenon so much as a longstanding group of people who don’t spend money on clothes. A theory that the trend originated in Korea was also floated, but with no evidence offered, so it shouldn’t be taken as settled.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G board) thread “[Image] X post: ‘This is literally every college student’s outfit these days’ hits 10,000 likes.”
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