Does Anyone Else Feel Like 2015 Ruined Suede?

I spent the greater half of two years looking for the suede a-line mini skirt — the kind with snaps down the front which you can now locate wherever garments are sold. And when I finally found it on Etsy, I thought I’d reached outfit euphoria. Never again will I need another skirt, I declared, but like a bad case of peanut butter syndrome imparted on me unwillingly, I could hardly look at it after six months.

For this, I blame 2015.

The year that has been co-opted by the resurgence of the 70s has tainted suede’s good name what with its overzealous use of the fiber on any garment permutation conceivable by the boundaries of your imagination and the trickle down effect that is the life (and therefore death) of a trend.

If in 2012, I could hardly find the skirt of my deceased dreams, in 2015, it is as common place as a pigeon on Broadway. But don’t get me wrong here — I’m not trying to be a fashion snob. I’m not proclaiming myself above the trend. Above any trend, really, but where suede was never quite the literal translation of a bygone decade, it has become the poster child for an era that is forcibly at the top of the collective consciousness. It has lost its zest because of its overt accessibility.

Remember when you could wear a suede jacket without feeling like a cheap version of any number of your 70s icons or to get more meta here, like any number of the models in current Zara or Topshop ad campaigns, posting as any number of your 70s icons? When’s the last time you experienced that?

When the first wave of 70s paraphernalia began emerging on Spring runways last September, the conversation was much more focused on what we, the consumers, are meant to do in the wake of winter fabrics for summer. Suede still felt like something a novelty — the personal style champion’s neon sheep in a sea of black leather. But that black leather has been eclipsed by its more supple sibling, which leaves those champions scrambling, bleeding out into otherwise genres and rejecting the 70s before they even actually get here. So what I’m wondering is this: can it be that as a result of obscenely fast fashion and our expansive access, we could be over a trend before its even de facto arrived or is this just another case of trend inception, ruining the party for its hosts?