Cool Girl Shoulder Pads

remixes, cultural daydreams, meaningless meditations

The extreme rolled-up T-shirt sleeve, AKA cool girl shoulder pads. Deltoid bearing, this look reads as ready for anything, like a Covid booster or a middle finger tattoo. Violently anti-athleisure, the expression is modishly caszh and easily deep faked by the muscle shirt. Elegant, and as suggestive as an ungloved hand, it’s the enduring look that’s launched a thousand girl crushes.

Looks like the effortlessly cool Zoë Kravitz and Lady Gaga got the cool girl shoulder pads memo—here, Kravitz goes with the low-key roll in contrast to Gaga’s demonstrative pussy power energy. It’s fair to peg this shirt sleeve zero-in as vapid BS (it is)…what isn’t bullshit, though, is what this style expression implies: namely, potency.

From Geena Davis’s iconic character, Thelma, in the ‘91 film Thelma & Louise to Jemima Kirke’s total smarty, Melissa, in 2022’s Conversations with Friends, there’s a powerful “TAKE NO SHIT” quality to this particular brand of sleeve. With all the nonsense girls and women have been dealing with of late where it concerns possession of our own bodies, maybe take no shit’s the style we all ought to be wearing.

Elizabeth Poirier