The PARKE Sweatshirt Trend Needs To Be Retired Already
There was a time when seeing someone in a PARKE sweatshirt felt rare enough to be interesting.
You would spot one in the wild and think, “Okay, cute,” because it actually stood out among the sea of standard crewnecks and oversized hoodies everyone rotates through on campus. But somewhere along the line, the PARKE sweatshirt stopped being a fun fashion find and started feeling like a mandatory uniform for girls who spend too much time curating their Instagram to seem like every other college student with the “clean girl” aesthetic.
Now every Starbucks line, library floor and apartment mirror selfie contains the exact same oversized, pastel sweatshirt with the exact same lettering styled with the exact same gold hoops, slicked back bun and pair of spandex shorts or leggings.
It has reached the point where the sweatshirt itself is no longer the issue.
The issue is the copy-and-paste personality that seems to come with it.
The funniest part is that everyone acts like the sweatshirt is revolutionary when, objectively, it is just a very expensive crewneck. That’s it. There is no magical fabric woven by fashion gods. There is no life-changing fit that cannot be achieved elsewhere.
Yet people talk about getting a PARKE sweatshirt the way medieval villagers probably talked about finding the Holy Grail.
And yes, before anyone gets defensive, they are comfortable. Most oversized sweatshirts are. That’s not groundbreaking information.
The trend also somehow created an entire social hierarchy online where owning one became a personality trait. Girls post “finally got my PARKE hoodie” TikToks like they just received acceptance letters from Harvard. The comments fill with people asking about sizing, colors and restocks as if the sweatshirt contains the secrets of the universe rather than the same cotton blend available in 50 other stores.
It took me a solid few months to figure out what even started this trend, then I found out people were paying that much for a sweatshirt with some random girl’s last name on it.
At some point, fashion stopped being about personal style and started becoming a race to see who could look the most identical while pretending it was effortless.
The worst crime of the PARKE sweatshirt trend, though, is that it killed creativity. Campus style used to be chaotic in a fun way. People mixed random vintage finds with old sports hoodies, weird jackets from thrift stores or giant sweatshirts stolen from their dad’s closet. Now, everyone looks like they were assembled in the same factory five minutes before class.
And because trends move at the speed of light now, the PARKE era already feels painfully overdone. The second something becomes impossible to escape online, it immediately loses whatever cool factor made people want it in the first place.
Once your friend who’s studying abroad, your roommate, three girls in your communications lecture and half your TikTok feed all own the same sweatshirt, the mystery is gone.
This is not a call to burn every PARKE sweatshirt immediately. If you genuinely love yours, congratulations on your very soft crewneck. Wear it proudly. But as a society, we need to stop acting like it is the peak of fashion innovation.
The world does not need another oversized sweatshirt that is only sold in drops or by resellers.
Especially not one that costs that much.