Even if you don’t find yourself at the Kinnick Stadium or a bar during a game day in football season, you’ll still undoubtedly find yourself walking amid a sea of black-and-gold-clad Hawkeye enthusiasts.
We take school pride seriously here in Iowa City, to the point we must physically signify our pride in the form of sweatshirts, socks, shirts, skirts, and every other possible piece of apparel.
One specific piece of clothing I can’t help but keep noticing, however, are those damn overalls, and it’s time to retire them.
You know which ones I mean: the black and gold, vertically-striped overalls that seem to magically appear in the closet of every loud man under the age of 30.
On any given game day, you’re likely to find at least five dudes wearing this same pair of overalls, even if you’re a student just going downstairs to the dining hall and back.
I’ve always found this particular article of clothing to be incredibly tacky. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good pair of overalls, but something about the loud, in-your-face colors taking over the entirety of the body like an invasive, ugly moss has never failed to annoy me.
Every time I stumble across someone unironically wearing these things in public, I feel like I’m getting blasted by a sweaty flash grenade.
Why are they so popular, then? After all, they’re not exactly easy to style. Wearing a sweatshirt over them ruins the effect, so you have to wear a solid-color, not too bulky, shirt underneath them, because any other design would clash with the brash, in-your-face stripes.
Now, it has been pointed out to me that, for some, this lack of stylability is a perk.
As my fellow The Daily Iowan staff members have informed me, many young men choose to wear these overalls as an excuse to not wear a shirt in public. What better way for a strapping boy to show off his defined absence of muscles than with a pair of pants that will conveniently cover your midsection?
Men who don’t want to wear a shirt can’t be the overalls’ entire demographic, though. Why, then, have they become the go-to gear for the Hawkeye Marching Band in their non-UI-affiliated events? Why has our beloved Herky the Hawk been seen sporting this very same pair of overalls at games for at least a decade now?
Well, to be fair, they aren’t exactly hard to come by. Both the Iowa Book and the Iowa Hawk Shop have seemingly year-round stands dedicated to selling these overalls in various sizes, so it makes sense that undergraduate students would be so drawn to them.
According to the owner of Iowa Book, Kurt Vanderhoef, UI stores have been selling the overalls for just over 20 years. The company responsible for the overalls is “Game Bibs,” and shortly after their inception in 2003, their owners, Joshua and Luke Helbing, began working with Iowa Book directly to distribute their signature overalls in all available sizes.
When I spoke to Iowa Book’s manager, Doug Shelnutt, about the prevalence of game bibs overalls at the store, he let me know they’re on display and purchasable year-round, but are most popular during football season, which he speculates is because they can be worn comfortably both inside and outside.
“The challenge is that we can only order from this vendor once per year. So, we tell our customers, ‘If you find your right size, get it now before it’s gone for another year,’” Shelnutt said.
When I first came to the UI and saw swarms of students wearing these overalls, I assumed it must have been some sort of psy-op. How else could something I found so obnoxious be proudly worn by so many people? Since then, I’ve seen not only students, but children, middle-aged citizens, and even some elderly folks wearing the overalls around, all with enormous grins.
Game bibs has been going strong for 22 years, so as much as I’d like to cynically attach an approximate shelf life of 10 to 15 years to their back, that feels disingenuous. They will likely continue on for many years to come, and when they inevitably crash and burn, they’ll still live on in Goodwills and thrift stores for the rest of time.