A Salmon Sensation

Heads up

Art direction: Liz and Beth Text: Clay Roper Photos by Beth, Liz, Clay Roper, and Salvador Kandinsky

3/11/20251 min read

Just like coastal tides and solar radiation, any self-respecting fashionista will tell you that sartorial trends come in waves. For proof of this immutable law of fashion and nature, look no further than the salmon sensation washing over the young orca population across the globe. In 1987, a pod of orca whales began exhibiting the peculiar behavioral pattern of wearing dead salmon on their heads for no obvious purpose other than plain old fun. Perhaps even more perplexing at the time was how this humorous habit was adopted by pods all around the world, becoming one of the only high points anyone recalls from the Reagan years.

Recently, marine biologists have observed a resurgence of this timeless—if not entirely sanitary—dorsal accessory in adolescent killer whales more than 30 years later. Yes, you can finally defrost your old Salmo Salar hat because the North Atlantic look is back in! According to the enterprising young whales of today, nothing makes you look cooler and more aloof while sabotaging the rudders of passing merchant vessels than adorning your crown with a rotting fish.

Never one to back down from a bad idea, we here at Slatternly have decided that such a noisome fashion statement is precisely what the jaded youth of today need to finally wrestle their parents’ attention away from their phones and make them pay attention for once. In this issue of the fashion world’s most preeminent publication, we provide you with two examples of how the salmon hat trend has journeyed across the U.S.A., beginning in the grimy bowels of East Coast parking garage loiterers and migrating all the way to the somehow even grimmer garden parties of the Hollywood elite in California.