Hoverboards. Self-lacing shoes. Hologram movie theaters. These are the bright things of the future that were promised to us in “Back to the Future Part II” when Marty and Doc Brown traveled to October 21, 2015. We”re still waiting on all three of those, but there”s one 2015 trend that just might become reality: Wearing your pants inside-out.
In “Back to the Future Part II,” Doc tells Marty, “All kids in the future wear their pants inside-out.” So Marty pulls out his jeans pockets to make his pants appear stylish, and, indeed, when he encounters his 17-year-old son, Marty McFly Jr., the kid is wearing his jeans inside-out.
Now Irishman Ross O”Mullane has created Outties so you can rock the style of all the cool 2015 kids just in time for Back to the Future Day this October. A Kickstarter campaign for Outties launched today.
You may be wondering, “Why buy ‘inside-out” pants if I can just turn my own pants inside-out?”
Here”s the problem with doing that: You have no access to pockets, belt loops or the fly. Turns out those teens were into a pretty impractical fad. (Which has totally never happened before, right?)
So O”Mullane worked with some contacts in the textile industry to create pants that appear to be inside-out but still have all the benefits of right-side-out jeans. Outties also feature a large thigh pocket that”s the perfect size for a copy of “Grays Sports Almanac” (or a large smart phone).
O”Mullane, who lives in Dublin, quit his full-time job as a marketing director at an e-commerce site to create Outties – a career move he admits his wife isn”t too pleased about. He had the idea after watching “Back to the Future Part II” last December.
The early bird price for a pair of Outties will, naturally, be 88 euros.
Will people buy them? Will the inside-out fad catch on? O”Mullane has confidence it will.
“Doc Brown didn”t say, ‘Some kids are wearing their pants inside-out in the future.“ He said, ‘All kids are wearing their pants inside-out in the future,”” O”Mullane pointed out. “To begin, obviously, [‘Back to the Future”] fans”ll get Outties initially. I”m hoping to start a revolution though. Jeans have stayed pretty much the same way around for 150 years now, so I wanna start a revolution of people wearing their pants inside-out.”
In all seriousness, though, O”Mullane says, “Look, I know it's a zany idea. The world might just collectively grimace and move on to the next thing on their news feed when they see it. But that”s the great thing about Kickstarter – we can give this a try without investing a huge amount of money right away.”
He further explained, “Part of me was thinking, ‘I”m doing creative stuff for other people. Why don't I do it for myself?” So I”m putting one of my wacky ideas out there and seeing what happens.”
O”Mullane also has tie-in project in the works: He”s hoping to get lots of people wearing their clothes inside-out on October 21 this year in an Ice Bucket Challenge-esque awareness campaign to support the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He”s begun spreading the word about that via BttFDay.org and has begun reaching out to folks at the Michael J. Fox Foundation about his idea for the campaign.
Outties, along with other related perks, are available for pre-order to those who make a donation at the Outtie Kickstarter page, where O”Mullane is aiming to raise €9,000 ($9,855) for the project.