Column: 'Blue out the sea, blue in the weave'

My week started off wonderfully with an email from ASOS, featuring the handpicked fashions of hip-hop’s hottest female vocalist, Azealia Banks.

Think Spice Girls meets Jay-Z at a jewelry store. Let me tell you, the 1990s are back.

This is one time when I’m glad men’s fashion is trailing seasons behind women’s fashion.

I don’t know how much Backstreet Boys-inspired mesh or Gothic wide-leg, chain pants I can handle.

Especially this close to finals.

But for women, this means lots of velvet, slim crop-tops and the weird fabric that changes color when you walk by it.

Plus, all of that Lisa Frank memorabilia sitting in your closet back home can finally be put to good use. Sea punk is chic.

Azealia Banks dropped her new video for her track “Atlantis” as well, and the sea punksters lost it.

Recently, a gritty, ’90s clip art backdrop played behind Rihanna’s “Saturday Night Live” performance.

An Internet feud started among the up-and-coming rapper, the mainstream songstress and the sea punk movement’s leaders about potential copyright infringement and originality.

Art should be shared and human achievements in technology and culture are meant to be steps in a process of innovation instead of final destinations.

No one ever gets mad at ice cream for making dairy products better. It’s just part of progress.

Graffiti artist Banksy has an entire documentary about how great artists steal inspiration and make it their own.

In the same way, you can’t just call “dibs” on culture. Or an Internet aesthetic meant to be shared in real life.

Consider Azealia Banks’ career. She’s bringing sea punk, which has been underground for the past year, into the light. This means progress.

Once sea punk is mainstream and Grimes is playing on the radio between Rihanna and Britney Spears, either a new counter-culture will arise or sea punks will fall victims to mass media.

No one wants to be that hipster still listening to Mumford & Sons, watching Lena Dunham videos and wearing grungy plaid to ironic house parties.

Oh, wait.

­— mwalschl@indiana.edu