Fall means football in the state of Texas. But in other circles, far from the gridiron, cooler temperatures also indicate a changing of the fashion guard. With a new season come new trends, and lately, the two disparate autumnal interests are intersecting in the most kitsch of accessories: the homecoming mum.
In July, Brooklyn-based fashion forecaster Mandy Lee posted a video to TikTok and Instagram Reels predicting that prize ribbons, also called cockades, would be a niche trend this fall. Texans viewing the video immediately clocked what Lee, a native New Englander, could not. “If you’re from Texas it’s just a homecoming mum IYKYK,” wrote TikTok user @lhxmax52. “It’s giving homecoming mums,” said @lupezzet. “Thinking about how it’s time to find my homecoming mum,” agreed @sestrera.mp4.
Though the tradition of the mum—a chrysanthemum, once real, now synthetic, strung with loads of ribbon—originated in Missouri, it is now almost exclusively associated with the Lone Star State, with a few try-hards straggling along in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Those who did not grow up here have a hard time understanding mums’ appeal, but they may soon be wearing stripped-down versions nonetheless.
Lee’s video displays instances of the trend: a $198 red “pony pin” from Sandy Liang, a $75 baby-blue medallion by Nina Bow, Chloë Sevigny wearing an oversized pull bow at a Loewe show. As Lee mentions, the ribbon trend is in part an extension of the coquettish bow style that has been featured in hair and on clothing for most of this year. Lee also cites the Olympics and its winning ethos—we all spent the summer witnessing the joy of receiving prizes—as an influence.
But fashion followers viewing through a Texan lens can also see something of the runaway country and Western aesthetic that’s lately invaded so much of mainstream culture. The ribbons are girly, sure, but they also recall a horse in the winner’s circle, a first-place apple pie, a champion barrel racer, a pageant queen. And, of course, we’re reminded of those dang mums: prize ribbons, with top puffs of fabric trailed by hanging, flowy streamers, are visually similar to the homecoming accessories (if minimal, stripped-down versions). They also evoke some of the same incredulity mums do: That’s what you’re choosing to pin on your person?
For brands that choose to incorporate prize ribbons into their designs, the playfulness is the point. Commenters on Lee’s video pointed to Fashion Brand Company, a Los Angeles–based shop known for its bizarro marketing. The brand has incorporated prize ribbons into its garments for the past two years or so, selling them alongside jeans with the butt cheeks cut out and fish-printed bloomers.
Lasso La Lune, a small Virginia brand, showcases its $42 Show Pony Ribbon on an actual pony, and photographed at the county fair, a further indication of the ribbons’ country roots. “People who get it get it,” says brand founder Haylee Childress, who first started making the ribbons for the 2023 fall season. “It’s about novelty and kitsch.”
With the prize-ribbon trend still in its infancy, the line between frivolous kitsch and dead-serious sartorial style still feels thin enough that I found it hard to tell if another TikToker, user @emilypolner, also of New York, was kidding when she posted a video on “ways to style prize ribbons” that featured legitimate, buy-in-bulk-on-Amazon prize ribbons. Even more so than on their visual similarity, mums and prize ribbons intersect on their embrace of silliness: There is no line between kidding and not. The mums are a joke, absolutely, but a meaningful inside one.
Texans certainly get it. The homecoming ribbons are one of the finer examples of our “bigger equals better” ideology, our embrace of novelty and kitsch. The whole point of the mum is to blatantly, gauchely convey status—to show that you’re the biggest, baddest high school senior with glitter, glue, and any number of twinkling, blinking charms. Like certain fashion accessories, mums can also cost upwards of $800—likely more in North Texas, where they just keep getting bigger and bigger, the joke taken further and further. The exorbitant cost is just another surreal aspect of the frankly insane accessory.
The biggest difference between Lee’s trendy prize ribbons and Texas homecoming mums is sheer scale. In parts of North Texas, florists or crafty mothers fasten multiple faux chrysanthemums together to craft gigantic mum monstrosities, sometimes capable of hiding teens’ whole bodies. In South Texas, home to a 78-foot mum, florists string the fake flowers along the entirety of a sash for a voluminous but relatively subtle look.
Likewise, Lee also sees sashes gaining prominence among members of the fashion set. In pop culture, sashes are already having their moment, telegraphing a nod to meritocracy in a similar way to prize ribbons. Beyoncé—Texan and perpetual first-place winner in our hearts—wore a red, white, and blue sash that read “Cowboy Carter” on that album’s cover while seated atop a galloping horse. The imagery, used for the artist’s genre-bending, first-ever country album, positions the sash as an accessory with roots in both country-Western and equestrian spaces.
Sashes have also been prominent at Chappell Roan shows, with fans wearing the accessory to mimic the artist’s debut album cover. (Texan Kacey Musgraves also wore a sash in album shoots for 2015’s Pageant Material.) Though not tied to any particular state or region, beauty pageants—and the accessories showered on the winners—retain the sort of big-haired, bless-your-heart sensibility so commonly associated with Southern gals.
As with mums, sashes are about theatricality, meant for the stage or the winner’s podium, even if civilians are beginning to wear them on the street. Maybe this is the legacy of the Western-wear trend: an embrace of camp and kitsch, a willingness to lean into character, to joke and play. Cowboy hats can look absurd if you’re playing it too straight. A heavy pile of sparkling ribbons and twinkling bells certainly does. Texans already know all this. For decades, we’ve been donning mums to signal something about ourselves: our identity, our status, our willingness to look a little silly. You might even call us trendsetters.
