Ironic, Post-Ironic, or Couture? (Lighten up, it's just fashion...)

Up here in the mountains of Western Maine, the hippest of the badass snowboarders have taken to rocking t-shirts like these:

Until recently, I always associated these shirts with one of the least coveted high school personas... A certain affinity for science fiction/fantasy writing, an unfamiliarity with the acne-clearing benefits of salicylic acid, and a disarming comfort with tucking one's t-shirt into sweatpants. Narrow-minded, perhaps, but I'm just being honest. Now, I have come to understand that wearing such shirts is intended to reflect an almost unprecedented level of cool. Acknowledging my students' obvious attempt at irony, my question is... Has ironic fashion really come this far? 

Rappers wearing madras is one thing; emaciated hipsters in basketball jerseys is another. Both rooted deeply in the "irony is clever no matter how obvious" paradigm... Not particularly original, but effective (and, at the risk of revealing my own played out-ness, something I typically appreciate). But I must admit that I was surprised by this reappropriation of the fashions of some of the most traditionally marginalized members of any high school by the very type of kid who would most likely have contributed heavily to the marginalization process itself. Does the "badass" nature of my particular students' lifestyle enable them to feel comfortable challenging the power of such normative social categorizations? Is it an attempt to reassociate snowboarding with outsider culture in the face of the mass consumption and near ubiquity of skate/board fashion on and off the slopes? Or is it just kids trying to be contrary?