Fashion Puns: 3 Ways to Awe Your Audience with Wordplay

Happy Monday… Today, We're Talking Fashion Puns!

Wondering how to write a good blog post title? Looking for ideas to spice up your written content? Want to be witty? Here are a few ways to incorporate fashion puns into your digital content.

Open any fashion magazine and it's loaded with wordplay – fashion puns. Just like many blog names (check out our blog name generator for quirky blog name ideas), these magazines title their stories “Into the Wild” for animal prints, “Chain Gang” for necklaces, trend pieces that lead off with “Enlist army green and black for your fall uniform…”. 80% of fashion copy has a double meaning (or at least a few fashion puns in the copy), a clever reference to something else, or a little joke all keep things fresh, even when you're talking about the same old-same old story. What can you possibly mean?

“Florals for spring? Shocking!” (Devil Wears Prada)

I personally love puns and wordplay, being as my favorite joke starts with “Why is six afraid of seven?” The punchline also happens to be the number of my street address. The more playful you are the more your readers will come to enjoy your actual writing, rather than just the pictures. Being funny in your posts is can get dangerous . . . how many times has sarcasm been misinterpreted on the internet? So. Many. Times. There are indeed very few funny writers who can transmit their sarcasm, satire and wit across the digital divide. Puns, alliteration, and rhymes are actually quite simple, and the wider your knowledge of current events, culture and language the more you have to play with.

Here are some methods and resource for incorporating fashion puns into your blog's name, post title or even the actual content itself (remember, content is king, so don't scrimp!)

Puns

Who says the fashion industry doesn't have a sense of humor? Fashion loves a good pun. Granted, puns are the lowest hanging fruit on the comedy tree… but so is toilet humor, and we still giggle at it, no matter how old we get. Puns exploit multiple meanings of words, or similar sounding words to make a joke. Can you make up your own fashion pun? Of course! The instructions are easy… “To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms.” says Walter Redfern

“Bows Before ‘Hose” a post about bows in lingerie or tights
“Dress Relief” a post about comfortable dresses
“Taming of the Shoe” a post about shoe trends becoming more conservative

There are more types of puns, but this is probably the simplest to implement in blog posts.

Resources: Punoftheday.com

Alliteration

Alliteration is the “repetition of a sound in a series of words or phrases.” I was quite pleased with the alliteration of my married name, “Jennine Jacob” which played no small part in my taking my husbands name (yes, I am that vain). It also sounds nice and, therefore, can be catchy. You can get carried away with alliteration quite easily because it only requires repetition of sounds. Considering how vast our language is, it's not hard to make alliteration work in almost any post.

“A Purple Proposal” a post predicting purple to progress as the next hot color
“Fantasy Fashion League” figuring out the finest fashion to further this season's fads
“Beautiful Blue Booties” I expect this to be a post about you know, blue booties

Resources: Thesaurus.com

Rhyming

Lastly, we all know what rhyming is… words that have an “end or a sound corresponding with each other.” You'll probably use rhyming in your puns and your alliteration, but rhyming on it's own is a great way to clever up your posts. If you don't have time, or are not feeling particularly humorous that day (we've all had those days), rhyming is both fun and easy.

“Deals on Heels” a post about shoes on sale
“Trouser Browser” a post series about pants you love
“Petal to the Metal” a post about metallics and florals, or floral jewelry

Resources: RhymeZone.com

What kinds of word play do you use to spice up your posts? Have you tried incorporating fashion puns into your posts? Let us know in the comments below!

This post was originally published on September 27th, 2013 by Jennine Tamm. It was edited and reposted on November 5th, 2017 by Laura Kell.

Liza September 28, 2013

Thank you so much for this information! Extremely useful!

Stacey September 28, 2013

Bows before Hose! HAHAHAHA! This was a fun read and you make a lot of good points. I need to get better at my headings so they aren’t so boring and obvious:)

The Redhead September 28, 2013

LOL! Informative and true.I need to get better at titling my posts. I usually put song parts/titles :S

Onianwah September 28, 2013

I used to want to stay away from titles like these but it seems I was actually wrong and should embrace them.

Barbara
www.barbara1923.com
Lagos, Nigeria

Addison September 29, 2013

It’s so interesting how titles really make or break how many readers click on a post to view it. The more interesting a title or the more it sounds like a list (i.e. 7 ways to ____), the more people want to read. Imagine!

Thanks for your tips, as always!

Ann September 30, 2013

thanks

Miss Monet September 30, 2013

This is helpful advice. Articles will catch my eye just with the title. I incorporate that quite often in my articles as well. Wordplay is creative, fun and different.