'Shore' fashions become must-have for teens

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Hair gel and hair extensions, tanning and True Religion jeans, Ed Hardy T-shirts and eyebrow threading. It's fashion, "Jersey Shore"-style.

MTV's hit reality show put the spotlight on a group of 20-something Italian-Americans, self-professed "guidos" and "guidettes," as they partied and fist-pumped their way through a Seaside Heights, N.J., summer. And now their style - heavy on gravity-defying hair and deeply revealing tops - is catching on among a non-"guido" audience that's tuned in not just for the drama, but to study the cast's particular, and sometimes peculiar, fashion choices.

"They're fist-pumping. They're doing their hair like us now, dressing like us," Pauly Delvecchio, who goes by Pauly D on the show, told NBC's "Today" show. "We obviously did something right."

Pauly D's blowout hairdo helps define the style, along with Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi's hair-clipped pouf, which has several fan pages on Facebook. Jenni "JWOWW" Farley has announced her own clothing line and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino walked the red carpet at the Grammys displaying his famous abs.

Zach Vujic, 15, has learned lately just what kind of dedication it takes to get Pauly D's hair. The 10th-grader from Stoney Creek, Ontario, got his own version of the cut, with short hair on bottom, topped by hair a couple inches long sticking straight up in spikes seemingly shellacked into place.

Pauly D, a DJ from Johnston, R.I., has called the cut windproof, waterproof, soccer-proof and motorcycle-proof. Zach, whose ethnic background is Serbian, gets up 25 minutes early for school so he has time to perfect the style.

Other hallmarks of the "Jersey Shore" look are Jenni "JWOWW" Farley's blonde extensions and boob-revealing tops, T-shirts and trucker hats bearing classic Ed Hardy tattoo designs, and designer sunglasses and bags - sometimes knockoffs.

Most striking perhaps is that the men of "Jersey Shore" appear to be more dedicated to their looks than the women. Pauly D says he spends 25 minutes on his hair every day and gets it cut weekly. He and Sorrentino, dedicate themselves to a daily "GTL" routine: "Gym. Tan. Laundry." so they look their best when they go out.

Lauren Lewis, 19, a nursing student at Laguardia College in Queens, N.Y., who is Jamaican, Italian and Irish, with a little Lithuanian and British thrown in, says she doesn't consider herself a guidette but looks to Snooki and JWOWW for tips when she goes out clubbing.

"I want to be Snooki or JWOWW. Outgoing. I'm not really that outgoing," she said. "I look at them for inspiration."

Lewis said she doesn't think she could pull off many of JWOWW's style choices, although few could. Take JWOWW's signature fashion statement - the infamous draping yellow shirt she wore in one episode that revealed everything between her breasts.

JWOWW tweeted this week that her blonde extensions - worn under dark hair - will not be making a comeback in the show's second season. Alicia Carmody, a hairstylist who works in Providence, said several clients have asked about those extensions, although no one has told her they want to look like JWOWW yet.