Nostalgia tends to manifest in fashion and design in 20 year intervals – the fifties were nostalgic for the 20s and 30s, the seventies were nostalgic for the 50s, earlier in this decade there seemed to be a throwback to the 1980s, and so on…
But in the last year or so a number of “classic” styles have begun to emerge based on a 1920s sort of timeless aesthetic that seems to signify less a playful feeling of nostalgia as it does a desire to have roots in a rootless world.
My immediate impulse is to be dismissive of the “hipster” culture of dismayed apoplectic teens whose behavior is marked by consumption of “cool” because, after all, what is there to be nostalgic about from the 1990s?
But the generation now defining trends is the first mature generation of children from the baby boomers, and notably the first generation whose lives have been immersed in mass marketing from birth. Maybe this throwback to a timeless American past signifies a rejection of the marketing messages to excessively consume products and services. Perhaps it’s a rejection of the underlying values that there is one type of consumer who should max out all credit cards in pursuit of happiness via bottle service clubs, expensive cars, and designer brands.
I personally find this refreshing and a bit ironic, because the mass marketing we see today was really championed by the baby boomer generation, how far the apple has fallen from the idealistic counterculture of “The Sixties”
Photo below from my favorite neighborhood speak easy, Williamsburg’s Hotel Del Mano, where I’ve had many conversations with my good friend David Mindel that inspired this post. Video above 4-minute short from 1939 Len Lye: Swinging the Lambeth Walk.
Well, I’ll be damned. I could have agreed more.