Nothing makes sense right now.
We’ve all sort of accepted that we’re living in a political and cultural moment made of nonsense puzzle pieces making no attempt to connect themselves. Global warming is melting the ice caps and there’s a new timeline on the supposed incoming apocalypse floating onto my timeline every morning. It is times like these when I begin to consider the ways in which we each plan to go about distracting ourselves from what seems to be constant disaster mode.
Within these times of chaos there are few things we can still believe is under our control. Being able to make decisions on what we wear and how we present ourselves to the world can be a great distraction from the world itself. Fashion has always been a reflection of the times; often doubling as a coping mechanism for that which we cannot change. From dresses made from flour sacks reflecting shortage during the great depression to the shortening of skirts during the suffrage movement, we continue to reflect our collective circumstance through the way we dress.
Recently I’ve been struggling to figure out what the generalized cultural image will be for the time period we are living in now. There are iconic clothing styles we use as points of reference to understand decades within American history. We can pinpoint the era that gave us the flapper dress and make the distinction between this and the time period that gave us flare jeans and platform dancing shoes. The image of a 1950s teenager almost always involves a poodle skirt in our minds. I don’t believe the issue of figuring out the “2010s look” can be chalked up to it being too recent for us to fully grasp. We can already pinpoint the specific fashion tastes and musical styles that were prevalent in the early 2000s. We have a general understanding of what cultural and political phenomena impacted our self expression during that time period (I refuse to believe we were all wearing those butterfly hair clips for no reason.) But how will we recognize the fashion of now? While fast fashion stores all seem to have an understanding of what people generally want, nothing feels new, innovative or unique to our time. There are multiple niche taste sets and subcultures that have emerged in the past decade but none seem entirely new. Are we all too individualistic at this point to have some sort of collective fashion sense? Is our growing nostalgia and love for familiar styles from the past inhibiting our ability to create a defining image for this decade?
We’re drowning in 90s television reboots and Baby Phat revivals. Our desire to escape from the nonsense of now has pushed us to romanticizing yesteryear. Normani’s ‘Motivation’ music video reflects this idea tangibly as she pays homage to many of our favorite 90s and early 2000s pop culture moments. Rodarte’s recent Spring shows have incorporated dreamy, delicate looks that pull from both 50s and 90s fashion. Makeup has seen a few noticeable shifts during these past few years. The skincare focused, “my face but better” look, frequently attributed to brands like Glossier and Milk, is a remaining staple. Our willingness to play with bright primary colored lips glossy eyelids has also caught my attention as a possible reflection of our state as a culture. This desire to be bold and make our own rules is an exertion of what little power we still hold.
I don’t believe it is a lack of creativity that is causing us to pull inspiration from our past. On the contrary, I believe it is a beautiful element of our humanity that causes us to yearn for an idealized version of a world so close yet so far away. I believe we are simply too busy figuring out how to be alive, take up space, and defend humanity to try to dictate what everyone should be wearing. What we are choosing to wear now is more of a personal statement than ever. We are looking inward, focusing on ideas of self care reading deeply into our astrological charts in an attempt to understand and ground ourselves. The world is a hot mess and all we have is ourselves.
Fashion being used as a means to make political statements is an enduring concept that we have not lost touch with within the last decade. Indya Moore recently made an appearance during New York Fashion Week donning earrings featuring images of Black trans women who were murdered this year in the United States. Billy Porter’s active efforts to subvert the iconography of masculinity are straight up jaw dropping.
Maybe our intensely polarizing views are reflecting themselves in fashion, causing us to turn towards niche tastes. Maybe we’re running towards the fashion of our childhood as a means of escape. Maybe the cyclical nature of fashion is just getting us ready for a major 70s revival.
Or maybe we just really don’t give a damn. The planet is melting.