Throwback Culture and Nostalgia: Fashion in an Age of Stunted Creativity
Graphic by Margeaux Rocco. Images via Urban Outfitters
The top eight highest-grossing films of 2019 so far are: Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Captain Marvel, Spiderman: Far From Home, Aladdin, Joker, and It Chapter 2. The next highest-grossing movie, Jordan Peele’s Us, is the first movie on the list that is an original story — the others are all remakes, sequels, or movie adaptations of comic books. Recently, film, television, and all other forms of media have been overrun with a trend of nostalgia, and new ideas are few and far between.
The same can be said of fashion; almost every trend today — from barrettes to plaid skirts to mom jeans — is borrowed from 70s, 80s, and 90s trends. The same girls who were teased for wearing scrunchies in elementary can now find them selling for $12 at Urban Outfitters, and every instagram influencer seemed to rock an animal print something this past year.
I believe the contemporary obsession with “throwback trends” is, like Disney’s live-action remakes of their classic animated films, due to a cultural moment of nostalgia. With the current political climate, serious concerns over environmental issues, and all the other chaos happening today, it is not unreasonable that many people feel nostalgic for what seemed like “a simpler time.” I don’t believe that there ever truly was a simpler time, as every decade faces its own challenges, but many of the adults today who were children during the 80s and 90s naturally associate those time periods with their childhoods, when socio-political problems weren’t as present in their minds. It is unsurprising, therefore, that 80s style icons such as Molly Ringwald and Winona Ryder have resurfaced in modern trends.
As an undergraduate hoping for a job in the creative arts, it can be quite frustrating and depressing to see the apparent stagnation of art and media today. Most of the massive corporations who control the creation and distribution of various media have little room in their budget for anything experimental. In one of my film classes, we were taught that insane profits from movies such as the Avengers franchise are used to fund everything else the studio makes, which is why superhero movies have been churning out every few months over the past decade. It is the natural process for a capitalist market to find something that works and mass-produce that thing until every ounce of profit has been bled from it. In other words, if you’re getting sick of superheros and musician biopics, you aren’t the only one. But as long as those movies continue to rake in eye-bulging profits, they aren’t going away any time soon.
Images via Google
As frustrating as living under late capitalism can be, I think the recent throwback trends of fashion can in fact be seen in a positive light. I, for one, think it is inspiring to see old trends revived and reimagined in completely new ways. True originality is, after all, impossible; every idea in every medium is at least subconsciously pulling from various sources, and this is not necessarily negative. Recreation can require just as much creativity and effort — for example, in every adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays, there is an expectation of some variation from the text, and those changes allow the audience to reimagine the work in a new context.
There is danger in nostalgia; the danger of getting caught up in the past and refusing to move forwards, but even in a time so deeply submerged in nostalgia, there are still creative people making amazing new things. So if you, like I, are considering a job in a creative field, I hope that you will not abandon your ambitions, because now more than ever do we need people who are willing to break from the status quo.