Everything Old is New Again

There's an old saying that "people laugh at the fashions and trends of the past, but follow the current ones religiously". I believe it's from the turn of the last century, but over 100 years later its still true. As cool as you think you look now, in the not too distant future, people will look at your picture and roar at the absurdity of your clothing and hairstyle. In ten years, this era, now seen as the cutting edge of cool by the young people living through it, will be universally derided as a fashion abomination, a cultural wasteland from which nothing of value was produced.

There's an interesting exception to this rule, though: When a new past era becomes targeted for derision, the previous "worst decade ever" suddenly experiences a revival in popularity. Today on the train I saw a soda ad that modified the font on the "Fanta" logo to look like the lettering on the name of an '80's hair metal band, with sharp, jagged edges, lightning bolts on either end and a color fade from shocking red to shocking purple. And it occurred to me that the 80's revival in pop culture is well under way. You see it all over the place. Movies based on 80's toys like Transformers are big. High top sneakers with neon laces are cool again. And the trend is all over the charts. Rihanna's Rude Boy video is straight up new wave punk, to choose one of may examples. (many will claim they were into the '80s before it was cool, and its true that some people were really ahead on the trend. But it seems to have hit its peak about now)

The older of us have seen this before. As a kid, I vaguely remember when the 60's was cool. By the time I was in college the movie Dazed and Confused had hit. A few years later That 70's Show was on the air, and it was a full-fledged '70s revival. It was only a matter of time before the 80's -just ten years ago despised as the lamest, tackiest most irredeemably awful decade in history- became the height of fashion.

I had always assumed it was a nostalgia trip; older people trying to relive the glory years of their youth once they get old enough to move into decision making jobs in media and fashion. But it occurs to me that most of the people leading this trend didn't live their adolescence in the 80's...they were born in the 80's, and in most cases are only old enough to remember the trends they're jumping on as vague childhood memories of the customs of older siblings.

While the much older might get a kick out of these revivals, it seems like these comebacks are initiated by the first generation not old enough to realize that that decade isn't supposed to be cool anymore. If that's the case, a 90's revival won't come until the people in their mid-twenties aren't old enough to remember grunge firsthand. Perhaps sometime in the late 2010's?