My sixth-grade teacher once told my class that our children would be wearing spacesuits everywhere they went. It was probably one of those spontaneous, thoughtless comments, but it has stuck with me throughout my life. The concept of people walking around in aluminum foil suits with bubble heads has been seeming less and less likely, discrediting pretty much any science fiction movie ever produced about the future.
We are living in an age of imitation. Usually, this would infer the most sincere form of flattery, but can you really flatter the 80’s? Walking around Oberlin College campus, it’s almost impossible to not bump into someone wearing Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie attire, and it’s even more likely to see a Siouxsie Souix or Cindy Lauper clone dancing in the ‘Sco on a weeknight. The age of ironic apparel is neigh, confusing anyone over 40 the world over. Batman sweaters and unicorn knee-high socks might have been your favorite articles of clothing in fifth grade, and thank God you didn’t throw them away. You are just as skinny as you were in elementary school, so you can fit the same clothes. But they now fit you in a much different way. You are ironic, and you don’t care what other people think of you. But you actually do, and don’t want people to know that you do, so you keep wearing that Snoopy backpack and the hair scrunchies your mom gave you for your ballet recital twelve years ago.
Summer in Oberlin lets every fashionista and fashionisto burst free of their winter coats and black skinny jeans, showing their true colors and making statements with their leggings and Technicolor garb left and right. Just a few years ago, the “hip” were wearing black, right? Well, we’re hipper than that now. Societal discontent and a delayed appreciation for the UK ecstasy raver trend have brought colors to a social denomination defined by apathy, artistic prowess, and pretension. These are neon board-shorted, sparkly-eye shadowed, skin-tight skinny jeaned apathetics.
After emulating the 60’s a couple years ago, the 70’s soon afterwards, and now the 80’s, where else is there to go? It is too soon to ironically bring back the 90’s, so where do we go from here?
I would suggest that the only place to go would be the 20’s and 30’s. No one wants to bring back the prudish and plasticized 40’s and 50’s, but the heavily drinking flappers and Dapper Dans of the prohibition era will probably make a resurgence sooner or later. The pencil skirts and leg-bearing dresses, as well as the skinny-legged suits cater to the starving-but-fierce trend in beauty. Then what? Will we be dressing like Scarlett O’Hara? Marie Antoinette? George Washington? Innovation in fashion can only go so far, it seems. A creative dresser is now someone who can combine various generations to make a “modern” and “edgy” look. Are we in the midst of the time machine malfunction decade? Or are we just trying to look as silly as possible?
At this point, it is important to stress that not every twenty-something is donning the leather jackets, puffy sneakers, and waist-belts. Although some of these fashions are becoming more mainstream, slowly losing their irony, being sold at Forever 21, and popping up in the pages of Vogue, the average Joe and Jane of this millennia has been experimenting with bold, solid colors and various styles of jeans and skirts. After the body-bearing trends of the 90’s, this focus on attention via color and shape is refreshing and accepting of various body types.
Worn by the hipster elite and apathetic dressers alike, American Apparel basics and other such monotone clothing have been dominating the public eye in the past few years. The act of layering basic colors shows a subconscious recharged attention to design. Being confronted by a wall of identically cut tee shirts in 40 colors is like starting a painting with a blank canvas and many watercolors to choose from. You can buy yellow leggings to pair with an off-the-shoulders, oversized, floppy sweater, or you can buy black leggings to go with a classic cocktail dress. There is one thing that the popular, youthful stores of today have in common. Chic vintage clothing shops let you browse through time itself until you find something you can wear proudly, ironically, or both. Multi-colored basics are all about freedom of choice and artistic layering. Even highly commercial chains like Urban Outfitters and the hundreds of such stores around the world offer differing looks for different social demographics. Maybe the trend for the 2K’s is not to look absurd, but to have the freedom to look however you please.
That being said, I will not be surprised if I see a spacesuit or two next time winter in Oberlin rolls around.
The Teenagers pop up in almost every fashion and party pics blog I look at. It seems rather unnatural to not include a Teenagers track (or better yet, a remix):
The Teenagers - "Love No (Dolorean Remix)" mp3
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