Remember the good old days, before things got weird? I do, barely. I vaguely remember something where you could reach into a pocket of a jacket you hadn’t worn in a while and not find a mask. Where you could enter other people’s homes without it being a whole thing.
But I also remember the really good, really old days, kind of. (I’m almost 39, not quite Archie Bunker years old, but not Gloria either.) The ones when you could bring liquids on an airplane. (Am picturing an enormous container of cooking oil from my favorite Chinese supermarket, though why I’d be flying with this I cannot say.) The time before 9/11, an event whose general significance is known, but whose personal one is that this happened right next to the high school I’d just graduated from.
I know you’re not supposed to think earlier moments had anything going for them. That if you thought the 1990s, or even (and this is the weirder one) the pre-pandemic times had anything going for them, it’s because you weren’t paying attention to how Actually it was always bad. Eh. Not our focus here.
These two Before Times are quite simply the topic of this post, which is about aesthetics (or vibes, for the readers too young to remember 2018).
The 1990s was the Delia’s catalogue. Courtney Love in Hole. Goth-chic. 1960s revival. Chokers. Daisy embroidery. Elaine dresses, or as they were known at the time, dresses.
The 2000s: the low-slung bootcut (not flare) jeans, which cost $200 (though discounts and thrift stores made them not actually cost this), paired with going-out shirts, which was in retrospect a camisole made of unnatural fibers. Mandy Moore Christina Aguilera Britney Spears and their less-memorable male equivalents.
Moving up to 2006 or so, you get what has more recently been labeled “indie sleaze,” or the American Apparel, The MisShapes, Cobrasnake… and then, 2009ish, heritage-chic, dressing like a lumberjack, Alpine hiking boots, Nordic cuisine, knowing where your food comes from. It’s hard to say with any of this when it’s been revived and when it never went away to begin with.
No, the revivals are the earlier two periods, but conflated in a way I find confusing. Confusing, that is, because the 1990s is Good, whereas the early 2000s is, for music, fashion, etc., grotesque. I say this despite having been, personally, a whole lot more attractive and fun-having in that later era.