Is style stuck in a 2 decade rut?

[Undertow]

I don't think it's a complaint so much as an observation. There are distinct differences in style between each decade, and the article would like us to believe we have not had a change in two decades.

I disagree with the article. I think there are obvious differences from style between the 90's and 00's. We're only in the early half of this decade, so it's hard telling what changes we'll see for the 10's. Furthermore, each decade plays off the last decade, and past decades, as it goes. Thus, the 60's reinvented pieces of the 20's, the 70's reinvented pieces of the 30's and the 80's would like to have touched on some of the 30's/40's. (These were only bits and pieces, though, and only small instances.)

Could we get away with wearing torn jeans, plaid flannel, dirty long hair and combat boots to the store (i.e. early-mid 90's young adult style) in this decade? Sure - just like we can get away with wearing Harris Tweeds. Style doesn't mean the same thing it used to, thus, we're in a decade where old fashions can be interchanged without much worry. And then you have hipsters who are pleased to wear mashed up fashions of multiple decades...but let's leave that for another thread?

If anything, fashion is becoming more slippery.

 

[Feraud]

If ones believes fashion has always borrowed from the past while looking towards the future the article is pure bunk.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Progress has been slowing down for years. In spite of all the chit chat about the fast pace of modern life, there has been less change in recent years than any time in centuries. For example, there has been no increase in the speed of travel since the sixties. If anything, travel is slower now since the Concorde shut down. This means ours is the first generation in the last 500 years to travel slower than the previous one.

Even the improvements are smaller. The telegraph shrank the world by orders of magnitude. Going from Email to Twitter was a comparatively trivial change.

Personal computers did make a big change but they have now been around for 30 years. Compare this to any 30 year period in the 19th or 20th century.

No, progress seems to be grinding to a halt at last. Cars, fashions, architecture and many other things have hardly changed in a generation. So be it. Maybe styles will start to move backwards, I can hardly wait.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Every civilization reaches its saturation point, at which time it stops advancing and instead begins to break down. Why should this one be any different?

 

[Captain Neon]

I was thinking about how foolish the kids with their pants hanging down around their knees look when I was grabbing lunch yester day, and got to thinking when that came to be and I remember it being 1993. Usu. some thing that silly is only a year, two at the most. Kids have been looking like fools with their pants on the ground for almost 20 years.

 

[PoohBang]

I guess it all depends on what you consider "progress."

If you think it's stopped... or if it's still continuing .

If travel is only measured in speed and you only look at a 30 years period, then I agree, we're not faster. But in that 30 year period, cars are much safer, much better gas milage, way more convinces, and more choices. As to air-travel, it's about the same. Train, about the same, and boat, I really have no idea as I never travel by boat.

Computers... in the last 30 years you're saying nothing has changed? Have you ever seen an Iphone as compared to an Apple II?

Does fashion have to change dramatically every 10-20 years? It does for fashion magazines or what else would they print about?

I dont' get why the world is always ending here if say fashion doesn't change, people wear pajamas to the store or a guy doesn't wear a suit to dinner? It's suppose to be the "Golden Age" here, where people made the best out of a situation and had fun. Not make the worst out of situation and complain.

 

[scottyrocks]

A. This is a vintage fashion, as well as other culture, site.

B. We don't all dress in 1940s styles. SOme dress in '30s, and '50s, as well.

C. Others don't dress in these ways but admire the people who did, and still do.

D. As a group, we tend to bemoan modern trends, especially when they have degraded as they have. If I can pull your meaning from the twisted syntax, people are complaining about modern fashion, comparing and contrasting new and old fashion, how relatively modern fashion has not changed much, remaining relatively slovenly, and how different all this modern fashion is from GE fashion, and style.

And E. We are respoding to the Vanity Fair article

All valid points of discussion, afaic.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Progress hasn't stopped but it has definitely slowed down. In travel I was thinking more of the last 500 years. Someone who was born in 1835 like Samuel (Mark Twain) Clemens was born in a world where the fastest travel was by sailing ship or on horseback. He saw the introduction of the steamboat, the railroad train, the telegraph, the telephone and by the time he died in 1910 the first primitive automobiles and airplanes. When he went west in 1860 he went in a stagecoach that whirled through the desert at 10 MPH, a terrific improvement over the 49ers whose ox drawn wagons went 2 MPH. A few years later he made the same trip in a railroad train at 40MPH sitting in a dining car, eating dinner off a linen tablecloth looking out the window at the road where he had once eaten cold ham and hard boiled eggs while rattling along in a horse drawn coach.

When he was born it took 6 months for a letter to get from New York to San Francisco by ship. The Pony Express cut that to 3 weeks in the 1860s. But the Pony Express only lasted a year or 2 before the telegraph cut the time to a few minutes.

Examples could continue endlessly. But here is one that might hit home. Go rent the movie Sunset Boulevard. It tells the story of a has been silent movie star, long forgotten, from a time as remote as the pyramids.

The star's career began in 1917 and ended in 1930.She was born about 1900. The movie was set in 1951. In other words, we are talking about the same time span as 1977 to 2012. Someone the age of Darryl Hannah or Renee Zellweger.

Time just moved along so much faster back then.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The difference between an Ipod and an Apple II is less than the difference between listening to Jack Benny on radio and watching Star Trek on a color television which took a similar time span. This in turn was less significant culturally than going from dots and dashes on a crystal set to listening to Jack Benny on a superheterodyne console radio. Or going from the telegraph in 1870 to radio and telephone in 1900. Or the difference between a hand written letter that took weeks, to a telegram that took minutes to be delivered.

All represent progress, all these changes took place over a similar period of time but the changes were larger in the past.

There are so many examples but it is hard to see unless you are steeped in history.

Another example. The local library used to have an edition of Dickens' novels that was published about 15 years after the first editions. In the introductions, Dickens said he wanted to bring the novels up to date but found it was impossible. Times had changed so much there was no way to do so short of rewriting them completely.

In The Pickwick Papers Pickwick travelled from place to place by stagecoach and got into different adventures. 15 years later the coaches coach roads and coaching inns were abandoned, supplanted by steam trains. One of the stories was about a riotous drunken election in a rotten borough. 15 years later election reform had eliminated rotten boroughs, drinking on election day, and "treating" voters. The same thing was repeated in the introduction to all the novels. In that short time they had become period pieces or historical novels.

Compare to today. How many popular movies are remakes of old movies, or based on novels 10 to 20 years old, that are still contemporary with only minor changes? How many novels of 15 years ago can only be read as history with no relevance to today? Maybe Douglas Coupland .

 

[LizzieMaine]

The other night, I happened to have the TV on and a "Seinfeld" rerun came on -- a program that aired twenty years ago. Unless you knew it was twenty years old, there was little to nothing in it that would tell you so -- the most significant thing I noticed was that the characters weren't as tied to mobile phones as people are today. Other than that -- the look of the characters, the way they talked and sounded, the attitudes they expressed -- the program could have come straight out of 2012.

If you watched a similar "hip" comedy program from 1960 -- say "Dobie Gillis" -- in 1980, it would have been like looking at a relic from a bygone civilization.

 

[PoohBang]

Didn't realize my syntax is twisted. I'll give it some yoga and see what happens.

A. not sure what you're looking for with this statement.
B. I was so off by +-10 years.
C. A little ego isn't it?
D. Only some here bemoan modern trends... Others just go with it.
E. yes, hence the link.
F. It doesn't really matter what I say, as you'll always yell me down as you always do.

Moving on.. I like where you're going with this.

As to the last 500 years, you're really just going back to the early 1800, what about the other 300 years? Life really didn't change during the 1500 up to the 1800's until the industrial revolution. The best and fast way to travel was by foot for most people.

I'll use myself as an example like you did with Samuel... If I wanted to travel I'd have to take a car or a plane or a train. About the same as today. But now, with progress, I can order my tickets at home, while in route or even years before I travel instead of back when I was born, when I had to go there to buy them or perhaps call them in, but couldn't pay unless I had a very rare credit card.

perhaps our progress hasn't changed in speed of travel, but in speed of getting the tickets, the speed of getting the best deal, and the convince of conversing while in travel.

If I wanted to send a letter to my friend when I was born, I'd have to send it by mail. It'd take a few days and they'd get it. Now, I can send a letter to my friend while walking down the street and they get it in about 4 seconds. That's pretty fast.

 

[Undertow]

I have to agree with PB on this one, at least as far as progress being relative. The Industrial Revolution was an improvement of technology and has greatly increased the sense of forward progress. However, humankind continues to progress at varying rates regardless of which imperial flag they fly, and regardless of what specific industry improves.

When you put someone from the 20th and 21st Centuries under the microscope, "progress" is certainly going to seem dramatic. If George was an American born in 1910 and lived to 2010, he would have lived through two world wars, horseless buggies, cars, racecars, etc.; biplanes, prop planes and jets; steam trains, electric trains and diesel trains; large passenger boats like the Titanic up to huge cruise ships for nothing but luxury vacationing. This guy would have seen the creation of IBM computing systems filling rooms all the way to personal computers that fit in the palm of his hand. He would have seen black and white silent films all the way to the CGI box-office monstrosities we have now.

But take one particular industry for example; i.e. guns. How much have pistols changed? Well, we have polymer frames, ambidextrous handles, better safety mechanisms, but we're still dealing with a centerfire cartridge which must be manually or mechanically loaded. A trigger is pulled and a bullet travels down a grooved barrel towards its target. For goodness sake, very many people on this forum still talk highly of their model 1911 pistols that are over 100 years old! Is that progress? Well, it all depends on what you call progress?

In other words, sure, certain aspects of "progress" seem to have tapered, but other aspects are increasing dramatically.

Regarding the OP, it would seem fashion has tapered off to a point where clothes from 1990 are still "en vogue" today. Nevertheless, fashion will progress as new materials are introduced and as generations die off. It's the natural cycle of things. We're just at a slow down.

 

[John in Covina]

Style wise here in LA we have certain segments of the populice following trends and advancing somewhat. But there are many that pick a certain dress style in their life and then stick with it until it's creepy time.
Here you can go and see the punks and they look very much like what I saw in the 80's. Many colorful women that are members of the latina segment have a specific look in their dress that is relatively unchanged for a number of years as is their makeup routine.

A lot of people out this way are candidates for the program style by jury.

 

[John in Covina]

When will Ugg boots get the boot? hideous!

 

[Undertow]

When will Ugg boots get the boot? hideous!

lol :eusa_clap

 

[bunnyb.gal]

And when will Crocs croak?

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Am I the only one who can spot 90s fashion from a mile away? Granted, it's not as dramatic as 1962 to 1982, but stuff from 1992 is very recognizable to me. I seem to have a talent for "dating" stuff and I'm usually right, give or take a year. I'm actually starting to recognize stuff from the 2000s, even though I was in a bit of a "vintage coma" for much of that decade.

 

[PoohBang]

Am I the only one who can spot 90s fashion from a mile away? Granted, it's not as dramatic as 1962 to 1982, but stuff from 1992 is very recognizable to me. I seem to have a talent for "dating" stuff and I'm usually right, give or take a year. I'm actually starting to recognize stuff from the 2000s, even though I was in a bit of a "vintage coma" for much of that decade.

I hit the thrifts a lot and can date an item pretty well myself. Yes, 90's fashions stick out like 80's and 70's and 60's...

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I hit the thrifts a lot and can date an item pretty well myself. Yes, 90's fashions stick out like 80's and 70's and 60's...

Especially the early 90s -- it was still kind of the 80s. Women wore shoulder pads, had big bangs, frizzy perms, they wore mannish button-up shirts tucked into "mom jeans", sometimes with cowboy boots. Then there was the "alternative" fad of babydoll dresses, dirty hair, and Doc Martins with those black rope necklaces. People don't wear this anymore (at least not wear I live).

And when we see old pictures of ourselves wearing this stuff we point and laugh and say "The 90s!"

 

[rue]

Especially the early 90s -- it was still kind of the 80s. Women wore shoulder pads, had big bangs, frizzy perms, they wore mannish button-up shirts tucked into "mom jeans", sometimes with cowboy boots. Then there was the "alternative" fad of babydoll dresses, dirty hair, and Doc Martins with those black rope necklaces. People don't wear this anymore (at least not wear I live).

And when we see old pictures of ourselves wearing this stuff we point and laugh and say "The 90s!"

My daughter asked for Docs for Christmas and she's been wearing them with her dresses and she asked for all my old high waisted jeans from the 80s (don't know why I kept them), which she calls mom jeans and cut them off into shorts. It's really odd watching my daughter walk around in the same things I used to wear :eeek: