Vox reader Stephanie asked: I’ll grant you that at 43, I’m old. However, I am scratching my head that fashion I have already seen in my lifetime why is recycling itself? Mom jeans were bad the first time – why are we doing it again when they look good on literally anyone? The 90s were bad but this time is worse? Have we lost creativity in fashion? It didn’t seem like it could happen before, but then again, maybe I’m wrong…
It’s a universally accepted fact that kids rediscovering the fashions of your youth will always be quirky and inexplicably boring.
My personal nightmare came around 2018 in the form of tiny ’90s-style sunglasses (and later, glasses), which seemed like two decades’ worth of wayfarers and oversized frames suited to my very round face. But guess what kind of sunglasses I wear now?
So you’re not wrong that it’s weird – but new, it’s not. conventional wisdom contains These trends are recycled every 20 years, because of how long it takes for new generations to come of age and reclaim aesthetics and styles that were popular when they were too young to enjoy.
To really understand why mom jeans are back, however, you need to appreciate a basic truth about fashion that’s existed for nearly a century, as well as some context about the way the industry — and our own attention patterns — works now.
Are trends running at hyperspeed?
There has been a lot of talk on the Internet in recent years that the trend cycle is accelerating because of the way social media reframes trends in shorter time intervals: at the start of the pandemic, for example, kids on the Internet were expressing their nostalgia for 2014, just six years ago.
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Part of the reason why it seems this way everything Now online is trendy, and so is nothing. You can pick a random fashion item from any point in the last 50 years and you’ll find a community on the internet who still love it. An incomplete list of things I was sure would never make a comeback but somehow have: mullets, kitten heels, thongs sticking out of jeans, 80s blush.
But we’re seeing the 20-year cycle play out right on schedule in the form of relentless Y2K-inspired trends in fashion, beauty and music, as well as those ’90s mom jeans you mention. They actually started gaining steam around 2016, to reach Top of their Google search interests in 2021.
Does that mean fashion is going through a crisis of creativity? Maybe — but I think something more interesting is going on.
As is the pattern In countless other industries, Corporate consolidation And cost-cutting is driving fashion brands to create cheaply (read: unethically) made clothes that cater to Algorithms and sales data. Your clothes are really bad now.
At the same time, consumers are pushing for low-quality and unimaginative fast fashion, was never more popular. Besides being a really fun way to spend an afternoon, rummaging through racks of vintage allows shoppers to think more sustainably about where their items come from, while also injecting some of that much-needed personality into fashion. Right now, TikTok is one of the biggest fashion trends Finding your personal styleWhich reflects widespread interest in opting out of the viral fad hamster wheel
One area of fashion writing that I think can help you understand is the sociologist 1989 work by Angela McRobbie How the rise of the secondhand market after World War II completely changed the way cool young people dressed.
Basically, in the 50s and 60s, kids started flocking to “ragmarkets” and fleeces, repurposing items that everyone else considered outdated: army coats, old-fashioned furs, petticoats, made of higher-quality fabrics than those sold. item. In period department stores (more things change!), items borrowed from the 1940s but styled to evoke the present, including peasant-style blouses and bohemian draping.
Why do “ugly” clothes have such enduring appeal?
Not only are kids rehashing past fashions for generations—they’re also particularly drawn to items that mainstream tastes find ugly or unappealing.
McRobbie cites two women in the 1970s who popularized artistic, androgynous dressing but in very different ways: Patti Smith, who looked malnourished and unkempt in leather jackets and T-shirts, and Diane Keaton as “frumpy” Annie Hall. Both wore clothing typically associated with men, but neither, he argues, “provides true androgyny.” In both cases, part of the purpose of the masculine silhouette was to accentuate how clearly the feminine form lies beneath.
The same can be said for mom jeans, which of course only read as matronly if the wearer has what is considered a “mom bod.” Because underneath all the fashion trends is a deeply unsatisfying truth: When young, hot people start wearing somethingIt makes the rest of us believe that the item itself is magic.
But really, it’s just the magic of being hot.
Bella Hadid, for example, can wear jorts and a tank top and people will call her a fashion icon because even regular clothes make her look super sexy. When enough people try to recreate that look in the hopes that it will provide warmth, it becomes what everyone wears.
Which means that if I had to guess, at some point in the next few years, you might be buying yourself what your current self would consider mom jeans. But at that point, of course, they’ll read to you as “jeans.”
That’s kind of lovely, I think! It shows us that fashion, and by extension culture, constantly challenges our ideas of what is acceptable, and that what we find beautiful and pleasing is entirely subjective.
Your mom doesn’t have to like jeans, just like we’re all free to ignore what all the cool young people are doing and dress however we want. But just because you’re “old” (you’re not!) doesn’t mean your style preferences have to stay the same for the rest of your life. Sometimes, repurposing clothing items you never thought you’d see again is a wardrobe necessity.
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