A Nineties "renaissance" is also detected in this curious piece by Hugo Jacomet at Parisian Gentleman, which is decorated with images of Retromania's various covers, and in which Jacomet asks:
"2013 OR 1993?
Backpacks and baseball caps are ubiquitous. Denim, Doc Martens and Converse trainers have been rediscovered. Over-size jumpers, T-Shirts and branded sweatshirts are de rigueur. Tartan, patchwork textiles and paisley represent the height of sartorial sophistication. For some.The fashionable markers of the 1990s have become today’s symbols of supreme style. Sartorial trends, fads and movements are rarely without an accompanying soundtrack and so it is here. Dusted off or recently purchased, over ear headphones are once again playing grunge and other angst-filled anthems from the 1990s.
Traveling about the capital in recent weeks, I have caught snippets of lyrics from Blur, Sum 41 and Nirvana. Adorned in the correct wardrobe and wired for sound, it is only appropriate that people are also choosing to sample nineties-style entertainment. There is much on offer.
Highlights include the Spice Girls’ ‘mini’ reunion and the stage adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ satiric novel, American Psycho."
He also asserts that "The fascination with the nineties is odd on at least two counts.
Firstly, the years between 1989 and 2000 are typically considered to be a period that fashion forgot."
They are?
"Secondly, what we are seeing of the nineties is only an insipid distillation of what the decade was about; or at least what I think it was about, having lived through it. A a recent concert, I heard teenagers belting out and butchering songs from The Dandy Warhols and Fat Boy Slim, among other artists. To my ears, these groups’ songs were hardly reflective of a tumultuous decade that witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet and New Labour in Britain, the Gulf War (part one) and a presidential indiscretion that profoundly skewed our perspective of politics and cigars....."
Thing is, it wasn't that tumultuous decade, at least compared with the current decade, or the preceding three. That's why people look back wistfully to it.
Haha yes. "...the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet and New Labour in Britain, the Gulf War (part one) and a presidential indiscretion that profoundly skewed our perspective of politics and cigars....."
ReplyDeleteThe barrel is really being scraped there for incidents to make the Nineties sound momentous. Philip Roth has a great line - IIRC in 'The Human Stain' - written from the 2000s looking back at the 1990s, where he says something like "those were the days when it really seemed there was no issue as important in the world as a stain on an intern's dress."
You have to admire the ambition though: trying to claim epoch-defining significance for The Dandy Warhols and Fatboy Slim the say some people write about the Beatles and the Stones.