(A bit different. Wrote this a while ago for another publication but it was never published and much too well-sourced to go to waste.)
Fashion and culture are interwoven with each other — widespread fashion is a harbinger of change in culture, yet culture also sways fashion. Think Stranger Things or Riverdale and the increase of 80s-inspired fashion trends such as jewel-toned, color-blocked anoraks, oversized tops and sometimes, in high fashion, shoulder pads.
High-waisted pants and statement sunglasses reminiscent of the 80s and 90s inundate today’s fashion, especially on the streets. Chokers, ranging from plastic to leather and velvet, found their places in numerous outfits on Instagram in 2017 and continue to linger as a go-to accessory in more alternative styles.
“I think it's reciprocal, and I don't really think you can point to the arrows really going in one direction. [Fashion designers] are very aware of cultural influences in the current moment, but also for art and music, they look at the past,” New York University professor and fashion historian Nancy Deihl said. “I also think that fashion has the power to be the image of a certain time period [...] it often reflects changes as well — what we call a zeitgeist.”
Styles fade in and out of fashion, and certain staples of specific time periods become muses for newer decades, but what exactly decides when such trends make a comeback? The cycle of nostalgia, a concept that says that every 20 to 40 years, depending on the source, an old trend returns, may not be so exact.
“When we talk about trends, we talk about macro-trends, so large, long-term trends [...] And then there are the micro trends — short lived, some people call them fads — the things that are far less predictable. When we talk about the return of specific fashion items, it's more of a short term,” trend forecaster and brand curator at Los Angeles’s TREND Company Roberta Panzanelli said. “It's not as predictable as the long term trend of being environmentally conscious, or being less regulated by gender norms. Other social issues like recent movements, the women's movement, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter — those things are the influencers of trends.”
Recently, chokers, colored hair, and other staples of 90s grunge returned to mainstream fashion. Last year, with the popularity of the Netflix series Stranger Things, the 80s returning with a mass modern reboot. Through the years, recurring themes of the 70s flit from musical festivals to regular streetwear in its flowy, floral, bohemian style.
Even after identifying these distinctions of when trends rose and fell, it is hard to pinpoint when exactly a reboot went out of fashion. For example, grunge elements of the 90s such as oversized and distressed clothing are highly popular in streetwear, but they blend with 70s and 80s trends as well.
“If we think about fashion history as [the board game] Candy Land, you can get from the 1920s straight to the 1960s rather than going through the other decades,” Deihl said. “We, going backwards, can do the same thing. We can just, in our travels, grab a sleeve from there or bring back a high-waisted pants from there or look at platform shoes from there. There are all these different pieces that are available to us, kind of like the history is this big, gigantic thrift shop, and we can go shopping without any pre-determined shopping list, just based on whatever appeals to us.”
The rise of the internet has greatly sped up the spread of fashion and the changing of trends.
“People have always been curious, always wanting to know about the latest fashion somewhere else [...], but then, it was restricted to those who could, and it was slower,” Panzanelli said. “Today, it is far faster, and it involves a lot many more people. In a sense, a lot has changed, and nothing. The mechanism has not changed. What has changed is the scope and the speed.”
From music videos to webstars, the internet has created a new platform for fashion inspiration.
“I get my inspiration from the music videos I watch,” Outlit Apparel co-founder Gina Partridge said.
Instead of one trusted source, individuals turn to other individuals on their favored sharing platforms.
“The mediating influence of, for example, fashion editors is just not as strong anymore ... A lot of my research has to do with going into old fashion magazines, and really, they were Bibles. There was a lot more authority coming from the fashion press,” Deihl said.
For many today, finding fashion influence online, especially on Instagram, is now the norm.
Rather than having a board of editors deciding the next season’s trends, social media has centered the power of setting trends in the hands of individuals.
“Having the confidence of trying something new is an integral part of creating a new fashion trend because no matter how bad it looks, if you wear it with confidence and strut with pride, people will start doing it too,” high school student Jai Bahri, who is new to finding his own style, said.
Now, especially with the option to create a business profile, social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are tailoring their interface to cater more to online shopping.
Especially with the added speed of spreading trends, the exact future of fashion continues to be unpredictable, even with trend forecasting services, which focus more on the bigger picture.
“If you talk about taste, fashion is part of our taste. Taste is very difficult to analyze, and that's why I love trend forecasting, because it's about the general state of the culture. It's not about one thing only,” Panzanelli said. “I don't know where it's going. I don't think you can really predict that. This is a very fascinating and incredibly frustrating thing about trend forecasting. Some things catch on, and some things don't.”
