80's are not "comming back" get over it!

Urban myths can sometimes be compared to a malicious disease. They spread quickly, harm everyone in their way and take time to get over. One of the most sinister attitudes swirling in the minds of many people regardless of education, job or sex, is that fashion and means of clothing in general constitute mostly of several recurring trends. Some even believe it’s only two (70’s and 80’s). I cannot even tell you how many times I had to listen to the sentence: “Why bother buying new clothes to look stylish when you can simply use your old ones”. Or worse: “Don’t buy that, I have something in the closet that might fit you”. Nothing against vintage!! But the twisted thinking continues: “Fashion is just an artificial concept created by greedy corporations to make people spend always more money more frequently”. In the line of this thinking North Koreans are the most reasonable people on Earth when they sport blue boiler suits for many decades, because… why bother, right?

The fundamental flaw of this thinking can be demonstrated without much difficulty in many ways. But it seems to me that the basic mistake that leads many to be deceived is to mistake certain trend characteristics for fashion itself. I understand, that maybe if contemplation and thinking about fashion, or beauty, style or life itself indeed, is refused and resigned upon, it is possible to come to a delusional conclusion that all there is to fashion is a set of tick boxes that are being checked and unchecked periodically by fashion business’ inner circle of greedy corporate fatheads. I know that those reading this blog do not share this view. However, it may be of purpose to write couple thoughts on this topic.

Among the most prominent “tick boxes” often mentioned is the height of the waistline, the way pants are cut, their length and others. These “categories” are indeed periodically changing their characteristics and are often recurring in the span of one or two decades. This however, is completely irrelevant when observing fashion. There is a grand total of three main possibilities for a waistline: low, high and very high for ladies. That’s it!! Could there not be a reoccurrence? Ever since antiquity the waistline has been rotating in between very low and very high positions. The following model from the Gallo-Roman period in France clearly accents higher positioned waist. Yet it does not have anything in common with fashion in the 80’s. The same applies to this fabulous dress by Valentino which comes from the 2008 S/S RTW collection.

Fashion is about the overall message. It is not about complying with certain sets of rules. You can break all those and still be very contemporary and stylish. It is about invention and creativity, which can but doesn’t need to follow trends. But even those trends are much more than sets of rules. It is the overall feeling and picture that is “in style”, not this or that particular item. This summer is all about subtle femininity, about rich elegance, about the celebration of feminine beauty as the highest esthetic quality. This summer is crazy about untamable poetry, almost chaotic colorful and cheerful state of mind. This is so much in contrast with the rough primal sexuality and blind amazement with artificial regular and geometric appearance of the 80’s.

P.S.: This reasoning is by no means finished. Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.