Vintage and the pursuit of rifling through online oceans of old photos and collectables seems to have been the hallmark of the last few years...In my mind it appears safe to say that if the balance is looking to correct itself we're looking at a new period of futurism...where imagination can run wild...do you personally feel that a time is coming where we will see a clearer visual identity to our new century that has little less obvious references to the past?
Last edited by Bop (2015-06-12 10:40:49)
Are you talking society in general, or just us nutjobs?
When I look to the future I just have visions of looking in the mirror and seeing an image of my former self being projected back at me from some sort of personal technology device. That, and dying.
I'd see those away from this forum as being the real nut jobs..
I mean popular culture in general...
I think most modern developed countries are experiencing a bit of an identity crisis brought about in large part due to the complete deluge of digital information at our fingertips. I only see this getting worse. I think people will continue looking back to various pasts where there was a stronger, more recognizable, and more homogeneous cultural identity as the question of our collective consciousness increasingly becomes "What the hell is going on around here?" But looking back doesn't necessarily involve casting imagination aside. Even those looking back often allow their imaginations to conjure their own personal image of the past.
I welcome decent innovation. I won't be on the bleeding edge, but when something good comes around and proves itself, I'll adopt it. I just haven't seen it outside of performance wear.
I love Tommie Copper!
Mommy!
What had me think about this was the other day I got off the train in London and a guy in all the latest sports gear whizzed past me on a self balancing electric monowheel type thing...and I felt like Marty McFly landing in 2015...suddenly it dawned on me... Fuck me I'm in the future..I sat and watched those movies as a kid and now I'm here...and this isn't far off what they'd guessed..so why do we comfort ourselves in the past?
Especially when what we often like from the past was radical in its own time...how come we can't see those good radical ideas in our own time?
Last edited by Bop (2015-06-13 05:04:03)
Well of course there's a bit of hive mind involved for those of us on this forum. But I have friends and coworkers that really embrace all the newest tech gadgetry and its promise of an improved life. I know guys that wait in line at the Mac store when the newest phone is released. Utterly Arse if you ask me.
Unfortunately the focus seems to be on producing more and more useless shit...if Samsung focused on my phone not over heating or being able to run smoothly after an update and not on the screen having a functional edge screen...I'd be a lot happier. And there lies my issue with a lot of modern stuff its barely functional anymore because its primary concern is exciting customers in parting with their money...after that your in a contract and your fucked...they're on to the next thing by then..that's the joke as I see it with digital tec . That's not to say there isn't some great uses for it.. But companies need to get a grip.. Get the fundamental s right all it'll just all fall down around them
And there were very much distinct styles and sartorial silhouettes from the 1920 - 1980s, indeed, I think the 80s had some of the strongest ones of them all. But then we seem to have arrived at the post-modern ideal of deconstruction of all that has gone before, with nothing new in the palatte. There's nothing distinct from the 1990s onwards, is there?
^
That goes back to what I was saying about the utter inundation of visual references and sources of inspiration that we can now draw from at the poke or swipe of a finger, not to mention the stuff we're bombarded with from commercials. How to make sense of the hodgepodge? Dress used to move in sort of big chunks and was relatively more homogeneous within that chunk. Now it's anything goes.
^That much is true, but what I was getting at, what from a gents fashion/style perspective from 1990 - 2015 could we say represented a fad, or fashion that was very much to be associated with that decade or period within it? We can recognize the style and silhouette of the 50, 60s, 70s and 80s, but the uniqueness of the 90s and 2000s doesn't seem to be there. The extreme ends of fashion are gone. Or seems to be, from my perspective.