If you were paying attention, earlier this year there was an extensive article published in Vanity Fair about the limits of the aesthetic developments in popular style. In his article entitled, “You Say You Want a Devolution,” columnist Kurt Andersen delves into the question of why we’ve come into such a stagnant period in both style and aesthetics, when before, things had been progressing and changing every twenty years or so. The whole article is essentially valid in its viewpoint, but perhaps doesn’t really take into account the true reasons why things are so ridiculously same-y these days. Do I have an answer to those reasons? Fuck no, but I have a few questions of my own and some idea as to why it’s such an elusive and difficult answer to pin down.
Just last night, I was reading through another article about the history of fashion forums, something of which I am a partial product. Forums like SuperFuture were in many ways the original proving ground for establishing an aesthetic identity on the Internet, but mostly, I was in it for the shit talking. (It shouldn't come as a surprise that I have been permanently banned for quite some time.) I did, however, pick up a wealth of knowledge that informs my own stylistic choices to this very day, but I was also witness to the birth of a mindset, a modus operandi if you will, that has carried forward from this genesis, disseminating across the world wide web to an assortment of platforms—an obsession with the past, a rejection of the future and the passiveness of the present. In short, a bunch of dudes who idolize dead celebrities and who aren’t original enough to pursue their own unique aesthetic identities. They end up being dressed by the Internet.
But if you had paid attention to Back to the Future, you shouldn’t tamper with the past, because it will only fuck up your present, and, spoiler alert, nullify your future.
Now, there are plenty of these folks who I have come to be friendly with, despite a proclivity for these friendships to start as pure shit talk–the Editor-in-chief of this website, for instance–but when I look around I see a distinct lack of originality and progress within a world that is so obsessed with "originality" and progress. Sure, Steve McQueen and Michael Caine are really fucking cool, but do we need to constantly remind ourselves and everyone else that this is true? What’s the difference between this menswear brand and that menswear brand if they’re both telling us that their collection is inspired by the same pictures of James Dean smoking cigarettes? How does your bow tie make you any different from Colonel Sanders? Why are you styling your hair like Morrissey if you fucking hate The Smiths? There is a distinct whiff of regressive boorishness that hashtag everything Internet fashion culture loves to champion as their favorite eau de toilet, and it’s not just #menswear cats.
So why do we all look to the Internet to inform us, to shape us, to imbue us with some aesthetic criterion that makes us who we feel we need to be? In many ways, it might be that we are obsessed with the past and constantly trying to measure up to a perceived gold standard of "cool" or "hipness" (gross) that may or may not even exist anymore. The Internet, ultimately, is a time machine, allowing us to go back as far as we’d like in order to dig up just what it is we want to relate to at the very exact moment we think of it. But if you had paid attention to Back to the Future, you shouldn’t tamper with the past, because it will only fuck up your present, and, spoiler alert, nullify your future. Bloggers seem to be only interested in hooking up with the past because it is inert and has no opinion or say—so they use it to their own ends, appropriating whatever they need in order to confirm that their present is as same-y as the last twenty years, or sometimes ever more, has been. Shout out to me because I just proved Andersen’s thesis. We’re stuck in a rut because we’re afraid of embracing the present on its own terms, not simply as the sum of the past, thereby ensuring the future's lack of progression.
I'm looking at you, Tweed Runners and Jazz Age Lawn Party Animals.
And, listen, I’m not gonna front. I get my hair cut at Freeman’s. I occasionally shop at J. Crew. I’ve got plenty of sweet images of various awesome style icon bros saved on my hard drive. I’m as guilty of this behavior as anyone else, but I do my best to not let myself fall prey to the obsessions and distractions of those who solely dig around the past because they’re too uninterested in the present. I'm looking at you, Tweed Runners and Jazz Age Lawn Party Animals. The “aesthetic rut” that Andersen describes in his article is one borne of an obsessive need to relive what has already been because the present is over-saturated with reminders that the future is fucking scary. And no shit, you’re damn right it is, but that’s not a reason to cling to the past as if the world has already ended. So long as the world keeps turning, the Internet stays connected and there are new ideas materializing every single day, I see no reason to worry and fear that the best days are behind us. I'm inclined to believe they've yet to even happen.
Max Gardner is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Read his blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
