Does nostalgia create dreamscapes from the past ?
Zoe Charlotte Lambe
.
A similar pattern pertains to the grungy ‘rock–star girlfriend’. The more you analyse their aesthetic and lifestyle, it starts to seem ludicrous and impossible that it ever became a trend. The entire aesthetic is based around chaos, being effortlessly cool and rebellion. In consciously trying to emulate such traits and conform to this trend, surely, we have entirely missed the point. What’s more, it seems deeply problematic to glorify their rock-star relationships. Tommy Lee and Pete Doherty – Pamela and Kate’s respective boyfriends, are known to have suffered from substance abuse issues whilst they were together, and both relationships were openly volatile and sensationalised by the media.
Y2K fashion isn't just low-rise jeans and a baby-tee; it’s memories of profound cultural moments and icons. Think Britney Spears’ bejewelled outfit and snake at the VMAs, Paris Hilton’s silver 21st birthday dress, or any number of celebrities getting papped in brightly coloured Juicy Couture tracksuits. There’s a reason Y2K came back ‘in’ just when the children of the 2000s grew up and began to set their own trends. They sought to recreate what they, as children, had idealised as the pinnacle of style and the lifestyles they believed its pioneers belonged to.
Similarly, when the ‘rock-star girlfriend’ archetype was plastered across TikTok and Pinterest in 2023/4, people weren’t purely interested in the look. Undeniably, the key pieces of the aesthetic appealed to many; leather jackets, smoky eyes, lace and studs. However, it wasn’t just this. Photographs of iconic ‘rock-star girlfriends’ such as Kate Moss or Pamela Anderson often capture them candidly, presumably on their way to after parties, or smoking in taxis and out of windows. Meanwhile, participants sought to truly embody the ‘rock-star girlfriend’, staying out late, representing chaos through messy hair and smudged makeup.
​
By following and promoting these trends, however, are we over-romanticising the faces of them and their environments? Through the lens of nostalgia, are we presenting the past as something it never truly was – a dreamscape of sorts. As Isabel Marant said, “on the one hand, you’re nostalgic for a time you lived in – but really, the stronger form of that feeling is being nostalgic for a time you didn’t live in”. We associate Y2K with frivolity, youth and hyper-femininity, but the fates of stars such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amanda Bynes allude to a much darker side of the era. We glamourise their red-carpet outfits and dream of emulating their carefree teen energy, but beneath the rhinestones and frosted makeup was a much darker underbelly of exploitation and mental health struggles
What springs to mind when you hear ‘Indie Sleaze’, ‘Y2K’ or ‘Grunge’? Although we characterise them as ‘styles,’ their appeal goes far beyond just that. They’re defined not just by their recognisable visual codes, but also by the landscapes we believe they were created by.
All of this is not to say that we shouldn’t take inspiration from the fashion of the past, or even to criticise the cyclical nature of trends. In fact, nostalgia for old trends might be seen as giving them the credit they deserve, and it can be an interesting way of contextualising their influence on today’s style. The office siren trend, for example,​brought a renewed interest in Giselle Bündchen’s outfits in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. The late 90s ‘ready-to-wear’ runways were peppered with tailored suits which can now be found across Pinterest, rebranded as ‘office siren core’. But, we cannot lose sight of the power of nostalgia and where it becomes dangerous. Fashion and the discourse surrounding it is political - to reduce women who were fashion icons in their own right to ‘rock-star girlfriends’ feels reductionist, like a contribution to the hyper-sexualisation of women in the media. This abuse of nostalgia has been a theme in right-wing politics forever, but is especially prevalent as of late, blatant in slogans like ‘Make America Great Again’. Over-romanticising the past can result in regression and fashion is not exempt from this.
It is also through this rebranding and recycling of trends that we can find another problem with nostalgia in fashion. Reviving old trends can accelerate production for fast fashion brands, as it allows them to avoid having to wait for new trends to be meaningfully constructed through cultural forces and social desire. Increased rates of production and lower costs mean that consumption of fashion is less thoughtful than it was in the past, allowing people to follow trends on a whim as they see them across social media.
Micro-trends reduce our emotional bond with clothes, and the low-quality of fast fashion brands can make them feel unworthy of attaching cultural significance or sentiments to them.
Perhaps the overconsumption of fast fashion will leave us unable to construct a dreamscape from contemporary fashion in the future. Low-quality clothing might leave us without physically enduring archives, and the rapid turnover of trends will reduce the sense of cultural continuity fashion had in the past. Being a dark age for personal clothing heirlooms could deprive our current era of its opportunity to be viewed as a dreamscape by future generations.
