Woodland Creature

You Say You Want a Devolution?

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present.

As a child of the ’90s, I’m not really on board with this statement. Has Kurt Andersen never seen Fuck Yeah Ugly ’90s Clothes? I don’t think you’d mistake any of those people for being from the year 2012.

Yeah, people still wear plaid shirts and jeans and sneakers, but those things all look pretty different today, in terms of cut, fit and color. And some things are just classics that never go out of style — Converse Chuck Taylors, Levi’s 501s and Ray-Ban Wayfarers have all endured since the ’50s. But I think that says more about the timelessness of those items themselves than fashion being stagnant overall.