The universal nostalgia that we revel in as an antidote to an uncertain future manifests itself in a vibrant mash-up with the 1970s and 1980s as focus for fashion in the future. Whether designers are looking back in order to challenge the world we live in or reclaim their heady teenage days, it all plays into a wider search for meaning. Perhaps it’s not actually bygone looks fashion wants to relive, but rather, an elusive time: to make an emotional connection with a lost moment, with youth.
For many of us, our teenage years will have had their share of traumatic, painful and awkward moments, but the magic of nostalgia means that we can reconstruct them with a positive ending to rewrite the narrative. In fashion, that could mean adding a witty layer of postmodern irony or applying a pair of rose-tinted glasses.
Oriole Cullen, Victoria and Albert Museum’s curator for modern fashion has this to opine, “A lot of contemporary designers use imagery as a source of inspiration. We are very much an image-based culture nowadays, and I think it’s inevitable that designers would be inspired by former fashion”. When elements from the 60s, 80s, and 90s can dominate a Gucci collection alone, for example, it’s clear that the past is woven into the present; and fashion is hooked on to nostalgia.
Nostalgia in fashion is not a new phenomenon. We can sit far back in the history of fashion — back to the early 19th century, which was a period of rapid industry and change — and see nostalgia for a preindustrial past, based on romantic notions of chivalry. Although it is nearly impossible to analyze each era’s influence on modern-day design, curators of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Museum at FIT concur that the 19th century is perhaps the era richest in references. From the drape of a sleeve to the placement of a specific embroidery, the 1800s, by some accounts, were the true genesis of modern fashion as we know it today.
Fashion academician Bani Jha from National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Delhi noted that while trends today are often attributed to the 70s or 80s, these recent decades are rooted in design innovations that stretch back to the 19th century: “The gigot sleeves of the 1830s we again saw in the 1980s, which we are today seeing at Saint Laurent and Marc Jacobs, with these full upper sleeves,” she explained. “The 1860s are another decade of frequent reference when skirts reached a full circumference with a narrow waist — something that Dior referenced in the New Look as nostalgia for pre-war times.
The 1880s are another era of very strong silhouettes, where the extreme bustle has served as a reference for many designers — Schiaparelli, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano,” she added.
Fashion academician and the former fashion director of NIFT, Delhi, Asha Baxi argued, “Fifty years ago designers had time to drape on mannequins to figure out new shapes and configurations. Now the industry is so sped up, there is so little time to work out new ideas. Certainly for retailers, nostalgia is something easy to sell as well. It’s very hard to launch a completely new idea, it takes a while for people to let it sink in. You don’t have time to let something sit while people come around to it. I think that’s why you find new incarnations of previous decades more and more,” she added.
Elements of nostalgia are more visible in Indian fashion, particularly when it comes to traditional Indian wear. Since artisanal craft plays a huge part in the design and construction of ethnic styles, age-old traditional crafts come into play. Rohit Bal in the 90s experimented with a skimpy choli influenced by the Kamasutra. The sensually styled choli still finds a place in Bal’s contemporary collection. Art and crafts from the Mughal era are indulged in by Indian designers. In 2015 Tarun Tahiliani dedicated his entire collection to miniature Mughal Paintings. Padmavat has made the costumes worn by Rani Padmavati in the movie the latest rage in bridal wear. The designer duo of Rimple and Harpreet who designed the costumes for Padmavati stated, “Every bride now wants the Padmavati look. We recreated the look from the 14th-century regal look of Rajasthan royalty.” Rahul Mishra, India’s one of the top designers who has made an international mark reminisce about missing the ubiquitous urban bird – the sparrow in today’s town and cities and has taken to the motif of the sparrow with a vengeance. “In my growing up days, I found the sparrow at my window ledges. Nowadays the sparrows have disappeared. I use the motif to remind the world of the disappearing bird species”, said Mishra.
Text By Jaydeep Ghosh
Image Courtesy: WWD
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