Ughh.

[Dismuke]

Here is an image I found on the web today. I laughed my head off when I saw this. But, it really isn't funny. Lots and lots of people actually looked like that back then.

For another VERY amusing - but at the same time, rather gross - look at just how horrible the 1970s were, see http://www.lileks.com/institute/interiors/

Many things may have gone downhill big time since the 1920s and 1930s in terms of aesthetics and popular culture - but at least things are no longer as disgusting as they were in the late 1960s and 1970s.

 

[zeus36]

I predict that 70's vintage look should be coming back in fashion in a few years.....

 

[BellyTank]

Unfortunately for me, that 'look' didn't inspire me to buy shares...

I never new anyone who looked so completely Goofy in the '70s...
...what happened to these poor people?

B
T

 

[Dismuke]

I predict that 70's vintage look should be coming back in fashion in a few years.....

Hmmmm. I am not so sure about that. I have no doubt that there will be certain types in positions of cultural influence pushing it for it to return as hard as they can - just as aging hippies have been pushing/predicting/engaging in wishful thinking that things would sink back down to the depths of the 1960s. But that has never happened on a very wide scale.

Indeed, I think the only reason we even have a retro movement and vintage stuff coming back into fashion to the degree that it has is in reaction to the ugliness of the 1960s and 1970s. The only place people can turn to in order to get a glimpse of a popular culture that has a sense of style, grandeur and good taste is earlier in the 20th century. You sure as heck did not see young people back in the 1920s - 1940s being nostalgic for and adopting the styles of the 1860s - 1880s. They had no need to - they lived in a period of pop culture that, unlike ours, was much more exciting and a lot more "cool" than those that came before it.

The reason that I don't think young people will ever turn in droves to nostalgia for the 1970s is that most of the stuff from that era was crap - and the only thing that the passage of time will do is make it old crap. The stuff from the earlier decades that people on this board celebrate, by contrast, was anything but crap. I am going beyond defining "crap" as something that merely clashes with my own aesthetic standards. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there were no aesthetic standards other than a sick, twisted desire on the part of cultural trendsetters to try and destroy all aesthetic standards - and on that basis, I call it crap.

I am more inclined to think we will continue to see a trend of younger generations being disgusted by and rejecting the nihilistic excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and, therefore, having a a greater appreciation for the 1900s - 1940s decades. Of course, it is always possible that I too am guilty of wishful thinking when it comes to this. But if I am corrrect, then it will be nothing more than a continuation of a trend that we have seen going strong for some while now.