generational nostalgia and anti-trends →[More:]
In chatting with a friend yesterday we were laughing about crazy nostalgia (sometimes anti-nostalgia). She's 23 so was waxing nostalgic about 90s bands that represent her "cradle music" - popular music that her parents listened to; Nirvana and Hootie and so on. These represent the same place for her as the Beatles do for me; music we may not entirely LIKE, like, but that represents a sort of background music to childhood and evokes happy times when we hear it.
In the same way we also laughed about some trends we saw, or could see being very dated. For me this was the late 80s/early 90s trend of wearing heavy dark brown matte lipstick (it looked good on absolutely no one) and for her it is the current (hopefully passe'?) "smoky eye" trend that makes celebrities like Kristen Stewart look creepy and sunken-eyed.
my personal anti-favorite though is the acres and acres of olive green, abstract jacquard (that looked kind of like puzzle pieces) berber wall-to-wall carpet that was Every. Where. when I was a tiny kid in the late 60s/early 70s. Like, not shag but
this super cheap, short looped patterned stuff -- that's the best image I could find as thankfully 40 years on, it seems like no one is willing to admit having it in their house. In the early to mid 70s I remember it being as ubiquitous and hideous as dark brown faux-pine wall paneling, and it universally smelt like cat pee and cigarette smoke. I am relatively certain that at one time every finished basement and family room in the suburban U.S. had this stuff in it.
my dad claimed on FB that he has no recollection of the carpet of which I speak. I responded "dude mom, Babysitters 1 and 2 and Aunt So-and-So all had it in [respective houses]". His response "oh. guess I was too stoned to remember it, it sounds horrible". Oh indeed it was.
I also just noticed the other day on a house tour with a friend who's home shopping that the (mid 00s?) trend of heavily patterned granite countertops has not aged at all well.
It's weird how stuff that seems so "current" can become dated so quickly. Has anyone else noticed this? or perhaps I'm just Getting Old...