Why we’re drawn to style controversy
Getty Images
In the most original opening line of 2016 let me get serious: we are all very interested in the 1990s. (Can you handle that revelation? Seriously: wow.)
We’re back in glitter, embracing slip dresses, and citing Kate Moss’ looks of two decades past; filling our closets with onesies and florals and the desert boots your parents wouldn’t buy you back in 1994.
But most importantly, we’re drawn to what was once deemed “controversial.” We’re enamoured with sheer pieces, once again favouring body suits, and taking risks we once could not even believe were being showcased by the likes of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. But also, of course we are – because everything else is boring.
And clearly that’s an embarrassingly general statement, discounting pieces that are wonderful and wearable and nestled in our closets like it’s middle school all over again. (I own several denim dresses now. And I’ll never apologize for them.) But when we look at Rihanna’s tank top in “Work” or Kim Kardashian’s clear sandals, we’re getting more than we did back when we asked our parents to let us wear similar pieces in the ‘90s. First, we’re getting context. Second, a better understanding of the way style works.
Since the ‘90s were an amalgamation of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s (and a response to the Wall Street aesthetic of the 1980s), so much was happening in so many different ways that everything we wore seemed reactionary to the previous trend. We saw Marc Jacobs help birth grunge, which he picked up from the music landscape of the early part of the decade. Then, after that become mainstream, we saw brighter colours, synthetic fabrics, and crop tops, breaking from the neutrals and baby doll styles that defined the preceding movement. (And lest we forget logo tops and athletic wear which brought us into Y2K.) Our senses were overloaded – since nobody has perspective when they’re in the middle of something – and we worked to out-shock or out-statement each other. Which upped the controversial ante.
(Photo by Patrick Ford/Redferns/Getty Images)
Which we now understand in 2016 (and as adults), as we see a resurgence of the pieces our parents wouldn’t let us wear before. Now that we’re in charge of our own looks, our own sense of fashion, and what we put on our own bodies, so we can look at pieces with a critical eye, acknowledging why they worked, why they may not have, and why wearing a sheer white top with no bra (like Kendall Jenner most recently) is totally fine. In short: we’ve basically realized the world won’t end if you don’t wear clothes the way we’ve been taught to wear them typically.
And that’s why it’s the most “controversial” of pieces we’re seeing brought back into 2016. We over-romanticize the ‘90s because they were interesting (particularly fashion-wise), but what was shocking or even deemed “bad” we can now recognize as simple statements: they’re bold, they’re freeing, they’re an extension of self.
Especially since controversy courts liberation. And in terms of style (especially style!), it challenges the status quo (read: the expectation for women to wear bras) and creates movements that celebrate everything from exhibitionism to self expression to the choice to wear whatever you want on the day you want it.
So when we look at the '90s, that’s what we see. We see how the decade took that past and worked it just enough to fit the present, resulting in a decade that was as aesthetically relevant as it was socially, politically, and culturally. We look at the Spice Girls, All Saints, or Kate Moss, and we remember the way their clothes made us feel, what people who didn’t get what they were wearing said, and how as adults now, we can pick up what we love and make it fit ourselves. Ultimately, we see the way controversy gave us our own style freedom and room to explore our own senses of fashion liberally.
