Breathing New Life in to the Old

By Lorrina Al-khouri

There was a point in my life when I believed that all great things come to an end. This doesn’t seem to be the case within the last decade. Every trend, from radio speakers to Doc Martins, seem to be adopted from our parents’ generation. It’s as if we have gone back in time, searching for new meaning in the old and tattered pieces that sit in our attics. We have developed a new style where we refresh a small part of our parents’ history and breathe new life in to it, giving it a new meaning in our post digital age.

It’s like the simple denim jacket your mother used to wear. You’ve adopted it as your own, and in high school it was cool to wear it every now and then, but it started to sit in the back of your wardrobe with the rest of your other jackets, all because it had a thread that had been cut loose. Until one day, that tear in the sleeve gave new purpose, a new style. You start to wear it again three years later. We have begun to do this with everyday objects and especially in fashion. Are we simply living by the words of Jim Jarmusch and his golden rule?

Accessories in the fashion industry, such as glasses have been revisited to create a bolder statement, with the oversized retro-vintage style frames all thick and round. In the 70s, glasses were the worst part about a teenager’s childhood as it was perceived as an opportunity to be seen as goofy and nerdy. Much like in the episode of The Brady Bunch, where Jan is mortified to learn that she needs to wear glasses and does everything in her mind to avoid wearing them. We can see the oversized and thick-rimmed frames revisited in Ben Affleck’s film Argo (2012), a story based on the 1979 secret rescue of a group of Americans in Iran. This film somehow inspired many to venture out to find similar glasses to the ones each character wore in the film. The purpose of these glasses has changed as retail stores sell non-prescription glasses for a statement instead of their original purpose.

Similarly, ten years ago, whilst cleaning out my parents shed, I found several dusty vinyl discs in their old jackets. I thought there was no purpose for them. To me they had no value, no one had a vinyl record player in sight. But today it’s become a collectable, worth so much more. It’s considered the cool thing to collect next to radio speakers. Record sales have jumped up to 32% in 2015, according to RIAA [7]. All because people are rediscovering the imperfection of sounds and pops that the records create when being listened to, something considered warmer than clean digitalised sound. Artists have moved towards making their albums into records, like Taylor Swift with her LP version of the 1989 album that already has a vintage feel and Justin Bieber’s single Purpose. This trend is partially owed to Record Store Day who started selling in 2008 and to the search for authentic experiences in reaction to digitalisation in the music industry. It’s still a small trend in the market but it has risen quite drastically in the last few years, our love for the old flawed sounds of our parents’ childhoods.

We have come to the point where we borrow ideas and create new meaning by giving purpose in a new context. From the vinyl records being used to listen to people’s favourite bands and songs, to being no longer sold in most music stores, to being a collectable item in recent years. And to the denim jacket that used to be cool because of its clean, brand new feel that is now the perfect addition to a grunge look outfit, with its torn denim and messy stitches from an attempted fix. We are inspired by the past. Jean-Luc Godard, a French-Swiss film director and critic once said, “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to [8].” This could be our generation’s manifesto.

[7] Vinyl Record Sales At A 28 Year High. (2016). Fortune.com. Retrieved 29 August 2016, from http://fortune.com/2016/04/16/vinyl-sales-record-store-day/

[8] (2014). The Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 September 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derek-handley/three-reasons-to-steal-no_b_5176290.html