Andie Summerkiss

The 90’s are about to make a come back. I can just feel it. With the indie movie The Wackness hitting US and creating all sorts of buzz, I simply can’t wait to stroll down memory lane for the decade I thought time forgot.

I came from what seems to be the most prosaic decade of modern times: the 90s. That period of time cannot be encapsulated by a single thought. 70s is love, 80s is excess. Maybe the reasons are that so many things happened during those times that we took those things for granted and forgot to look back. 

Lets start with the internet and the information age. Kuwait was invaded. Margaret thatcher resigned. DNA as first used in crime labs. A sheep was cloned. Techno music went mainstream. Grunge was the look. Therapy became pedestrian and Bill Clinton was a rock star.

Everybody who is somebody started becoming an environmentalist and tried to outrun each other to Africa and the other poorest corners of the world to make a difference - so to speak. Entrepreneurial spirit was celebrated. I tried to be an entrepreneur and, like the minute millionaires of the 90s I went bust pretty quickly.

I was also intimidated to have internet at home. It is changing so much of how we live our lives. Not in a million years I thought I can talk to someone who lived three thousand miles away through Skype and that I could buy luxurious lingerie online? 

I think what the 90s tried to do was the inspiration to create. It was a modern and experimental decade people started thinking lyrically. The 90s is also the playground of the twenty something millionaires from Silicon Valley. Every month the world was awed by some new innovation, web millionaires were cropping and falling with every breath.

It was also fashionable to edit, thus my least favourite trend, minimalism become mainstream. It was fashionable to be sheer, translucent in manner, dress and attitude. Everything was toned down. Madonna and Paula Abdul had to make way for the Dalai Lama.

A theory on Generation X is that this band of young adults could not identify with the generation that made them. They had to modernize vintage philosophies by wearing vintage clothes. TV captured most of this internal torture and encapsulated the thoughtful and glitzfree voice of our time. Of course, Sex and the City was born, opening minds of women (and men) everywhere.

The hero was the ordinary man with extraordinary thoughts. The nerds lead the way. 

Douglas Coupland was the first one to coined the term Generation X in 1991, with his book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. It hovers around the conflict between secular and religious values, difficulty in aging and taking on adult roles, ironic attitudes as a response to intense media saturation, and pop and mass culture. In other words, everything that went wrong with the young.

Do you think the 90’s making a comeback? I sure hope so. It is an exciting time and we need that to save us from the hardships and hatred that have been going around, online and offline. Bring out the pot, people! 

Image credit to SXC.hu