Vintage revival underway ?

Definitely not a gentleman's-only discussion but I couldn't find a better place for it.

There's a vibe in the air that vintage is cool again. Folks in here have known that all along but I keep picking up signals, a lot of it from younger folks, that it's actually ok to look back and appreciate things from yesterday. I hear kids talking Cab Calloway-speak, bands are listening to 78rpms on Victrola's while traveling on the highway, thrift stores are hip again, the ukulele is back, and growing your own vegetables (a la Victory Gardens) is booming.

I think this round is different from the swing revival ten years ago but I can't put my finger on why yet. This wave seems more to the core, not so much about dancing and drinks, but perhaps a subtle rebellion against how fast things are advancing along with its complexity and diminishing benefits. Am I just imagining this or have others picked up on this, too?

I may be waaay out there on this, but I'm wondering if the difference might be a generational thing. Check this out:

(source: http://www.brandchannel.com/start1.asp?id=156)

Generation Y "millennials":

"...

• Unlike earlier generations, Millennials have a near-zero generation
  gap, and parent-child co-purchase decisions are common. Martin agrees,
  saying: "When you ask this generation who their heroes are, the
  majority say their parents." Brands seeking to appeal to this
  generation in the name of rebellion will increasingly fall flat.
  
• Millennials are expected to retain close parental bonds
  even after leaving home, and they are more likely to consult with their
  parents on major decisions. Marketing aimed at this generation should
  consider the input of parents on big-ticket purchases.
  
• Millennials show greater interest in family, religion, and community --
  at the expense of celebrity role models and their associated brands.
  

..."

Seems to fit at least a bit????? I dunno....my cohort is more a Generation X thing, even thought I feel I don't fit in too well....

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the state of the Economy and people FINALLY catching on that Society is decaying rapidly, though there may be time to stop it.

Because what I see, is less about the flash clothes, flash cars, etc of the 10-year ago revival, and more about people seeking out the Real Core Values of the past.

These are things that I'm seeing:

Simplifying
Repairing
Reusing
Reducing Waste/Paper usage
Recycling

It's sort of a Ration-era mentality.

When the future is portrayed as looking so bleak, I'm not at all surprised to find out more of us are looking for answers and inspiration from the past.

My only concern is that someone will find a way to turn into a money spinner/trendy/a what's hot-what's not listee. Gah! I can just picture it. The market flooded with cheap, tacky repros. When in fact its as much a state of mind as a lifestyle.

I don't see any revival I'm afraid.
Sure, everyone's a burlesque superstar now and rockabilly is the new emo but those are just transient fads. followed by the sort of people that follow transient fads. People are gobbling up the very worst of modern life as if there's no tomorrow (maybe that's the point? There isn't?).

Film cameras are now rarely seen in camera shops, even though they are cheaper and far better quality than digital. TV is delivered digitally to your set with a massive drop in picture quality (don't even get me started on the actual ouput of the TV stations). Vinyl is seen as some arcane and preposterous medium for sound. Technology is no longer expected to last.

Even though these things were better, and often cheaper, in the not so distant past, people are buying into the technophilic hype that newer (and smaller) is better.

As I've mentioned before, in one way historiology will change forever because the pictorial evidence of everyday life will disappear due to 'photographs' not physically existing anymore. How many people do you all know that take snapshots of family and friends on a film camera? Not many I'd wager. What memories will they be able to show their grandchildren? Zero because they took a few barely discernable images on an old mobile phone 40 years ago that was traded in for something smaller and of even poorer quality.

Quality in clothing is no longer seen as important. People prefer to pay pennies for some old crap made by forced child labour in Thailand than pay for decent fabric produced in (relatively) decent conditions by (relatively) fairly paid workers. Style has all but vanished. People can't even spare the time to actually break their clothes in, they instead buy pre-distressed trousers! That is insane! Hey, I like to look a certain kind of scruffy half the time but buying T-shirts with the seams on the outside, covered in faux-distressed graphics of no obvious meaning and 'random' rips, paint splatters and frayed, applique numbers makes you look like a mentally deficient cretin.What's more, it makes me want to kill you!

I have veered a little off track here but you get my gist- no, I don't see any kind of renewed appreciation of any aspects of the past, at least not here in the UK. The only revivalism I see is the very worst kind; an abandonment of science, reason and logic and a lemming-like herding towards all things supernatural, metaphysical, theistic and fatalistic.

Good heavens LS!

It's true, I think, of Society At Large.

I suppose because I keep my "circle" so small, that I see these things. The "movement" of which I speak it definitely alive here, but it is pretty much off the grid. Which, actually, is part of the whole thing. A lot of the folks making those changes and moves to simplicity and quality, etc., are also going offline. I'm not really ready for that, but I have decreased my time online quite drastically in recent months. Part of that, is because I need to move. I need exercise, fresh air, sunshine, and someone has to do the garden and we can't afford a gardener!

But it's all true, what LS said...technology is moving at a crazy speed towards what? Nihilism?? I don't know...

What I do know, is that my friends, IRL and online, are making moves towards something else. Our economy in the US is the worst its been in some time, and needs must, I suppose...so people are not driving the big SUVs so much, going to bikes and scooters, those kinds of changes are a bit more noticeable. I just hope it hangs on when things pick up, if they ever do.

Indeed, if, as is suggested, we are on our way to a recession with rising utility, fuel, and food prices we should be budgeting properly for our day-to-day existences.

This budgeting could manifest itself in a more make-do-and-mend attitude of the past, with tastier, healthier meals cooked from fresh produce; good quality, worn clothing repaired or altered instead of binned, cycling or public transport instead of driving, socially interactive pastimes instead of the latest, overpriced playstation game, etc.
On the other hand, it could manifest itself in consumers simply going for the cheaper cigarettes, the cheaper chicken nuggets made from the crusty nipples and rectums of sickly battery hens (yes, I know chickens don't really have nipples), the cheaper, crappier clothing made by even more maltreated children in sweatshops, etc.

We are lucky; we don't feel the need to be fashionable thus we can quite happily socialise in 60 year-old clothes and still look infinitely more stylish than the fashion-conscious. We don't need to spend anything on the latest 'styles'.

Time for your medication now, Mr Kedzlie.

Fear not LS, I too get disturbed about the some of the attitudes and behavior that I see, with a lot of it around technology, and I am a technologist! And don't get me started about digital photography - I posted a long rant about its pitfalls and weaknesses back in PH with my basic premise being that grandma's shoebox of black/white pictures from the 1930's kept in the closet will last longer than those gigabytes of digital pictures you've got stashed on spinning rust (disk drives) that are just waiting to fail or get overwritten. And yes, I own a digital camera.

But going back to my original posting from January, I'm still optimistic about some of the trends I'm seeing in my neck of the woods.

• My local farmer's vegetable market attendance has doubled this year! Maybe partially due to the USA tomato scare but it's a good sign anyway.
  
• I'm a cycling nut and I hear that local bike sales are doing very well and the shops all have a lengthy backlog of repair work being done.
• I'm hearing material being sprinkled into my local college radio station playlists, among the modern hip-hop, emo, electronic, shoegaze, etc. like Hoagie Carmichael, Billie Holiday, and Edith Piaf that I don't remember from five years ago
  

Fashionable micro-trends that will bend in a slight breeze, or a forward indicator of the way things will be longer-term, I don't know. But I'll lean to the "sunny side" right now!

Just so long as we don't go back so far that fast food is a chicken one doesn't have to kill personally.

Does or doesn't?

I think it would be great for carnivores to have to kill the meat they eat. People are so disconnected to the whole process of rearing creatures for food and the subsequent butchery that the shrinkwrapped pink thing in the fridge ceases to have any link to a once living thing. I think it would do wonders for vegetarianism.

We did actually have a TV series that guided an audience through the whole process of various cuts of various animals and that converted a few meat-eaters!

I've been becoming more and more veg lately and couldn't agree more. After having reached the point that I can only eat meat that does not resemble the animal it once was, I realized that I needed to stop.

Are you veg?

Whilst on holiday in Greece, I cycled through a village in Ixia, which is a small coastal town, the butchers there had a shop sign that raised a smile- it showed lambs, rabbits, cows etc. all jumping about in a field. You just wouldn't see that here in the UK.

Always amazes me how many people get upset when dining out on seafood and they're presented with a fish with a head on it.

Andy

Mimi wrote:

Are you veg?

I am indeed, so long as you ignore the leather shoes/belt/wallet.

My mother and I were just discussing some of these points... one of them was the economy, and how people in the past addressed hardship so much better than the entitlement attitudes of today. Her cousin, who's got a terminal illness and is slowly dying over time just had her food benefits cut from $100 to $30 a month. She volunteers helping the homeless and likes to make them food, and she won't stop even now in her dire circumstance. She's a great example of someone who will always give to those less fortunate, even at this incredibly unfortunate stage of her life. But she said, "I don't know how people did it in the Depression... how people got through..."

I pointed out that they didn't always. There were soup kitchens, children went hungry and were often given up by parents who couldn't feed them, a lot of people didn't make it, and maybe that close memory is why the people of the forties were able to aproach rationing and the war shortages with such a genuine dedication and attitude of pulling together. Because they remembered. But today, most people don't remember much other than good times. And some of us remember the odd-even days of gas rationing in the 70s here in the US. I was a child, but I recall it.

I'd like to see a vintage revival... maybe if it happened, even in media, people would realize how lucky we are in this day and age. I'd like to see the best of the past brought forward, and the worst remembered as lessons. Unfortunately, the only vintage revival I see in my town is a small stirring of 'he who dies with the most vintage toys wins', and looking down at those who don't have the style even if they have the soul of a retrophile. My friends in the rockabilly scene have mentioned this many times, they lament the lack of grace and manner in their subculture, and the way style has become a way to one up the next guy or gal.

I do tend to live like I'm in rationing... but that's because since the roomie got laid off, we pretty much are rationed!

I'd like to see a vintage revival... maybe if it happened, even in media, people would realize how lucky we are in this day and age. I'd like to see the best of the past brought forward, and the worst remembered as lessons. Unfortunately, the only vintage revival I see in my town is a small stirring of 'he who dies with the most vintage toys wins', and looking down at those who don't have the style even if they have the soul of a retrophile. My friends in the rockabilly scene have mentioned this many times, they lament the lack of grace and manner in their subculture, and the way style has become a way to one up the next guy or gal.

EX-Actly. Amen.

Sooo sick of that, and that is about the extent of the "scene" here in Baltimore, too...Ick.

I've been thinking a bit on this as well, and I'm hoping that in the long term we'll see a revival of some of the things that made the past good. Like passenger train travel and ocean liners- at some point those may be cheaper options than driving or flying, just as they were in the 40s. And with a continued emphasis on the carbon & fuel costs of importing goods from halfway around the world, perhaps we'll see a resurgence of American Industry- at least we can hope!

I think there is a revival in collecting vintage items but not much of a revival in vintage ways of thinking.

MaryDeluxe wrote:

I think there is a revival in collecting vintage items but not much of a revival in vintage ways of thinking.

With the credit bubble well and truly burst, thats changing too, I think.

Ali wrote:

MaryDeluxe wrote:

I think there is a revival in collecting vintage items but not much of a revival in vintage ways of thinking.

With the credit bubble well and truly burst, thats changing too, I think.

I will say that in my small East Texas town, many more people are walking to places, biking, or using scooters. You still see the big behemoth SUVs/trucks still, but it's good to see the alternatives being used (at least while gas is high... it's coming way down - $1.87-1.91/gal). Also - it's more friendly.

I've noticed that also. Even though gas is coming down, I think that the threat of $4+/gal is still in the back of people's minds. I hope that people have changed their habits for good, even if gas stays cheap. I know I have- I still try to consolidate my errands and don't make frivolous trips.

SusieQT wrote:

I've noticed that also. Even though gas is coming down, I think that the threat of $4+/gal is still in the back of people's minds. I hope that people have changed their habits for good, even if gas stays cheap. I know I have- I still try to consolidate my errands and don't make frivolous trips.

Nationally, people are still being very frugal - spending is down almost in every category, except healthcare and food. I have a 1981 Honda Passport (C70) scooter - which is exactly like to old Hondas from the 60's (they still make this model for non-US markets)... and I enjoyed the 80-100 mpg before the prices shot up... then it became a pleasant necessity when gasoline turned into the monster it did.

Personally, I am glad that we, as a nation, are getting a little comeuppance.

Dread Scott wrote:

Nationally, people are still being very frugal - spending is down almost in every category, except healthcare and food..

I totally agree.

The question is whether the USA (and perhaps other countries) can survive with a population that doesn't spend and consume. I think the answer is "yes" because there are thousands of small towns that have been dealing with 1% sales tax growth rate, even during the boom years at the turn of the last century.

Our expectations about the city services we receive will probably need to be tempered and re-adjusted but I think we'll make it through this darker period.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post, please move it around. But personally, I feel folks will have to get back to lifestyles similar to the thirties and forties only because we've been riding the material wave since WW2 and I think it's an artificial event. There has got to been some sort of equilibrium...

Guess what I'm saying is that basically, American society has been living too high and this cannot be continued.....

Maybe I'm crazy?