You probably just work with the wrong teenagers.
The followup, Ashes To Ashes, actually sends the lead character to the '80s, and yeah, the world was very much a different place 30 years ago.
“Remember the good old 1980’s?
When things were so uncomplicated?
I wish I could go back there again
And everything could be the same.”
— Ticket to the Moon, Jeff Lynne, ELO (from the album, Time)
That actually holds true even for some 30 year olds that I know.
Not sure if this has been posted: retronaut.co - retronaut Resources and Information.
That link is a time capsule and a large majority of people dress and look very differently than the people of today.
Incredible website by the way.
Yeah, they hadn’t quite gotten out of the 80s by then. Man, look at all the big hair and pornstaches.
I suspect that in 20-30 years, the thing we’ll be goggling at is all the shaved heads.
You couldn’t get attention from us punk-ass teenagers in the 1960s, because we were too busy smoking LSD.
Thanks for the link. Here’s Bryant Gumbel saying “What is the internet anyway?” :
http://www.retronaut.co/2011/11/what-is-the-internet-anyway-nbc-today-january-1994/
“A large majority”? It seems to me that this is an edited collection—that is, the photographer’s goal was specifically to target people wearing highly fashionable clothing and hairstyles, or else they targetted everyone in the mall equally but the creator of the website selected a subset of photos which he felt highly contrasted with fashions of today. Sure, the majority of the primary subjects in these photos dress and look differently, but from this collection alone you can’t extrapolate to say that the majority of all people in the mall, or in the 1990s, dressed so differently. Indeed, many of the people in the backgrounds of these shots wouldn’t look at all out of place walking down the street today.
Thanks for posting this. The odd thing here is how different the ostensibly similar fashions look: the skinny jeans with mom-jeans waists, the puffy jackets that still don’t look much like the ubiquitous North Face stuff of today, the t-shirts inexplicably tucked in.
I agree. Some of these are shots of clothes worn by store mannequins. There are two guys in tuxedos. And I’m sorry, but a guy wearing a midriff-cut Mickey Mouse T-shirt or one in a white T and overalls was as much of an anomaly at the mall in 1990 as he would be today.
This collection is roughly the 1990’s equivalent of People of Walmart.
I remember girls at my high school wearing tight-ass jeans like that. With the high-stop tennis shoes too. And that hair. I’m so glad I wasn’t cool enough to try to do that with mine.
But that was definitely 80s spill-over. By the mid-1990s, we weren’t looking like that. Which just goes to show how fast fashion can change. It is really hard to believe that the look in those pictures and the grunge/hippie chick aesthetic co-existed within five years of each other. Just look at Alanis Morissette’s early career to see what I’m talking about.
I agree. The 90s didn’t even start until after the 1992 election. I don’t agree that those 1990s photos are showing people on the cutting edge of fashion. If anything, they are behind the times, kind of mired in an 80s look. I googled around for some 1994 yearbook photos and in the midwest girls were still pegging their jeans! For realsies! And ALL the guys’ shirts are tucked in, with belts, even tshirts. Hilarious.
That’s called “pegging”? I had no idea there was a name for it. Now I know what to call that embarrassing thing I used to do in the late 80’s early 90’s. It wasn’t just girls doing it, though, as I’m definitely not a girl.
Oh yes both girls and boys did it - the New Kids on the Block sometimes pegged their pants (I think that’s Danny in the acid-washed, ripped, pegged jeans, no?) but as that pic shows, guy’s styles were more varied. ALL the girls pegged their pants. Back in the day, I had a pair of pink with black splatters jeans. I wore them pegged, of course. They were sooooo cool. 
I agree and disagree with you. I agree that the photographer (or the website) picked the conspicuous photos to display over boring ones. However, I disagree that the people in the background would easily fit in.
In the background I see women wearing large blazers, big hair, guys wearing “too short” shorts, and tight white jeans.
The only people you would see wearing the same clothes other people are wearing the background today are the elderly, white trash, and the stereotypical “People of Wal-Mart” (the same people who would have worn 1960’s clothes in the 1980’s).
You can clearly see that teens and young adults (the people you look to in order to examine the zeitgeist of an era) are on an entirely different wavelength than the people of today. This might not add to the 1992 argument, but I think someone with two eyes will observe that 1990 was a very long time ago culturally.
Look at the kids. Not the weirdos. You picked out a few photos and twisted it into nonsense.
Teens are well known for wearing what everybody else their age is wearing. The attractive girls have big hair and a very different fashion sense than the girls of today.
Teens are also well-known for wearing what nobody else their age, except for a tiny subculture of like-minded individuals, is wearing.
The last generation born to the baby boomers (myself born in '73), grew up in a world transformed by counterculture. There’s nothing particularly culturally shocking, now that my generation are the parents/adults.
What the fuck is going to surprise or shock me anymore? I grew up exposed to The Sex Pistols; Ministry; Guns N Roses; AC/DC; Metallica; NIN; Nirvana; Alice in Chains. I read Stephen King and my neighbor had a stack of Penthouses. I’d crack the fuck up to Eddie Murphy’s Delerious and Raw; George Carlin; Ricard Pryor. I smoked a bit of weed, and partied at friend’s houses. I played video games; had a Commodore and a Mac; got a GameBoy. We watched movies like Nightmare on Elmstreet; Animal House; The Breakfast Club; Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Se7en… etc.
I have far more in common with my kids, nieces and nephews than I do with my parent’s generation. I have to keep reminding myself when I’m watching Tosh.0 with my 13 year old daughter that it’s pretty inappropriate for her age—or at least it would’ve been when I was her age, because my parents found that stuff appalling. But the other side of me argues, “Shit, you’d watch stuff just as vulgar and irreverant when you were 13 and loved it.”
My nephew just came out as gay last year at 16 years old. His grandmother is in denial, but our (and his) generation barely even flinched. In fact, it was pretty clear he was gay since he was years younger, so when he came out, I said to my wife, “It’s about time!”
So I think the key is this: Sure there’s cultural differences, but we who came of age in the 80s and 90s have far more in common, at the root, with today’s teens/young adults than we did with our parents generation.
We’ve maxed out the culture shock.
Tiny subculture in their minds. Goth, emo, whatever have tremendously large followings. If a teen joins a certain group I can assure you most of them are wearing what their friends are wearing.