|
Retro styles aren't real, they're just styles. The clothes/music/cars made today aren't replicas of things made in the past. People have made an idealised style from some of the neater aspects of design. I could never see retro as unoriginal because to me original things made today are.. really, really bad. Music, clothes, cars, originality and pushing the boundaries and all that.. really sucks. And it always has.
Okay, here's an example of what I mean. The 80s music that's now becoming the cutting edge of hip culture today, things like gang of four, men without hats. If you put them under today's style filters, they do sound kinda cool. The guitars of gang of four sound like more like an abstract disco beat, they could be on par with all the indie bands around today. Now, remove those rose-tinted spectacles - they suck, they're a band with little rhythm and a bunch of vague communist references trying to pass themselves off as a real band and failing entirely. They were original, they produced horrible music, they are now worshipped for influencing a bunch of good music.
A retro style is never going to be accurate, it's just picking up all the supposed cool aspects, whether they existed or not. Retro to me is original and good because it's making something wonderful out of things that really, really weren't.
I tried to ask an old guy the other day where he got his hat, because it was a really cool fedora. He thought I was being a smarmy youth and he tried to attack me with a cane. He wasn't aware he was stylishly retro, which suggests to me that the concept of what is retro is original and ever changing, and not some kind of creative vacuum. If it were just old ideas rehashed, everywhere would be selling the best damn fedoras ever.
|