Dyze

This is something that bothered me for a very long time. Yesterday, I saw the new/old/retro 2005 Ford Mustang GT and this gave me the rest. Aren't we sick of the retro look? For over a year now, car companies, clothing brands, distillers, food brands, detergents.... everyone is lost in their past.
Everything has to look like in the good old days, use retro looks or packaging or whatever. Ah, music is a good example, too. Labels cry because nobody buys records, but I do not want to pay for a techno re-make of an 80s hit.
Is our generation unable of inventing new designs? Why are we so backwards orientated? Because the economy is doing bad and we miss the days? Up-keeping the tradition?

Tell me what you think.
Did you buy a car that lookes like your dad's first car? Do you buy stuff in those fancy, old-looking metal-boxes because, well, it's a fancy, old-looking metal box? I'm over it.

2005


oldschool 1967


I don't want to start a discussion about the car, but you see what I mean?

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Lebell

FYI,

I think the new mustang looks hot.

So I guess my answer is 'no', I'm not tired of retro.

I guess I don't understand why you're complaining.

Last time I looked, there are plenty of new car designs and new songs out there.

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stingc

I like the retro stuff. There are very few good looking new cars out there IMO. A lot of things look decent (unlike the 80's...), but I could probably count on my fingers the number of reasonably priced new cars that don't look like gumdrops on wheels. I think that almost all of the best automotive designs were from the 30's-70's, and I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.

I also prefer old music. There are only so many times you can listen to the same Stones songs, so I think new bands copying the old is a good thing. Don't fix what isn't broken.

And I'm not an old geezer who can't change either. I wasn't even alive in the 70's.

Dyze

I did not say that retro is bad. Don't you see my point? Stingc, you say new bands copying old songs is a god thing. But can't we come up with, say a song of that level? Will our children listen to the Eminem Encore album and say, wow, thats a great oldie? I doubt it.

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Halx

You're only complaining because this is your first trip through life. If you had lived a life before, you would realize that it's all the same.

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Blackthorn

I like the new stuff. I like the old stuff. I like the old stuff that looks new. I like the new stuff that looks old. All of that applies to cars and a myriad of other things. Meeeeh....not much to rant about here. Moving along...

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Charlatan

Things go in cycles... Soon everything "future" will be in and your children will love something retro... only retro to them will be the 90s or the 00s...

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stingc

Yes, I'm sure that some people could come up with new styles that are really good. What I meant was that copies of old styles aren't necessarily bad.

I wonder how much of the music nostalgia is just related to us picking out the best songs over so many decades? Maybe there was always a lot of crap, but people only remember the good stuff. I'm not old enough to know.

More to your point, I think that the vast majority of cars, etc. are not retro. Designers are trying to produce new styles. Most new designs flop, so I imagine it's pretty tempting to steal "proven" concepts from the past.

Squishor

I've been around for a little while, and I've noticed that each decade seems to have its own retro trends, although most I've seen haven't been so marked as now.

When I was a teenager Happy Days was on tv and my mom griped and complained that it was oversimplified drivel and they weren't "happy days." Now I've been noticing for several years that people in their early 20s have the urge to recycle the worst pablum crap pop music that we already had to endure once in the 80s. I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper or any of that stuff in the 80s and I sure don't want to hear it now, much less some remix. I listen to some newer music but not that (shudder). So what I'm saying is the musical nostalgia trends don't actually seem to revive the best of what was happening in that decade, as far as I'm concerned. I too have wondered why someone in their early 20s, a very creative age, would get stuck on pop drivel from 20 years ago. I can only hope that it's intended with humor but it doesn't seem to be, so it's mysterious to me. Of course I'm sure plenty of people think that music has merit - I just don't understand it.

As for the automotive retro design trend, I personally favor it because throughout most of the 90s car design got so boring (in my opinion) that they all basically looked like they had been squeezed out of a tube. I think the new mustang looks hot and I've never even liked mustangs at all.

IC3

That 67 GT500 is beautifull.

I feel the opposite about retro being old, Alot of the new cars coming out are taking the same shape as eachother...Round. VW Jetta looks like Audi's, Chryslers 300M Looks Like an Intrepid..and not to mention, What's with most of the dodge trucks sporting the same grill..Even the durangos have it..I don't know about this years durangos..But the first ones had the same grill as the trucks.

One of fords trucks..Not sure of the name but all they did was take the ford explorer from the back door forward and stick a bed on it..Possibly one of the ugliest trucks/SUV i have ever seen.

I'm happy to see car company's putting out cars that give that retro look, It's something different.

The 2005 Mustang is nice, It kicks the last generation of mustangs (2000, 2001 etc.) ass.

I'm not really likin the futuristic look alot of cars are taking.

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Craven Morehead

Some retro is ok. The new ford GT is very much with it. The reto Thunderbird looked contrived. Not sure how I feel about the Mustang. The PT Cruiser would have been much cooler had Chrysler limited production to something under a million. Since they are everywhere, its just gets tiresome.

The opposite of retro is futuristic, right? What would that design look like? I envision some of the concept cars of the early 60's. Starfire, bunch of Pontiacs, the Chrysler turbine car. 40 years later, where the fuck are all those cool cars? This is the future, right?

Squishor

Well isn't the front grill on the new Thunderbird a huge ripoff of an old Triumph? That's how it looks to me anyway. You'd think they'd at least stay within the same model for their retro look.

lurkette

I don't buy retro, I buy vintage. (40's and 50's). The clothes can be way cheaper if you know where to look, and they were MADE to last. I got a vintage designer 50s coat for $10 on ebay - wool, solid, beautiful fitted construction, it'll last me the rest of my lifetime and I'll look good in it. Stuff today that's made to look retro is usually crap that will fall apart just in time for the next fad. As far as cars go, I wouldn't buy a PT Cruiser, but I would sure love an old 40's Studebaker or a mustang, or this gorgeous puke green impala convertible that someone at our office drives. It's so hideous it's an aesthetic all to itself.

Incidentally, you think "retro" is a new concept? Take a look at the late 18th century. Our government buildings all have fluted columns and triangular facades because our founding fathers were into NEOclassical style - hearkening back to the architecture of the Greeks and Romans who inspired their political philosophy. Fashion at that time went the same way - the high-waisted, loose, flowing dresses were modeled on the "natural" lines of Greek and Roman dress and were a brief respite from the corset. There's been "nothing new under the sun" for a long, long time.

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Lockjaw

Some retro I'm tired of. The fashion of everybody dressing in late 70s early 80s styling IMO was played out the second year it was being done much less still in 2005.
Retro music not so much because I enjoy the old stuff and the new equally. So while SOME of the music is retroish it's not like the music scene is totally devoid of original music. Now for the cars...heck no I'm not tired of retro and I'd be glad to see more car makers going back to their roots. The average commuter car today is just flat out bland and boring. Talk about getting lost in a crowd. The height of car design IMO was in the 50s and 60s. If a pristine 56 Chevy passed you by tomorrow you'd turn your head and look because it's a good looking car. Fastforward 50 years if an 05 Nissan Altima or Honda Accord passed you by you would probably wonder what the hell people saw in that car. The new Mustang,the 300C,the Magnum, and the new Mini Cooper are all cars that draw heavily on their heritages and let the good designs from the past influence their new vehicles. The road could use more cars that look like them instead of every other car looking like a shoe or a melted marshmellow.

Amnesia620

I think they're awesome. Take a great idea and design and make it even better? ROCK ON!!

If you want to go and promote "futuristic", be my guest in buying and driving the (boxey) Honda Element.

Honda Element:
The new "aerodynamic" SUV...yeah, right...*rolls eyes, smirking*

Give me retro or give me death.

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flstf

Old cars are cool. Most new cars look like variations of a soap bar.

Speaking of fashion, I wonder how long it will be until basketball players look back and say, look at those guys uniforms, they were wearing women's culottes.

mazagmot

waiting for shorts to get short again, flstf?

flamingdog

US Department of Retro Warns: We May Be Running Out of Past

WASHINGTON, DC -- At a press conference Monday, U.S. Retro Secretary Anson Williams issued a strongly worded warning of an imminent national retro crisis, cautioning that if current levels of U.S. retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by as soon as 2005.

More -- http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark...dept-retro.htm



Joking aside, I think there's some truth to this. We've run out of ideas, and started cannibalising the past. But rather than using the ideas to inspire, as has been done before, we're just lifting products lock stock and barrel to milk the retro dollar. Look at remakes like Starsky and Hutch for your examples.

Rdr4evr

Although there are plenty of cars that belong in this year aesthetically, and there are plenty of choices for me to go non-retro, I am still sick of the retro craze. I think the Mustang looks like utter shit, as did its 67 counter-part. I think all retro cars look like hell, we are in the year 2005, I don't want to see a 60's remake, I want to see innovation, not the same rehashed crap, but as long as there are consumers who live in the past, there is nothing none of us can do about it. But whatever, the Z is still waiting for me .

flstf

Not really, but men basketball players wearing culotte skirts is probably going to seem awfully funny not too many years from now.

Rodney

Modern retro had its first run in the '70s, looking back at the '50s. Some of it was Happy Days/American Graffiti" nostalgia, and some of it was what came to be known as cheese: making fun of the banality of the 50s consumer culture, old TV and so on. I got tired of that crap, largely because the people giggling at the past were creating cultural institutions that were equally as banal as the ones they derided: Duran Duran, anyone?

I've got no problem in resurrecting an old style because you think it's attractive. There is a certain coolness in finding something good in a thing or style that everyone else has dismissed.

But this whole retro thing is artificial. If something was truly good 30 years ago -- not just stylish -- it's good now. People should be aware enough to know that, not just wait for someone to tell them.

And frankly, every new style or motif or school of art stands on the shoulders of those that came before it. I'm a big art deco fan; art deco applied modern graphic arts techniques and the streamline aesthetic of early 20th century technology to classical themes of mythology and nature that have been around for millenia, and also built on the decorative arts innovations of the Beaux Arts movement which immediately proceeded it. You see very little art deco retro because it takes real talent to do it well, and good materials, too (except maybe in a poster). Otherwise, it looks cheap.

Redjake

I'm not a big fan of retro but the new Mustangs look so much better than the ones before them. I have to give Ford a high-five on the design.

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Lockjaw

There is no way the NBA will go back to nut huggers and wifebeaters again.

They have enough of those in the stands anyway.

flstf

I don't think the NBA is much of a fashion trend setter besides the players are probably wearing nut huggers under their culottes now, .

Fashions will probably change like shorts/skirt lengths just to be different after a while.

Lockjaw

I have to disagree. Go to any major city and it won't be long before you see a bunch of young kids in NBA gear especially in the summer time. Basketball shorts are practically as common as blue jeans around my parts from June until September. The nut hugger shorts on the other hand just aren't manly enough to be cool in this generation. Maybe when I'm 60 kids will start wearing them again but I just can't see it happening anytime soon. I cringe everytime I look back at my child hood and look at those things when kids were wearing them with their knee high socks and pumas.

mazagmot

Runners still wear nut huggers, but they've never been accused of being remotely stylish.

Hip hop seems to like wearing shorts so long, and so far down their ass, that they almost touch the top of the shoe. It's amusing watching a dude prance about and be gangster in what are essentially loose-cut pedal pushers/capri pants.

Janey

I thought retro was new. I love the touchstones of my youth popping up here and there. Gives them some creedance. The 2005 stang is gorgeous. So is the new chrysler 300. It's retro to an even earlier era...

One day the tear drop stylings of the 1990's vehicles (a la altima and taurus) will come back as being the 'new retro' and we will shake our heds in wonderment that the 'bad' design of the '90's could ever be popular again, just as the '70's kitsch is so popular now....

Lockjaw

I still shake my head at the who revival of the 70s fashion. I didn't like wearing those clothes when I didn't have a choice I'll be damned if I'll wear it now that I do. We need to retro all the way back to the 40s and 50s. Where guys wore pin stripes, fedoras, and wing tips out on the town instead of looking like a homeless person from the 70s. And women wore actual stylish dresses and had classy good looking hair and makeup instead of looking like borderline hookers.

Think I need to just start dressing that way and when the style catches on I can say..."I was cool before cool was cool again."

flstf

If I recall though the baggy shorts fad started on the streets and later the college teams. As I remember wasn't it the Michigan Fab Five with Chris Webber etc..that wore them first on national TV and didn't the NBA resist this fashion at first?

P-Naughty

I'm getting pretty fed up with it myself. Music, clothing, car design... Is nothing sacred?

Now some of the music doesn't bother me, and by some I mean one or two artists/groups. Clothing, well lets just say I wore those f'ed up looking 80s shorts once, and I'll be dead before you see me in a pair again.

Cars are kinda hit and miss. I love the look of the Chevy SSR, the new Thunderbird, etc. But the new Mustang is something I still haven't developed my opinion on yet. Anything is an upgrade from the "OMGWTFBBQ!?!? This 'Stang is t3h j37f1gh73r!!!1111" body style they just threw out the window. Still this one looks like they put a female 2002 Mustang and a male '67 GT 500 in a pin and let them make whoopie, resulting in this turd.

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Squishor

Go for it, Lockjaw! I'm with you on the rehashed 70s fashion thing. Giant patchwork pants are not flattering on anyboody. My ex-boyfriend dressed completely in 1940s attire when he was in high school - I'm sure it presented an anomalous picture, expecially since he's Asian (doesn't fit our old movie stereotyped image), but someone has to show some class, right?

NCB

Retro done right is awesome (see the '05 Mustang). However, you do have a point that some of htis retro shit has gone to shit and is being overdone

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raeanna74

I like retro but I think it's overused. It would be nice to have some new designs that were different from the past creations. The more NEW creations we come up with the fewer CHOICES we have in the NEW creations. I hope that makes sense. I mean the wings on the fenders of my parents Olds back when I was a kid - ANY wings now no matter what shape will be considered more retro than new. So if they want to be new what do they choose? Our inventions aren't so much clothes and cars now but more in the electronic industry.

I'd love to see a few new clothing ideas instead of this crap that walks down the runway. Layers of material that look like they were just tacked together by my daughter and hanging off some of the more pertenant parts that aren't usually made that public. I'd like to see some simple styles with a few little nuances that are NEW for once.

That said I think a lot of us look back at our childhood and may remember some of the 70's and 80's things (for me anyway) that we enjoyed. I used to love listening to the music that was "retro" then. There was one radio station that played "Oldies" those oldies being the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Anyone remember the song Lamlighter? My fav.

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Lockjaw

They resisted but Michael Jordan IIRC was the main reason it got big. I remember his rookie year he wore the nut huggers but he started wearing the baggy shorts like his second year or third year in the league. I'm fairly certain Jordan's baggy shorts predated the Michigan crew by a few years as by the time the Fab Five came out every kid in America was trying to emulate Jordan.
Then again the current baggy shorts are longer than the "baggy" shorts Jordan wore in the mid to late 80s. When he first started out he was wearing the nut huggers like Bird and Johnson were wearing. Then a few years later he started wearing the looser shorts that are about the length a pair of normal shorts are. Then the super baggy shorts came around the early 90s so I guess the Fab Five could have started that trend but I know for sure the super short nuthuggers were well out of style before the super baggy shorts came around.

hotzot

I'm a sucker for a 1950 merc.

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pinkie

Saying "retro is getting old" is a double entendre. Besides, I love retro!!!!

Manuel Hong

A thought:
Twenty years from now, what do you think people will be doing to rekindle that '00 style? How will it be represented when our "now" becomes "retro"?

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Reese

The new Mustang is the only Mustang I like made after I was born. It actually looks like it has muscle. I'd love to have a car with all the looks of a 65 mustang with all of today's technology built into it. As for music and video I could do without the remakes of perfectly good films.. They're remaking evil dead..again.. sigh..

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World's King

Okay. I've avoided this thread for long enough. I'm "retro". I've always been "retro." I will never live my life like a normal 23yr old male in 2005. Most of my standards and beliefs are what you would call "old school." I've lived in the 50's and 60's for most of my life. Listen to the music, dress in the clothes... everything. Now oddly, I do spend alot of time on the net but that doesn't mean I don't still hold true to my beliefs.

What I'm trying to say is. Retro isn't getting old. It's just not cool anymore. But I'm still gonna look and act this way. I was retro before it was cool and I'll be retro after no one cares.

It's a damn good thing I can pull it off.

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Frowning Budah

Hey I am retro. the first car I bought was the 1966 Mustang Fastback, so I guess you know what I think abt all the boomer's bringing back their youth. I am all for it. The only thing that pisses me off is when some people act like they have created something new and all it is is a rip off of something that came before.