Zeitgeist
Here's something timely: So this weekend I stopped in to H&M and noticed their co-branded Coachella capsule collection. With festival season among us, I'd like to submit some commentary on fashion, music and cultural appropriation. Bear with me.
As expected, "festival style" has become a fully exploitable shorthand, monetized by fast fashion houses like H&M and Urban Outfitters for the uninspired masses as a badge of freedom; an air of carelessness and an affiliation with a movement in a time and place its consumer likely knows nothing about. Hey, you in the cutoffs & bindi, tell me about Gram Parsons. Tell me about Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain. Tell me about the path to independence from religious dogma. Tell me about the Source Family. Tell me about Joni Mitchell and the Byrds, about Jackson Browne, and feminism. And if you know these things, surely you can tell me it wasn't as glossy and idyllic as its music makes us believe, with Vietnam and the rise of the Cold War; with the draft, and violent civil protests. Or can you? (or truly can I? I wasn't there, either).
Nevertheless, retailers can't keep the crocheted top, the floppy hat, the micro-hotpants, the flowery sundresses and head-pieces on shelves because for festival-goers, "Coachella style" - a festival much of whose music, too, is a far cry from its obvious points of inspiration - is all about a breezy time and a freedom of being and non-conformity, right? It's all about counterculture "indie" and bohemian ideals; it's about anti-culture.
Or isn't it?
I've been to festivals including Coachella several times both in the "before it was discovered days", when you could still jump a fence and water was free and nothing sold out, and in the days since it was discovered. It's about drugs, and street style pics and how many Instagram likes your festival photos get. It's about RSVPs and pool parties and see and be seens. It's also about music and sore feet and fabulous memories.
The new anti-culture is in fact our mainstream culture. This applies to music, and this applies to fashion.
The zeitgeist of the 60s influenced fashion, music, art and politics for much of the rest of the 20th century. So this is less a narrative about fashion and music, and more a narrative about what inspires our cultural ideals. Paris has its 1900s la belle époque; the 40s and 50s had the beat generation; the 60s and 70s had civil rights and pop music. Certainly our generation must be known for more than Instagram photos, Tumblr, emojis, texting, club drugs and the appropriation of those who came before. Right, guys?
Break on through to the other side.
/rant
