Beyond Y2K: How Retro Fashion Could Transcend Its Eras
The fashion nostalgia train's Y2K stop is not its only stop by any means. As a matter of fact, some fashionistas take their nostalgia way more seriously - albeit with a few tweaks here and there.
Some of these tweaks are purely stylistic; others are anything but skin-deep.
“Vintage style, not vintage values” is a phrase that has now become synonymous with the retro-inspired fashion microblogging stratosphere. This is primarily an attempt from many fashionistas associated with that “aesthetic” (which draws heavily from the fashion of the 1940’s to that of the 1970’s) to dissociate themselves from the actual eras their style represents, which were marked by various forms of racism against Black people and other people of color, along with misogyny. Although it is believed that the phrase was coined by Harlem-based Jazz musician Dandy Wellington, he had previously stated that he did not create the phrase, and that some variations of it were already circulating online before it ultimately got attributed to him.
But if you ask Nabiha Jamal, a fashion researcher and retro-inspired fashion content creator based in Melbourne, Australia, she has quite a different stance on the matter: That some “vintage” values weren’t all too regressive, and that there is nothing inherently wrong with subscribing to some “vintage” values like maintaining respect for elders and maintaining strong family ties or friendships while simultaneously denouncing the more regressive practices of the eras retro and retro-inspired fashion heavily borrow from and are heavily associated with.
“I think that we live in a world right now where people want to look at the past through a two-dimensional lens,” Jamal says, “and I think there’s danger in that. I think people are too quick to pass judgment now, and I think that you need to consider that people in the past were different [from] us.”
Jamal also adds that through her incorporation of vintage style - primarily 1950’s style, in her specific case - into her everyday fashion, she gets to redefine that era and redefine what it means to be a woman from such an era and from beyond.
Although Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Gabrielle Jones, another vintage and retro-inspired fashion content creator, subscribes to the “vintage style, not vintage values” philosophy on a personal level, she acknowledges and maintains that the audience that tunes in to her content spawns a myriad of generations, beliefs, and values.
“I do have young girls [following my Instagram and/or TikTok page] who are clearly also of that mindset,” Jones explains, “and then I have older women who are reliving and recounting the clothing that they had and experienced during that time. It’s so tricky on social media, and that’s why I try to stick to these first-hand accounts, like ‘this is what my grandmother wore, and this is what it was like for my grandmother’ because everyone had a different experience.”
Jones’ vintage fashion content creation gig started as a way of bonding with and honoring her grandmother, herself an avid thrifter and collector of vintage fashion. In fact, Jones assigned herself a mission throughout the entirety of 2022: to style a piece of clothing from her grandmother’s vintage collection (which includes articles of clothing that date back to the 1890’s and continue until the late 1990’s) every single day and film the process for her followers, explaining the history and context behind the garments in question by blending personal anecdotes from her family members with her own independent research.
In this TikTok clip, Jones styles two scarves - one of them belongs to her, while the other is from her grandmother's collection of vintage clothes and accessories. The video is part of a now-completed series of 365 videos in which Jones attempts to style one piece from her grandmother's collection every single day for an entire year.
(Courtesy of Gabrielle Jones - @gabis_vintage on TikTok)
“I have a background in Theater, so, costuming has always been part of my life,” Jones says, “so, I feel like I have a general understanding of what the different silhouettes of these different decades were [like].”
Just like Jones, Jamal also seeks to build a form of community within her work, albeit by empowering and inspiring Muslim women like herself. Part of the appeal 1950’s style and fashion initially had to her as an observant of the Hijab (a religious practice of covering one’s head, observed by many Muslim women) was its relevant modesty, which would make it easy to pair with her religious head covering, which she styles and wraps in a variety of ways with her outfits.
While attending an exhibition devoted to the life and works of Alexander McQueen, her favorite fashion designer, Jamal opted to pay homage to him with this look.
(Courtesy of Nabiha Jamal - @theveiledvintage on Instagram)
Despite that, Jamal admits that most of the support she gets for her content at the moment comes from non-Muslim women.
“It does bring me down sometimes because I feel like I am working so hard to achieve something for Muslim women,” she shares, in reference to the representation of Muslim women in the fashion space.
Even as she faces that challenge, she hopes to continue challenging the beliefs some Muslim women - or even Muslim men - may have with regards to adapting their sense of style for their identities.
“[I’m] trying to encourage more and more Muslim women to tell Muslim men that, ‘hey, you don't get to dictate how I express my Hijab and how I wear it’,” she says, “and to introduce them to sustainable vintage fashion and show them that it can be compatible with their headscarves, and also to use it as a form of activism.”