Trends have been changing quicker than ever, and new things are becoming trendy and going out of style every month. But there is one trend that has been in magazines and on Pinterest boards since the beginning of the pandemic: retro style. This old-style fashion has started spreading among adolescents and young adults, exactly replicating the fashion styles that were trending a few decades ago. These ｉｎｃｌｕｄｅ mom jeans, flared pants, denim, bike shorts, and shirts with puffy sleeves. Even scrunchies were originally popular a long time ago.
The main source of the wide popularity of this style is pop culture. Today, pop icons are wearing outfits influenced by the retro trends of the 90s, 80s, 70s, and even the 60s. This trend has already become deeply entrenched in our lives.
Thrift stores are a big part of the retro trend. These stores sell vintage clothes, accessories, bags, and sometimes shoes. The items are not on order, and everything is one-of-a-kind. These thrift stores have become a part of the trend as they are great places to find vintage. Going to a thrift store, referred to as “thrifting,” provides customers with the excitement of hunting for invaluable items.
My friends and I also admit that we follow these trends and notice that we dress similarly to how our parents dressed in their adolescent years. To get more details on and learn about personal experiences with retro, I interviewed Anna Tzou, a friend of mine who enjoys retro fashion. She told me, “‘Retrospect,’ meaning thinking about past events, is becoming a big issue nowadays and becoming trendier as well. There’s a saying that fashion always comes full circle, and that’s why people nowadays prefer fashions that feature retro/vintage products more than those with normal-styled products.” When I asked her about her personal experience with the trend, she said, “Even though I wasn’t born in the 80s or 90s, I liked how people dressed in that period in Korea, and I favor retro/vintage fashion that has been trending. … I prefer oversized t-shirts and jeans. I sometimes even buy products that were sold 10 to 20 years ago.” As I mentioned earlier, the clothes we wear to follow this trend may not be entirely the same as those worn decades ago, but they are rather similar.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives completely by restraining our daily activities. So it is quite interesting how instead of creating new trends, we seem to have gone back in time and revived old ones. However, these old fashions have not been replicated exactly, they have been “spiced up” to spark new trends. And it seems likely that it is the pandemic that has made this a reality.
Christie Park
Grade 10
Daegu International School