From throwback fashion to vintage soul dance parties to psychedelic posters, today’s young people are looking to the past in order to find the path to their futures. Once a popular blog hits the mainstream with the name “My Mom the Style Icon,” on which trendsetters look to old family photos for style inspiration, you know there’s something pretty deep going on.
There is, and it’s more than a fashion or fad. Perhaps Gen Y started peeking into their rear-view mirrors in the wake of 9/11, when the simple ideal of a protected society crumbled along with the Twin Towers. But the Great Recession sealed it. Within the space of a decade, a generation of kids patterned to think they could “do anything” came face to face with the stark notion that their futures were no longer in their own hands, even if their hearts and minds were in the right place. They’ve learned that there are no eighth-place “winners” in the real world of 2010.
