It’s happened, hasn’t it? Just as the prophecy foretold . Noughties nostalgia has grown into something bigger: a vibe shift. And slowly but surely the cultural pillars of the late 2010s/early 2020s are being knocked down (goodbye clean girl aesthetic and 5am club).
In their place? A new wave of grubbier, scenier pop culture reminiscent of the halcyon days of, er, Club NME. There’s an electroclash revival teetering into existence. There’s all those lyrics about doing keys and being a party girl on Brat .
The coolest pop stars have got really into smoking again. (See: Dua Lipa at Glastonbury and Rosalía..
. everywhere?) Gigi Hadid appeared in Heaven and Dilara Findikoglu’s latest campaign sporting eyeliner I last saw at a The Horrors gig. MySpace’s hippest photographer, the bloody Cobrasnake, is getting hit up to photograph the coolest parties once again.
And amidst all of this, what I’d call “Gen-Z Aesthetics TikTok” is beginning to mine the fashion archives for indie sleaze inspo and discovering some of the late-’00s’ greatest hits for the very first time. I hadn’t really thought about it before but – just as many Americans don’t realise that bronze, buff EDM Calvin Harris used to be pale, gangly electro Calvin Harris – there’s a real chance that anyone born after, say, 2008 might only know Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as the impossibly chic designers of The Row rather than the grunge queens of New York: child stars turned NYU drop outs. And it .