As anyone who follows fashion trends for any period of time realizes, what is new is often a modernized version of the old. In recent years, the fifties seem to have dominated the scene. Pinup girls, skinny jeans, red lips and big, black sunglasses.

I’m a detriot-politico-fashionista and in my mind, the trend of returning to the fifties has been reflexive of our broader political/cultural trends in these, the Bush years. The war on terrorism is the cold war, reworked and reworded. Silly pop songs like “sweet escape” and “fergalicious” are “rock around the clock” for a different generation. Likewise, a subculture of anti-establishment artists reign outside of the establishment’s eyes; bright eyes being our allen ginsberg.

However, when I took my detroit-politico-fashionista ass to New York City for this past week, I noticed something. Just as the sixties shattered the fifties (the poodle-skirt wearing teeny-boppers left in frantic awe) so it seems, the mod dress of the sixties is beginning to overtake the fifties trend.

NYC was dominated with demure beauties in dresses twiggy would’ve adored. Super loose dresses made of brightly printed silks and jerseys with skirts so short, indecent exposure charges could be made. These are worn primarily with bare legs or bright leggings and flat shoes.

As I sat at a cafe table pondering the passage of fashion trends from one generation to the next, I wondered if this was some foreshadowing of what’s to come in our political and cultural lives. will the next years be filled with protests in the streets, burning draft cards and the uprising of the (thusfar) anti-establishment subculture?

Time will tell…

Filed under: Fashion, Living