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What years did today's "look" start in, both in clothing and hair style?
I'm not talking about particular fashion trends, or the appearance peculiar to certain subcultures (emo, goth, punk, etc.). I'm talking about what would be considered the mainstream style.
To put it differently: looking back on photos or videos, what's the earliest year that you would confuse, or almost confuse, with the current year, if you were not to know what year the photos or videos were from?
I'm looking at the yearbook from my freshman year of high school - 2001-02. The individual student photos - which would have been taken in September 2001 (I believe they were taken right before 9/11) - do not look radically different from what I see on the street and in Facebook pictures today (besides that stupid short on the sides hairstyle for girls). The same with the senior color pictures, which were mostly taken in 2001, some in 2000.
On the other hand, I remember my 8th grade geography classroom having pictures of each (partial) 8th grade class since 1992 outside a monument in Washington D.C. The classes from 1994 and before were dressed and groomed in a style that could absolutely not be mistaken for then. That was less than seven years prior to then, and my yearbook is over ten years old.
Watching some commercials from 1999 on Youtube, you can tell that they were from a different period by the clothing / hair styles, but even they were not as radically divergent from those of today as the 1994 8th grade class picture was from those of 2000.
I wear clothes from as far back as 2003 in public, and I don't feel out of place.
So I would say 2000-2001 are the earliest pair of years in which the contemporary "look" could be (almost) confused with the current look.
I think 1994 was still being influenced by the late 1980s; by 2000 most of the 80s influence was gone. I haven't studied it enough to know when the switch over really came.
I'm going to say somewhere around '03-'05. My fashion sense died when I graduated high school in '96
(I still wear a few things from the mid-late '90s), but spending enough time walking around department stores with my wife and the ton of clothing catalogues we get in the mail are saying '03-'05 to me.
I think fashion follows a 7 year timeline. I'm certain it gradually changes before then, but 7 years is typically when I notice a real difference. Today, flares are making a comeback. 7 years ago, around 2005, I remember skinny jeans coming around, and flares going away. Around 1998, when I was starting a new school, I noticed more kids wearing flares than the relaxed fit, tapered look. 1991 was still like the 1980s. I'll project the rest because I'm not that old, but from what I've seen in movies or older advertisements: 1984 was likely when "80s" fashion started and bell bottoms were already fazed out, etc; 1977 was "disco", 1970 was still "hippie", 1963 was when the '60s became contemporary (Beach culture from Beach Boys, R&B/Soul music from the Supremes, etc.), and '50s style fashion and Rock n' Roll was fazed out, etc. (Anyone who remembers these times is free to correct me.)
Today's look started when women began wearing "helmet hair." (example: Kate Gosselin during the heyday of that horrible TV show)
I've seen many women with that hairstyle but never gave it a second thought until now. Just goes to show that it's very difficult to judge, or "notice", the time we presently live in. If that makes any sense.
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