90's Party

(In Samfunnet tonite! A celebration of things long gone, I guess.) The wyff (born 1982) thinks the 90's was an indistinct decade. I (born 1976) begs to differ. In female mainstream fashion it heralded the return of the babe - in male fashion a much needed sobering came through stronger and stronger as we closed in on the millenium.

And in streetfashion the unlikly marriage betwixt grunge and hip-hop/rap was dominant, atleast in Scandinavia. Check this video by Stockholm/suburbia based Latin Kings - Kompisar från förr - (Buddies from before); the band who truly broke scandinavian language rap, not only to the masses, but to the 100's of hip-hop collectives round the archepilago.

Kompisar från förr, kompisar från förr/Nogra lyckas, nogra dör :: Buddies from before, buddies from before/Some succeed, some dies... et cetera.

Girl Power! Was a big thing there for a while, and it is only passing strange, methinkst, that one of the greatest hits of the early ninties was Barbie Girl by Aqua. That girls again where supposed to be girls, a trend that has held true ever since, I think is no loss. I mean, really, androgynity is sexy, really really fucking hot sometimes, but the women trying to be men we saw in the 80's where really just... sad.

An oft overlooked trend you can find in the very Barbie Girl-hit is the return of Ken. The facialhair-trends of the 90's where dominated by goatee's (or at heigth the 'smultring'), and the phattest sideburns you could find were the Beverly Hills 90210 sideburn reaching all the way down to the top of the earlobe - and only in the new millenia did we see the return of manly things such as the full mullah and the (only) slightly ironical mustache.

On a scale, and I do not think I'm only saying this because I was 14 in 90 and 24 in 2000, the early 90's where dominated by a sertain naïvitee, a lack of refinment that slowly worked itself into the decadent and non-flamboyant styles of the new millenium - and while its going out on a half-broken limb; I think shit like Hammertime, Maccarena (the ketchup song!) and Ice, Ice Baby will be hard pressed to ever reach the mainstream again.