What drives me nuts as a gen x is when gen z wear slayer and metallica shirts and don't even know a song. In my day, that would get you ripped on hard. Posers lol
It's about the art. Metallica didn't make those designs. Those were made by commissioned artists, and they look good so people wear them. Obviously you should check out the bands themselves, but it's all about the art/visuals in the end.
I always found Gen X 90’s fashion to be more authentic giving way to a lot of popular modern trends today. I remember when JNCOs were popular which nowadays I do see the wide leg fit become more trendy. I also remember Gap being one of the most popular stores to shop at.
Great commentary. Totally agree. Gen X kids (born from 1965 to 1980) drastically experimented with fashion from the late 70s, 80s and early 90s. People look back and laugh at the 70s disco outfits and 80s neon clothing and hair bands; however, Gen X broke apart gender-stereotypes with fashion. Cis men wore as much makeup and hairspray as women and trans-performers. Our neon clothes were the rainbow flag of our generation. Many musicians across genres promoted gender-fluidity and androgyny in the 80s. We grew up idolizing cross-dressing bands like Queen, Kiss, Prince, David Bowie, Boy George, Elton John, KD Lang, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, The Cure, and many more. "Glam rockers" also embraced gender-fluid fashion including Motley Crew, Poison, Twisted Sister and Aerosmith. Kurt Cobain also wore dresses. Gen X pioneered the New Wave of gender-fluid fashion that continues today.
I'm Gen X (born 1974), and just about everything you said about us and our style(s) is 100% dead on. And, yes, I'm extremely protective of our style. My personal style is firmly rooted in the late 80s/early to mid 90s, and although it gets refreshed and updated, it has stayed consistent all these years. Our style was influenced by the times. On the one hand, it was a time of affluence, even decadence (ESPECIALLY the 80s), as well as a time where we really thought the future was bright and things would keep getting better - especially after the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. You can hear that optimism in the music of the late 80s and early 90s, as well as see it in our movies, which are being endlessly and soullessly remade these days. It was just an optimistic time, where there was a sense that people's fingers had moved away from "The Button", and everyone could finally let out the breath we'd all been collectively holding, and finally breathe freely. On the other hand, it was also a time of tremendous change. We were the generation that came at the end of the Civil Rights movement, and that showed in how we grew up. Racism was fading, and there was real effort at cross cultural understanding and appreciation. Anyone who doubts that should remember that the 80s was when rap and break-dancing went mainstream, and Michael Jackson was the biggest pop star on the planet. Growing up a mixed kid in a very mixed area on the East Coast, my friends were kids of all races and ethnicities, and none of us ever even realized it. But it wasn't without its struggles, either, and we hear echoes of that in the music of groups/artists like NWA and Tupac, as well as see it in all of Spike Lee's movies. But it was in the late 80s and early 90s that black culture really BECAME pop culture, and that influence persists today. It was also a time when manufacturing started being shipped overseas in earnest, and factories began shutting down, leading to collapsing industries and towns, and an increase in homelessness, crime, and drugs, and in many cases, as times got harder, the stressing or disintegration of families. At the very least, it was increasingly common for both parents to work, leading to an entire generation of "Latchkey" kids who basically grew up in after school programs because their parents had to work. This contributed to a sense of frustration, insecurity, depression, and anger that we can see expressed in the Grunge fashion and music rebellion of the early to mid 90s. And lest we forget, the 80s and 90s also gave us Heavy Metal, "hair bands", hip hop, boy (and girl) bands, drastically loosened sexual mores, the internet, cyber culture, and, by the end of it all, a real sense of being burned out, jaded, and wondering, "Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?" It was a creative time, an exhilarating time. It was REAL. It was fresh and new and exciting and bursting with a sense that ANYTHING was possible, but also a confusion as to where it all was going. And all that vibrance and energy poured out and swirled together and produced the styles that people are still imitating today - sadly, without the SOUL. I loved growing up as part of Gen X. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. It was a great time to be alive. And I still stay true to my personal style that was shaped and molded by being a mulatto kid growing up at the confluence of ALL of that culture. I am the place where hip hop, rap, heavy metal, and alternative come together and coalesce into something new and unexpected. I am the place where welfare kids and rich kids, John Hughes and Spike Lee come together. I am where Motley Crüe, Skid Row, NWA, Nice N Smooth, The Gin Blossoms, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, The Stone Temple Pilots, The Goo Goo Dolls, Tupac, Puff Daddy, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, and The Cranberries become one. For me, wearing the clothes I wear isn't an affectation; it isn't a soulless attempt to imitate the style of yesteryear without understanding it's context. I didn't appropriate my style, I LIVED it. My style is to me what some people's tattoos are to them: my personal story, and a reflection of who I am. And I love it.
Gen X was amazing... music had a great influence on fashion back then, everything people wear now, had already been worn back then... take a look at Suicidal Tendencies pics or vids from the late 80s and early 90s
I was going to say Gen X too, mainly because millennials built on that, and I'm weirdly nostalgic for fashion being about community. Self expression is fun, but it can still exist within community, and being able to guess a few of a person's interests by what they wore was helpful, socially. I am curious what fashion will look like for Gen Z in hindsight, when there only seems to be time to create/recreate styles, and infuse trends, instead of creating visually distinct things. Most 'aesthetics' require a series of images build up enough to guess the direction of, and I don't know that that will be a strong reference point for people to look back on in the same way an image of a hippie, punk, or scene kid might be.
One thing about Gen X is that since we didn't have the internet or social media as an outlet for communication in the 80s to mid 90s, I think fashion played a huge role with our self-expression.
Gen X here (1979). High School years 1993 - 1997. My older siblings & cousins were all born in the early to mid 70's. Gen X fashion (imo) was all about being true to yourself, & what you felt looked cool. You (90's slang) "Rocked" it with confidence, because you felt it was true to your personality/culture. I think the key factor is authenticity. (Generally speaking) We wore things not to fit-in, but we genuinely were (90's slang) "feeling" that our gear was just our style/personality. Most of us didn't care what other people thought about what we were wearing. If we liked it, we were "Rocking" it, with quiet confidence. Like I previously mentioned, authenticity is the foundation. Like the popular 90's slogan we "Kept it real." & we still do.
@ 9:43 1973 Xer, exactly, we did not even try....still wear my grunge sweater and worn-out pair of jeans. No internet until the mid-to-late 1990s (people seem to seriously forget that!) so did not rely on social media. Music largely influenced our fashion, pop-Style Madonna, grunge Nirvana etc and cannot be under-estimated. Profoundly individual, I never thought about my clothes as a status symbol either (we had these 1980s United Colors of Benetton crap adverts on TV but that never took off), I just wore what I thought would match my personality and so did my peers, even at school...I still do, and I still do not give a damn....Kurt was right all along.
I’m a tip-end GenXer, older millennial. And in that era we had a regurgitation of style cycles like 60s mod/jazzer/swinger styles, 70s retro, 80s punk revivals which I still adopt to this day, on top of my nerdy/skater/street/hip-hop look. And it’s dope that Gen Z is adopting much of these today with oversized everything, the JNCO/houser look. But I have a small build and have lost a lot of weight so I’ve been the fittest I’ve ever been in my life. And I find it so annoying trying to shop for clothing because literally EVERY retailer has gone oversized! Even an XS from Uniqlo can be too big for me! lol I digress…I dig the oversized look, cuz hell, my generation started it. But it’s not very suiting to my smaller stature and so I’m having a difficult time trying to enjoy my newfound body build as I adopted a more ‘fitted’ look since the mid-2000s.
im a millenial, and i like gen x's more than z's style. the reason is... they, gen z's looked like wear some uniforms, even the streetwear or the "so called authentic" are still uniform (it's different with basic). gen x's on te other hand, have theme but not tryin to fit in, so seeking for the most flattering style for themselves whether they'll be popular or not. it was similar case wth y2k (don't really fancy y2k), y2k was the peak of freedom and starting point of uniform look. y2k seems to brought back but it was more disaster than the 00's because everyone looked like in uniform on steroid (even when they said they're authentic, unique, or whatever). LOL. but, i like how fashion is more reachable and more worldy spread than the 90's and 00's.
I was born in 1980 and have to say every modern trend is a variation of something I lived through. I find it weird how many kids dress exactly like me and my friends in high school(1994-98 and we were the skaters of the school only about 10 of us because skateboarding was unpopular at the time) I was always told I was Gen x
I'm from the same era. It's really bizarre to me to see teens starting to get into the stuff I wore in high school. I feel like.... Really? Are we going back to those jeans?? Then I remember I'm old as shit and it has been 25+ yrs
I'm getting tired of being swung from one generation to another; I was born in 1980, and I'm a late Gen X. One of the most extraordinary things about my age is everybody mingled with everybody: in your group of friends, you used to have the Emo friend, the punk, hip hop, classic ones, etc.
Thank you for this! This is honestly the first time I've seen a Millennial give Gen X credit for anything. They seem to want to take credit for creating the era themselves. This is an excellent take!
I agree . Born in 1991 i grew up watching friends , seinfeld on tv and seeing cindy, naomi, claudia, linda evangelista, yasmeen ghauri and stephanie schiffer on all those magazines and billboards and i have to say that they are the hallmark of fashion. Even though i was a small kid at the time i was amazed at the amazing clothes and styles i grew up seeing. The early 90s was a fun time for sure. Unluckily for us we grew into teenagers when fashion took the ugliest turn into the 2000's trends and everythin i assumed id be wearing as a teen and an early youth went out the window as it just wasnt there anymore. Not until 2020 when the early 90s started returning and gen z started wearing it did i recognise these styles on those gen x supermodels. So millenials grew up influenced by gen x fashion but didnt get to wear it in our teens and early 20s and gen z instead waltzed right into it when the trends recycled back. Oh well dosent stop millenials from wearing it now. We wore it as kids so may as well wear it in our late 20s and 30s since its finally back. But its definitely credit to gen x for the greatest fashion trends that ruled the 80s and 90s
My fists are not wrinkly! Yet. I feel that there was a shift in the way we dress and think about clothes in the 80's, largely due to the Japanese invasion of Paris. Suddenly the high fashion runways were filled with oversized, androgynous, deconstructed and sometimes distressed and torn swathes of black fabric. This was at a time when fashion was all about power dressing, glitz and traditional femininity/masculinity. What's shown on the runways doesn't dictate what people on the street will wear, but it does filter down.
GenX- The Coolest ! Most Original Millennials - The Blenders/The Bridge- Blurred the lines between high and urban! Kanye and Pharrell’s Children! GenZ- The Freest So Far! The Most Expressive! Coronials- Boys will wear skirts and girls will go shirtless at the beach! And Non Binary Genderless fashion will be a norm!
1978'er here...I was infatuated with Breakdancing and then Thrash Metal. Both outsider things when they started. Now i look at how far our fashion went is amazing. IS any fashion outsider anymore? or is it all branded and shared.
Wrinkly fists 🤣 Gen x is the blue print I see a lot of the fashion trends of that time being worn now. But that's fashion its all a cycle great video as usual.
im a gen z (that sounds so weird but yeah) and I feel like everything bout gen x is strangly nostalgic, like I wish I was from then, where everything is so authentic😢
It's really a story of accessibility over time as well, culminating with IG and TikTok having everything from everywhere right in the palm of your hand
What counts as a Millennial can get confusing. Some would say that I'm a late Millennial and others would say that I'm an early Zennial. I'm totally a Zennial.
Madonna is not Gen X. She’s a late Boomer. They call us Generation Jones. She started performing in the 70’s and got her first major label record deal in the 80’s
Ah I knew that would come up! Madonna was earlier but she certainly influenced Gen X by a mile. That's the ONLY reason she made the thumbnail. If I put your generation in It would have been NO CONTEST. All the greats come pre - 80s.
I'm an X and also into the fashion design for more than 30 years, and frankly said, the entire modern fashion is a collaboration or a mix of ideas influenced (stolen) from various cultures of the middle ages going through The Renaissance and jumping in the modern post-war times since where the actual modern fashion begins, forming styles which ending in the late 90's of the 20 century. Since then, the fashion looks like searching for something new, but ending in a disaster, because all good was already discovered and invented. That's why it is better to imitate and renovate the old style, than trying to create something new which in most cases will be a bad copy of already existing. Every 20-30 years, something old comes to life again, like perpetual fashion wheel of time.
Gen X all the way!!! We did what we wanted to. Still do. Most Gen Xer’s have a love/ hate relationship with technology, large scale operations, and will be haunted by the book 1984 forever. Cynicism and sarcasm are our jam!
I think the worst time in fashion was 2000s (you can youtube 2000s celebrities red carpet outfits for example) and i guess that’s millennials. I just think it’s important to mention 🤣 but then millennials themselves grew out of it and wanted to leave low-rise and rhinestones where they belong but Gen Z fell in love with it, glorified it and latched onto it 2019 onwards.
I feel like gen Z has made fashion itself its own culture with many subcultures within itself, it used to be fashion followed the music, the community, nowadays the community is created by the style in which people want to dress. there are dedicated discord servers to just kiko or rick owens, these ppl may not have the same taste in music but they have the same taste in style which is really interesting as it allows each individual to borrow from their other interests, you can have two ppl who like rick with one who loves punk and another who loves hiphop and they put their own spin onto the same brand aesthetic.
You really over estimate the internet of the early to late 90s. The internet you describe doesn't happen till early 2000s and when the apple iphone1 came out. Also id say millennials are the kids that grew up in 2000s. And genZ kinda filed in after. Yeah there was blogs and what not in the 90s, But accessibility wasn't the same. It wasnt streamlined it was clunky.
But it was millenials that utilized the internet to process and disseminate info via blogs, forums, and message boards. Regardless of it being slow, it wasn’t the speed so much as it was the access.
I would say that overall, Generation X has the biggest influence on Generation Z. However, since I have never been interested in fashion, I have no idea if Generation X (which I am a part of) has any influence on Generation Z's fashion. But what I can say is that I like Generation Z's genderless style.
I'm turning 50 this year and my 20 year old daughter is raiding my wardrobe...she says old man's clothes are trendy these days! (Just don't touch my cardigans and corduroys)
Gen X defined styles. Millenials refined it. Gen Z cant decide what to identify with but thats not a bad thing. I think millenials let style extend to personality and define it in a sense. I think the 90s was the best time for fashion because it was slower moving and when something creative was done it was authentic.
Actually the reason why most generations are generally 15 years and not 20 is because it’s widely accepted that at 15 you are unlikely to have children. In the past the age of consent was younger and 16 was plausible because at this point most females are physically capable to bear children. Many have kept the 15 year model over the 20 year model in terms of generation gap and it makes more sense because a 15yo and a 1 year old will essentially be exposed to the same things growing up mainly because a 15 yo will still be a dependent as the 1 year old hits 2 or 3. By 5 the child is exposed to ALL content a 20year old will be interested in. However a 5yo and a 25yo will often be out of lockstep with each other.
When you said lets not forget hip hop made street wear more popular and im over here as a skateboarder like….thanks? Lol. Timberland buying out Ipath ruined that brand completely. Same with Supra when Supra was sort of the hip hop artist of the 2010- shoe. I wish somebody like Lil Wayne woulda bought Supra to keep it alive and innovative. Not to mention now bc vintage has blown up all the dickies jeans i used to get from kmart for $25 are now $100s but have luckily gone down due to people just tryna make a buck not caring to get top dollar for them and thats what i love about the late gen z kids. Alot of them think overpriced everything is dumb and i agree besides with tees. Tees are a great market that i love but not everything needs to be priced so high like a Stanford crewneck being $65-80 is garbage BUT i will still sell my stuff at market value as they drive down prices bc why not.
Street started with skate BUT was expanded to mainstream by its integration with hip hop. I would think that skaters didn’t need the popularity. When it was purely skate street it was far more lifestyle than fashion centric.
im a gen z-er and i think this is a flawed question, because gen x were the OGs for most of the fashion we see today, millenials helped spread it as you said, and gen z well i think we are more able to be ourselves through fashion, and i think we are influencing fashion a good bit, but thats just my opinion
The only thing Millennials brought to fashion is they tried to bring back the fashion their Boomer parents made popular in the '70s and '80s: skinny clothes, big beards and big eyeglasses. Other than that, the stuff they wore was similar to the stuff GenX wore, just not nearly as baggy. GenZ on the other hand, appears to be trying to bring back the baggy look of their GenX parents. It all seems so cyclical. On a side note, we have to give credit to a microgeneration that often gets overlooked: those born in the early 60s. They are not quite GenX but they are also not true Boomers. They're the ones that were in their twenties during the '80s. They are sometimes called Late Boomers or Generation Jones. A lot of the trends they started wearing in the late '80s such as Jordans, baseball caps, hair fades, etc, are still relevant and popular today.
yea i dont get how this guy completely skipped over the millennial hipster thing with the tweed jackets, sweaters, beards for men, thrift stores, sewing machines, return of thick frame 'geek' glasses, 60s style fades, and 'scholarliness' that was upcycled from the boomers. i'm a milllennial myself. this is the main statement millennials made.
GEN Z IS about lables and trends. Gen x was about self expression. Gen x also didn't try to keep styles from others by complaining about whether or not people were "ALOUD" to wear what they liked. Gen x didn't have or need social media to explain or "HYPE" our style. We were not following anyone. We just wore what we enjoyed wearing. So, no, Gen Z doesn't deserve any awards for their fashion sense. Get over yourself sir.
how? I love Gen Z. And if you love something its important to criticize it when necessary in hopes of making it better. Gen Z is an amazing generation but to say are the best (IMO) is just intellectually dishonest. Also don't assume things about people you don't know. That's how we get into unnecessary confrontations. We all like fashion here. There's little room for negative back and forth.
Gen X may have been the most "authentic" generation, but they were also nearly as conservative as Boomers man. They would often relegate themselves to trends within their sphere of culture. So much so that trying to experiment or dig deeper inside and evolve that culture was nearly impossible. Gen X might have been the origin point that modern Millenial/Gen Z elaborated on but they reacted with gatekeeping to anyone who tried to veer away from that authenticity. Gen X in my opinion is important, but they were not the best. They gave us the clay, but Millenials created the tools and skillset as a foundation that Gen Z uses to this day. Gen Z does have the potential to truly elaborate on global and modern fashion... but Millenials at the end of the day are the ones who get us here. Gen X can literally be compared to an sub-culture movement from even ancient generations. Without Millenials their fashion would have fallen into obscurity like so many before them. So while they were the launching point the same could be said for sub-cultures of the 20's and the 40's if the internet had become a thing at that point. Giving the BEST credit to Gen X gives them too much credit in my opinion. Especially since they are so eager to gatekeep. At least Millenials are willing to thrust the tools forward into Gen Z's hands. Millenial and Gen Z fashion can even be very hard to identify because they can look so similar. Of course as time goes forward Gen Z may push us even further beyond lol!
I hear you BUT without their gatekeeping we don’t have that foundation. We don’t have that culture nor refinement. As a millenial our part was so integral. And he information sharing alone is noteworthy. But it’s all a moot point without the consistency and culture of Gen X. The culture they protected gave rise to revolutions. This wasn’t just the US, Europe and particularly the UK was a BEAST in fashion during 75-early 90s. Nearly all the runway styles today are pulled directly from that period.
