![]() ![]() ![]() With the current reboot deluge in culture, it almost doesn’t matter if the show is an objective failure or success when it dominates social media conversations. Young people, especially teen girls, have an enormous impact on pop culture, from running TikTok accounts for ’90s and 2000s shows, it’s no surprise that the industry is trying to appeal to them and boost profits. The idea of bringing back a show or movie that has a die-hard fandom is an easy win for executives there’s little risk because people will tune in, even if they choose to hate-watch. Often, these reboots follow a similar premise, but include more BIPOC and LGBTQ+ characters. In entertainment, TV and film executives constantly push reboots of original shows that are still popular and in the zeitgeist. From the resurgence of Balenciaga’s City Bag to Hulu’s scandalous Von Dutch documentary, the message is clear: 2000s nostalgia is the look du jour. Champion may have peaked in the 90s, but in 2021, its hoodies and sweatpants are once again inescapable. On the consumer front, brands such as Vetements were quick to capitalize on 2000s nostalgia at its start: In 2018, the French fashion house released a Juicy Couture collaboration, complete with rhinestone tracksuits that looked straight out of 2003. For stylists, dressing clients in beloved references yields a higher reward - media recognition, for example - for less work. While fashion is an integral part of pop culture, the regurgitation of iconic moments makes for nostalgic whiplash. ![]() “I like to pretend that it still smells like Aaliyah, and I just hope that Aaliyah is looking down at this little brown Filipino boy giving her dress justice 21 years later,” a gleeful Bretman told Variety. Social media influencer Bretman Rock turned up to the red carpet in a yellow tiger print Roberto Cavalli dress, the same dress the late R&B singer Aaliyah popularized almost two decades before. Beer looked stunning, but headlines immediately clocked the look for what it was: an homage to the same dress Beyoncé wore 18 years prior. In September, 22-year-old singer Madison Beer arrived on the VMA red carpet in a pink corseted silk and lace Dolce & Gabbana dress from the line’s Spring/Summer 2003 collection. The decade is still young, but the question remains: How will we define our own form of pop culture for the 2020s in an era of remakes, reboots, and consistent homages to our favorite celebrities? “But it meant I met lots of interesting people who I then took photos of.”īelow, Rebecca Zephyr Thomas talks us through a selection of mid-aughts indie sleaze portraits, recalling the characters on the Shoreditch scene and her memories of the kids who lived through it the first time around.Nostalgia isn’t unique to contemporary pop culture, but so far in the 2020s, it’s in overdrive. “I was partying quite hard, which had its downsides,” she remembers. Over the years, she amassed an archive of images capturing the faces of this febrile scene in the pubs and streets of the so-called “Shoreditch Triangle” and beyond, as well as becoming a regular at The Underage Club – a club night for teens founded by Sam Kilcoyne. ![]() Throughout the period, Thomas worked part-time at Agent Provocateur whilst becoming embroiled in the world of London nightlife, never missing an opportunity to carouse around with her camera. I shot with either available light or on-camera flash and I mainly used the upstairs of pubs or the street as my locations.” My photography style was resolutely anti-commercial – no models, no studios, no lighting setups, no stylists. Thomas recalls: “I shot all these photos on my father’s 1970s Nikonmat camera that I’d nicked when I moved to London in 2002 from New Zealand, everything was on film, it was a bit of a Luddite move in the early 2000s as most people were using digital. The only expensive element would have been the haircuts.” “All you needed was a vintage dress, slogan tee-shirt, a pair of Converse, Wayfarer sunglasses by Ray-Ban and you were away. “I was never a real indie person – I liked Dr Dre – but I definitely appreciated the look and also the fact that the ‘indie sleaze’ uniform was so easy and cheap to assemble,” Thomas tells Dazed. Characterised by a low-fi, mash-up, Tumblr aesthetic, plenty of smeary kohl pencil, Ronnie Spector bed-head hairdos, and American Apparel standards as a counterpoint to charity shop finds, indie sleaze was a look immortalised in the high-contrast Polaroids and flash-lit photography that prevailed at the time. ![]()
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