As someone born in the early 2000’s I’m probably in no way qualified to say this but… bring back 90s culture. Specifically British 90s culture. There’s just something about it that hits different to me, I long to experience it and I know at least a couple of friends who do too.
Before Spotify crawled its way into everyone’s lives and took all our money, music was a culture. There was no algorithm to pick what you should and shouldn’t like, you had to pick a side, Oasis or Blur, and it wasn’t just about the music, this was politics. Britpop made itself a national identity and music wasn’t just background noise for a long car ride, it was everything. Music was culture, it was gritty, raw controversial and it meant something. The songs on the radio were about more than just sex and heartbreaks, it made you actually feel something. Not to mention the rise of the girl band, The Spice Girls themselves were a cultural force to be reckoned with, they made friendship bracelets trendy and proved that five girls in platform heels could do amazing things. So yes, absolutely bring back 90s Brit culture if it means being able to live through the music scene that they had.
It wasn’t just the music too, even the TV shows were better. There was no doom scrolling or skipping adds, and as any other early 2000’s kid will know, there was nothing better than hearing someone yell ‘its back on’ when you’ve gone to the toilet during an ad break. 90s British tv gave us low-rev graphics, slow and strange masterpieces. Somehow the poor quality makes them better, the low budget makes them feel more comforting. I don’t feel as strongly about it as I do music, because I am a victim of the hour long Tik Tok scroll, but I absolutely think that 90’s tv would raise our kids better than some random American yapping on YouTube any day.
Everything in the 90s just had more meaning, the music, the tv, and the fashion. British fashion in the 90s didn’t try to be perfect or fit an aesthetic, it just was. Now, I’m not saying that flared jeans, crop tops and mini backpacks are my style, but it was organic. Styles came from underground and rose up with everyone from the council estate kids to the celebrities putting their own twist on the current trend. Britain in the 90s had a uniform and it was bold, effortless and a bit rebellious. They were trying to prove something, and it didn’t matter what it was because at least they were doing it with conviction. Most people now have all these opinions and goals and do nothing with them, teenagers only focus on being validated and conforming to what others want them to be rather than expressing themselves freely and fighting for that freedom to do so. People have lost their passion and the pattern of the trend cycle reflects this. The 90s trends lived a full life while recently, the trend cycles are exhausting, constantly switching from one thing to the next, never actually exploring all aspects or experimenting with making it individual to you. The result, everyone dresses the same. Not literally, but figuratively, some people pick a certain ‘aesthetic’ and stays with it, others don’t and follow the consumer trend, buying and wearing what the people on their screens are telling them to, but this changes so quickly that one day everyone is wearing converse, and the next everyone is in stores paying a stupid amount for three different pairs of Crocs in all different colours. Granted, bad example because I have two pairs myself, but for me its practical for work, I have my reasons I promise.
Either way, die modern trends die, all hail the fashion culture of the 90s.
Lastly, bring back boredom. Before we all had phones, when you were bored, you had to actually find something to do, and not stare at a little screen until you fall asleep. Boredom bred creativity, people made art, mixtapes, kids made up new games, there were drawings and clothes and music being made simply because they didn’t have Tik Tok, YouTube or Instagram to rely on. They had the patience to wait a whole week for the next episode and they built stuff with their hands just to have something to do, and honestly, I think this made them a better society than we are. We may have better technology, but that doesn’t make us better people, we’re less compassionate, less accepting (despite all this preach about accepting everyone no matter what), less creative and less human. This new tech may make our lives easier and supposedly better, but our struggles are a part of the human experience and we’re kind of ruining that for ourselves.
So absolutely, bring it all back, bring back the music that made you scream the lyrics like they mattered – because they did. Bring back the dodgy but charming tv shows that aren’t just in it for the views. Bring back fashion for the self over fashion for the masses, and bring back the boredom that sparked something real. We don’t need five-second trends or AI generated algorithms telling us what to like and what not to like. We need a culture that feels lived in, a messy, bold, unapologetic culture. The 90s were messy and definitely not perfect, but they were real, people actually lived their lives for themselves rather than for the validation of others.
Bring back Britain in the 90s… but maybe leave all the bad bits behind.
xoxo The Bueno Dispatch