How ’60s Psychedelia Became Fashion and Streetwear’s Latest Obsession
Brain Dead, Online Ceramics and Cactus Plant Flea Market are upping the dosage one drop at a time.
Common wisdom tells us trends flow in cycles. Spin the fashion history wheel at random, and you’re bound to land on something that looks a lot like something else. During the 1950s in the UK, teenage boys took to dressing like Edwardian-era dandies and called themselves “Teds,” joined by their female counterparts “The Judies.” Popular American fashion in the 1980s was functionally a redux of motifs from the ‘50s: Rayban Wayfarers, varsity jackets and Ronald Reagan. The ‘90s amounted to more of a bricolage than a clean lift: a ‘60s-style fringed suede jacket here, a billowing 40s zoot suit there. Like the ‘90s, our most recent decade has been a carousel of the past’s greatest hits. And while much has been made of Gen Z’s thrift-store odes to Y2K, there’s another, trippier trend having a similarly buzzy moment.
