The retro thing is you

Pinning down an exact date isn't important, but it was probably around the late 90's that I'd get the occasional 70s or 80s shirt.  I liked the look, I liked the fit (back then, Medium didn't also mean "wide"), and it went against current trends of weird oversized everything.  At the turn of the century, Dealville brought more options...so much so that a majority of my wardrobe was that stuff.  It got to the point that in the mid-00s I dropped off a bag at Goodwill that covered now 2nd-overworn "retro" clothes.  Less than a year later, I saw one of my shirts in an unfunny "comedy" worn by one of the main characters.  I'm not alone, it seems, but such things became harder and harder to find.  It made sense: time was marching on, that era gets older, stuff gets picked through.

Looking back, here's what's interesting: in any of the times wearing this clothing out and about (and it essentially covered my life for years and years) not once did I have someone who was my current age then see me and say "holy shit, why would you wear THAT?  Back then we didn't have a choice!" or something in that vein.  Maybe I was lucky.  Actually, the fact that I could just live life was good enough.

Last weekend as all the sales went on, I got one from a site I occasionally frequent with the subject line "Y2K Summer 4ever"

It comes for all of us.  Now I'm the one looking back 2 decades at fashions I attempted to avoid at the time.  Said fashions were apparently the "inspiration" for this new line.  For the intended audience, they were toddlers, babies, or not alive at all.  Another splash in the face.

"Vintage-inspired fits bringing major 00's vibes into Summer."  

I...you know, at bars I'd inhabit we'd give to shit to people wearing this stuff.  It stopped before things got "heated", but you wouldn't choose these things.  Well, I didn't.  Wouldn't.  No one I knew did, either.

Out of morbid curiosity, I clicked the button "shop Y2K".  Von Dutch...Ed Hardy...West Coast Choppers.  Yes, I remember seeing this all, and all that came with it.  I stopped to think "...but why?"  And just as soon as I thought that another thought came in: well, why did you?  You had your reasons for 80s clothes, they have theirs.  That was your "time", this is their "time."

Another thing that has since hit me: the "retro" to me can't help but seem so much older...which it is: there's no denying that.  20 years didn't seem so far away at the time.  Now it's 40...50?  Holy shit.  Maybe that mine has been picked.  Those of another generation have gone to pick their mine, one that holds no value to me, but is worthy to them.  

For me, there's a depression that comes with it.  Finding more video gold from my retro time makes me feel a little better.  It should be curious, I suppose, that it's only when I hear new music that I really like does my depression lift: I'm enjoying something from today?!  At my retro time, it always seemed an odd juxtaposition of then and now.  Maybe that's how I've always lived my life.  And maybe (thankfully I should say) I'm realizing I'm not alone.