Edit; I’m not asking what the 90s were like because I was there. I’m thinking what the pastiche of the 90s would be like should it have a revival like the 80s one that is nothing like the real 1980s by young people that presumably only have vague ideas from magazines and music and movies to go by. Like for example if it takes off from grunge but not like it was then but like it is idealised by kids today, what would it be like? What else was a 90s thing? Boy bands and indie pop mixed together on MTV? Hardcore techno and jungle/dnb with it’s own analogue distribution channels by mail, flyers, mixtapes? Last generation of B-movies with practical effects shot on film before that part of the industry degraded into C-tier on digital with terrible CGI in the 00s? Mainstream pop culture, whatever that was? Television and radio, magazines and records before the internet took off? How would any or all of that be reimagined by people that didn’t live it back then? I had no interest then nor do I have today for fashion magazines so if somebody knows I’d love to hear your twist on the topic.
Synthwave was the result of taking futurist stuff from the 1980s, and then decades in the future creating a nostalgic 1980s retrofuturism-themed theme combining various things like Tron and Outrun.
So I guess that the closest analog would be looking for aesthetics from movies that were aiming for a futuristic vibe in the 1990s, then combining those.
https://old.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1bauod1/in_retrospect_1990s_scifi_film_had_a_very/
In retrospect, 1990s sci-fi (film) had a very distinct style.
At the time you couldn’t really tell, but looking back at the body of work that came out during that time, there was a very distinct style…and that style was apparently rust, lots of tubes connecting everything and up close shots with a fish eye lens.
Spaceship? Make it as rusty and dark as possible.
Medical scene? Connect her to 75 tubes to nowhere.
Getting chased down a corridor? Fish eye, baby.
I swear this is like every other sci fi film from 94 until 2000. A lot of it is almost reminiscent of horror.
70’s sci fi was still the era of tin foil and white jumpsuits. (Logans Run, Zardoz, etc. Star Wars was the exception, not the rule.) 80’s sci fi was darker and grittier and more serious looking drama, heavily influenced by Star Wars and Alien at the end of the 70’s. (TWOK, Blade Runner, Aliens, etc.) A lot of that mid-late 90’s stuff was leaning into horror, and kind of continuing a trend of the 80’s darker sci fi popularity. Then by like 2009, you had the Apple Store aesthetic in the Star Trek reboot where the style was “the future’s so bright you gotta wear shades.” It was all lens flares for a few minutes.
So I guess maybe it’d have more of a horror vibe than synthwave?
Interesting. This is what I was going for in my thoughts. But so how would it be reimagined through a contemporary retro wave? Or was the arty and dark witch house exactly this?
Doc Martens and flannel. Can you smell the grunge?
It’d be Niravana done in the style of Phil Collins while the video shows a vhs recording of people partying on a beach in board shorts and bikinis flanked by skaters in JNCO jeans with POGs glued to their skateboards with a club in the background that’s called “The Edge”, which is brightly adorned with a combination of “that cup design” and the pastel RGBY in geometric shapes while inside its actually got a simultaneous jungle and future aesthetic.
Surfers wearing bright pastels, talking like ninja turtles, all shot on cheap video cameras.
Vaporwave is that
I’m thinking that vaporwave is a niche glitch aesthetics spinoff from the dial up experience.
Depends on which part of the 90s. That whole “deep space nine” color palette was huge in the early 90s — lots of maroons and mustards and dark grays.
