Why is Tumblr aesthetics making a comeback in 2022?

Article originally published January 6, 2022.

On TikTok, fashion trendsetter Mandy Lee (@oldoserinbrooklyn) saw her video Indie Sleaze go viral: it’s about the strong 2000s aesthetic, filled with retro Lycra sportswear and flower crowns for pop star willingly trash. Or soft emo grunge to put it politely.

Typically, the days when the media thought it was cool to tease Lily Allen, bright pink hair on a white dress, in a K-Hole outfit (ketamine overdose), escorted out of the 2008 Glamor Awards ceremony. the worst of the Y2K period.

Daughter, or rather little sister, of this dark period of popular culture that isindie squalor (literally: the independent sordid), it’s the Tumblr era. And now it’s back in fashion, driven by the health and social crisisfueling a new wave of passions in young France.

By the way, what was Tumblr culture?

This American microblogging platform was launched in 2007 and gained popularity in France in the 2010s. This is how, as a teenager locked in my room, I discovered Xavier Dolan, Lana Del Rey and Azealia Banks, and that I had decided to make it my personality, for example. On my Tumblr I have spent my life creating and sharing gifs of the British series Skinswhere minors too often drunk and drugged made me want to live dangerously to feel exist.

These 2010s formed a form of the golden age of artists like Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, Lorde or even Marina & the Diamonds. Their music, their clips and their looks have formed what we can call the Tumblr culture whose aesthetics are making a comebackaccording to rowing American which he titled: “The 2014 Tumblr Girl Is Back”.

Basically: ultra glitter make-up, heart-shaped moles, kitsch flower crowns, oversized denim jackets, oversized rock band t-shirts, fishnet stockings and biker boots are back in fashion. And if it looks a bit like the look of the heroines of the very contemporary series Euphoriathis is further proof this soft emo grunge aesthetic rebirth. But why (from) now when it barely dates back to yesterday?

Why is Tumblr culture (already) making a comeback in 2022?

The content creator Clara Defaux, already known on YouTube under the pseudonym of Clarinet where she talks about fan studies (an academic discipline that analyzes fans, fandoms, fan culture and productions), has rightly dedicated an enlightening video to fan culture. .

Close LoseClara Defaux is hardly surprised by the current renaissance of the Tumblr aesthetic, which in part is generational change, like every decadein your opinion :

“This renewed interest stems from a generational logic. Each time one generation drives out another, the aesthetics and subcultures of the old are rethought, re-evaluated by the new. The same was true of the young people of the 80s who fantasized about the looks of those of the 70s and then reinterpreted them for example. Each generational change leads to this type of reconsideration, evaluation. “

The looks of the most influential young people in this Tumblr culture, aged 20-30 today, are then reinterpreted by teenagers born in the 2000s (those known as Generation Z).

A chaotic and disenchanted youth

In addition to explaining the generational change, Clara Defaux also thinks there is something at stake around particularly significant values ​​in Tumblr culture that resonate with the current pandemic situation:

” The Tumblr spirit of the 2010s partly supported a form of nihilism and individualism which resonate with the current situation of economic, climatic, health and social crisis. The pandemic has been going on for two years now, and young people may be experiencing a specific form of usury. Deprived of many forms of sociability (face-to-face lessons, outings, concerts, festivals, clubbing, etc.), they were asked to make a lot of effort, almost making them feel guilty as the main culprits for the contamination of their parents and grandparents. Gold now we are in 2022, and there have never been so many contaminations as today. “

Tumblr, the reign of 2010 nostalgia

To the immense fear and fatigue linked to the pandemic is therefore added a feeling of deception experienced by most of the disillusioned young people, who come to become nostalgic for extremely recent phenomenacontinues Clara Defaux for Lose :

” We become nostalgic for the life we ​​led before the pandemic in the West, that is, before January 2020. So much has been stolen from youth that it contributes to forging it that it overflows with anguish and existential questions, which at times may seem excessive. Now, many people would give a lot to live their twenties in the 2010s rather than the 2020s, because in those not-so-distant times things still seemed possible: meeting at concerts, going out in clubs, falling in love … “

In the case of clubbing, for example, in 2020, France had around 1,500 clubs or discos, compared to 4,000 in 1980, according to The expedition. The health crisis just closed another 300 in 2021, he notes The crossand this carnage is set to continue this year.

I’m talking about a period that people under 20 dream of having known

According to Clara Defaux, the Covid crisis has accelerated, revealed and perhaps even contributed to causing a great break with what young people in their 20s today should embody. We do not respond at all to the cliché of youth that they should like, love and run fast, as we are overexposed to crises, illness, death, unemployment. So the values ​​of nihilism, individualism and self-withdrawal can be seductive. And also the subcultures that have fed on it. And among them, Tumblr.

So it’s an accumulation of Tumblr crystallized nostalgia : people who have truly lived and taken part in the golden age of Tumblr culture, as well as those who have not experienced it firsthand but have fantasized about it as a golden age they would like to have. part. And the platform itself particularly celebrated the feeling of nostalgia, especially glorifying the punk and grunge subcultures of the ’80s and’ 90s.

Different lives from mine, on Tumblr

Finally, there is a possible deja-vu effect: confined to our homes by the pandemic, this may have reminded us of the living conditions we had in our teenage rooms to isolate ourselves on Tumblr. And so the space-time in which we have created lives different from ours, invented carefree and above all freer digital worlds, concludes Clara Defaux for Lose :

“The pandemic and the accumulation of different crises confine us so much today, it can remind us of the teenage rooms we were in when Tumblr culture was democratized. The tumblresque sociability we had at the time has pretty much become our only means of socializing today ever sincewe have no choice but to communicate online more than ever. “

Much more than the time when Lana Del Rey was not yet publicly problematic, the fashion trend Tumblr version 2022 therefore tells a lot about the new wave of soft emo grunge passions of a disenchanted French youth.

Photo credit of one: YouTube screenshot of the clip Born to Die by Lana Del Rey