A ‘vibe shift’ is coming, apparently – and I love being too middle-aged to care
There is a particular experience that comes from living in close proximity to, but total separation from, people whose tastes may presage our tastes in future. In my neighbourhood in New York, a mile or so from the city’s downtown and Brooklyn, no one is striving to be on trend. People are, for the most part, striving to be on time, in a state of ball-park togetherness, with all their children accounted for. If I have time to look in a mirror, my thought isn’t: do I look cool? It’s, do I look normal? In keeping with the rest of the neighbourhood, it is thrillingly, absolvingly lame.
These observations are a predictably late response to the conversation around A Vibe Shift Is Coming, an article – for the benefit of those even further from the epicentre than me – published in New York magazine’s the Cut 10 days ago, which has been roiling social media ever since. In it, the writer Allison P Davis reports from the bleeding edge (irredeemably middleaged phrasing!) of the country’s trend forecasters, who predict an imminent change in cultural trends. Jeans may go low rise, the last of hipsterdom may die and the appetite for political division and posturing, with the totemic language – “cancel culture”, “virtue signalling” – that came with it, may wither. If the pandemic acts, structurally, a little like the first world war, and with a big caveat around Russia, then the 2020s may be about to usher in a new jazz age. We may, predicts the article, lose our heads and lighten up.
As with all these things, it’s hard to look out of the window and pin this discussion to any concrete reality – although, even away from the trend hubs of downtown New York and LA, there are indicators of large-scale change. The Great Resignation, in which record numbers of largely 30- to 45-year-olds quit their jobs in the wake of the pandemic, is a vibe shift of sorts, as is disaffection with big tech. This last indicator is readable via lots of “does anyone still post on here?” exchanges between middle-aged people on Facebook.
To view but not be part of a trend shift is the horror of the young and the consolation of the middle aged, where any discovery of potentially untapped energy reserves – things I used to worry about and don’t worry about now! – is pathetically welcome. What constitutes, per phrasing in the article, being “left behind” to one group falls into the category of blissful ignorance to the other. Fear of missing out edges into the nihilism-tinged joy of not caring.
What’s odd about these kinds of trend pieces, of course, is the certainty that whatever your relationship with fashion, you can’t ever wholly opt out. Any rejection of a trend is as shaped by its dynamic as a full embrace. My claims to not caring are disingenuous, too. Those of us living in the lame, middle-aged neighbourhoods of major cities can benefit from trend-adjacency while still wearing high-waisted jeans from the Gap. In the 2010s, I sneered at hipsters as energetically as all the other thirtysomethings, but I did quite like their hipstery glow. I could be part of that, I thought, it’s right on my doorstep; I simply choose not to.
Like a stopped clock, if you live for long enough you will inadvertently find your regular style right on trend, which is why normcore was so exciting for people who only ever go out in their running shoes. I’m hoping, with this in mind, for a future in which Gore-Tex outerwear finally has its moment; we celebrate big white sneakers, Jerry Seinfeld-style; and unbrushed hair, last-minute decision-making and a 9pm bedtime have their long overdue moment in the sun.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist