Retrofuturism Revived: From '60s Space-Age to '90s Hacker Chic to Now
Retrofuturism is an ever-changing constant: The fashion industry will forever look forward, and back, to understand its role in the current cultural moment.
While fashion has been known to look to the past for modern inspiration, the industry often works like a pendulum, swinging between a yearning nostalgia for a simpler time and an enthusiastic vision of fashion’s meaning in a technocentric future. Enter retrofuturism. Although the late 1960s may be the most memorable era associated with retrofuturist style, its roots lie even further back in time, though it continues to find itself in contemporary fashion, evidenced by the current ubiquity of the Y2K fashion revival as well as the industry’s interest in the Metaverse.
The marriage between fashion and technology can be traced back to the 1920s and early 1930s. In an era obsessed with the idea of modernity across all spaces of life, designers and artists frequently relied on gilded lamés, planetary motifs, and early experimentation with unusual materials like wood and plastic as a way of expressing their vision of the future. Even if space travel was but a distant dream, it didn’t prevent couturiers like Elsa Schiaparelli from envisioning how fashion could be influenced by, and participate in, the vast possibilities offered by the beyond.
Into the 1960s, couturier André Courrèges revolutionized the direction of retrofuturist fashion with his 1964 space-age collection. Coinciding with the culture’s obsession with the space race to the moon, Courrèges’ use of shockingly bright whites, textiles like lycra, vinyl, and PVC, and shorter skirts that emphasized movement became hallmarks of his designs. Soon, iconic women like Audrey Hepburn, Françoise Hardy, and even Jackie Kennedy were spotted wearing these radical styles. Even the indomitable Yves Saint Laurent admitted, “Things have never been the same since Courrèges had his explosion.” Retrofuturist fashion was here to stay.
Spoofed in cult classics like William Klein’s 1966 film Qui Êtes-Vous Polly Maggoo? (Who Are You, Polly Magoo?) and essential to the popularity of science fiction films and series like Barbarella and Star Trek, space-age fashion was everywhere. Beyond Courrèges, couturiers like Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne were putting their own spin on retrofuturism. Rabanne’s chainlink dresses and Cardin’s bold colors and aeronautically inspired silhouettes reflected the utopian, technocentric vision which was so vigorously embraced by the culture at large. By 1969, NASA even asked Cardin to design a spacesuit for its astronauts.
These looks were enthusiastically adopted by younger clients, signifying a cultural shift in the fashion industry. Before, trends were driven by a more mature—and well-funded—clientele, but space-age designs had found a new audience. While fashion publications initially pushed back against this change, deeming the styles juvenile and unsophisticated, they quickly found popularity among the It crowds, urging editors and critics to begin expressing their support. This monumental transformation within the industry contributed to the revivals of retrofuturism in the ‘90s, the noughties, and even in today’s Y2K resurrection. Retrofuturist fashion has its roots in youth rebellion against polite society.
The splash made by the space-age collections of the ‘60s continued to inform fashion’s conceptualization of ultimate modernity. However, by the 1980s the bold, space-themed, and alien-like collections of designers like Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana overtook the relatively innocent vision pioneered by Courrèges and company. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the spirit of retrofuturism transformed completely. With the new millennium around the corner and an impending anxiety about new technologies, fashion was defined by dystopian visions of a future ruled by hackers and cyberpunks.
"Retrofuturist fashion has its roots in youth rebellion against polite society."
With the rise of the World Wide Web in the late ‘90s, tech-inspired fashion followed suit, capitalizing on cultural interest in tech. Films like Hackers, Strange Days, and The Matrix influenced futuristic fashion, with cyber-inspired costumes crafted from patent leather and metallics in sleek silhouettes. Some inspiration for ‘90s hacker chic was born out of tech paranoia and a rebellious spirit involving machinery, such as 19th-century inspired steampunk aesthetics, which combined the future with elements from the past.
Today’s futuristic fashion tends to skimp on nostalgia. While Y2K trends revive “retro” tech like flip phones and T9 text style graphics, much of the cutting-edge fashion looks towards the future. The 2020s are emphasizing how fashion can be transformed through technology, not just in the real world, but online as well. Fashion NFTs have gained popularity in the past year, reinterpreting a brand’s trajectory in the cyber universe and pushing the boundaries of materialized garments. March 2022 saw the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week hosted by Decentraland, moving the runway, an ever-present institution of fashion, to the digital sphere. Prominent brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Elie Saab, and Etro pushed creative limits with their cyber collections, and while the novel event came with mixed reviews, many fashion tech moguls believe this is only the beginning.
In September 2021, L’OFFICIEL created its own digital universe with the House of Dreams, a virtual museum celebrating the magazine’s 100-year anniversary. Visitors were invited to explore 13 different spaces, each of which included a unique NFT devoted to a certain dimension of fashion’s long history through the lens of L’OFFICIEL. In collaboration with brands like Salvatore Ferragamo, Valentino, and Dior, the House of Dreams represents the larger shift in how publications and brands alike are adapting to an increasingly online world.
Beyond these virtual spaces, many fashion houses are incorporating wearable technology into clothing, as well as looking to technological advances in fabrics, such as the mushroom-generated leather replacement MYX. There is also some movement toward an alternate fashion system that prioritizes slow production and a return to community as the keys to a thriving industry and, more importantly, planet.
As retrofuturist fashion ebbs and flows through the trend cycle, it begs the question: what do we really consider to be modern? Futuristic? In retrospect, ‘60s space-age fashion is glaringly unlike actual millennium fashion, and today reads like a campy daydream. 1990s hacker chic now feels removed from the actual trajectory of cyber fashion. And while wearable tech, the Metaverse, and NFTs seem to be the latest direction in futuristic fashion, the industry is still grappling with its place in these online worlds.
Ultimately, retrofuturism is not necessarily about the fashions that emanated from a certain decade or designer, but rather about how the consumption of these fashions transformed the meaning of the future within the culture. Like most trends, it’s a cyclical chain reaction. Retrofuturism can often be seen as escapist. In the moment, it feels revolutionary. Looking back, it feels dated. It makes one wonder: What will we think of the “futuristic” fashion of today 20 years from now?
