“Mi wake up, turn on the arc lamp found in a bric-à-brac and placed on the Ikea bedside table. I prepare the coffee with the latest model of Nespresso machine, modeled on the 60s bar design, I choose from the wardrobe between full skirts, 90s blazers found in a second-hand and a hippy bracelet stolen from my mother’s jewelry box ».
Taken by nostalgia
There semiologist Daniela Panosetti thus tells the story of the past / present short circuit that has infected our lifestyle. The virus, fortunately not lethal, is called nostalgia which in songs rhymes with “disease”. “Celeste” for Riccardo Cocciantand, “rogue” for Al Bano and Romina, tender, desperate, sweet. No one is immune, and there is no vaccine. We cultivate the regret of the “best years”we fall in love with unlived or idealized eras.
Nostalgia for Kate Moss and Johnny Depp, when they were a couple in the 90’s .. GettyImages
Does it mean that faith in the future has disappeared? Or that there is nothing more to invent? Lucrezia Ercoliwho teaches History of the Show at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, in Yesterday. Philosophy of nostalgia (Ponte alle Grazie) tries to answer by following the unstoppable current that goes from fashion to cinema, from reboots (the infinite Batman and Spider-Man) to remakes.
To draw a boundary between “good” nostalgia (vintage, art) it is bad” (regret, melancholy, and “those were good times”) passing through Covid, responsible for a particular form of nostalgia: that of the day before yesterday, since today can be a little depressing.
The Oscar-winning vinyl
Nostalgia for vinyls. Getty Images
There is positive nostalgia in Licorice Pizza (in theaters from March 17), rightly nominated for an Oscar, which takes us to 1973, in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. The title is stolen from a famous chain of record shops (“licorice pizza” means vinyl). Director Paul Thomas Anderson paints the adolescent lightheartedness in a colorful fresco that is the background to the love story between a fifteen year old and a twenty five year old. Music is a time machinewe know: with But You’re Mine by Sonny & Cher, Peace Frog of the Doors, Let Me Roll It by Paul McCartney and the inevitable Life on Mars? by David Bowie we’re right there.
While The Fair of Illusions – Nightmare Alley by Guillermo Del Toroplunges into the world of carousels, when (in the early 40s of the last century) we could still believe in magicians, mentalists and tarot readers. A little dark nostalgia.
A world without social media
Nostalgia for Nirvana. Getty Images
We have cultivated the regret of the 60s, 70s, 80s. The glossy world of American Graffiti and Happy Days. Now it’s time for the 90s: the Spice Girls, Beverly Hills 90210, Toy Story, the Nokia 3310, the Tamagotchi and the VHS. Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss, Jennifer Aniston, Naomi Campbell, Winona Ryder and Madonna.
In our house here is a recovery operation just arrived at the cinema. The beautiful years of Lorenzo D’Amico de Carvalho, with Maria Grazia Cucinotta, makes us relive an innocent summer of 1994, on a campsite, before social media, before Facebook and Instagram. “Years of crazy changeof unknowns, of possibilities, of an emotional restlessness that still characterizes us »admits de Carvalho.
«There was Roberto Baggio, there was crazy music, Nirvana, Cranberries, Jon Bon Jovi. And you could be together without distractions. Today a sixteen year old is standing in front of you and chatting with his friend in Korea ». Fashion also draws from the Nineties. Slip dresses, denim, sporty T-shirts and logo briefs peeking out of jeans are back in Demna Gvasalia’s latest Balenciaga show.
The look book of the Pre Fall 2022 collection was presented between Polaroid and Vhs. Virginie Viard (Chanel) paid tribute to the ’90s with pastel pink minis and tweeds. But different decades coexist in the supermarket of memory. Maria Grazia Chiuri (Dior) was inspired by Marc Bohan, creative director in the 1960s. Pierpaolo Piccioli designed Valentino Archive: Zendaya wears vintage clothes from the 60s and 70sfive reruns were on the catwalk in spring-summer 2022.
Gucci Vault (online concept store, idea of the creative director Alessandro Michele) sells restored and revised pieces with a story to tell. «The past» says Michele «is a bridge towards the future. I created a space for impossible conversations between objects of different origins, authors and eras ».
Longing for lost paradises
Nostalgia for the old 500. Getty Images
“The vintage mood collects fragments of alternative pasts and often contrasting cultures that build a hybrid style, the result of the latest trends and casual encounters” explains Professor Ercoli. “A melancholy desire makes its way that, between analog TVs and arcade games (those with tokens for arcades) and vinyls, we could call it “tecnostalgia”, strange in the digital age. Sometimes just the name is nostalgic. Volkswagen remakes the Beetlethe Fiat 500, Piaggio rebuilds the Vespa and the same goes for the Mini.
The future (of marketing) is in the past. You create an unseen who knows already seen, so it reassures you. The promise of the new is a little broken, the next generation will be no better off than the previous one, each dreams of her lost paradise. A revaluation of the early 2000s is already looming, because nostalgia wears out quickly and needs to be renewed ».
The golden ages
According to Ercoli, there is a positive side in all this looking back that risks making us stiff necks, a way out of the celebration of the golden age that perhaps never existed: “Vintage mania does not contain the pain of loss. It is not an escape from the present but a strategy to enhance it, to enrich it with memory, not to forget. Thus nostalgia stops being paralyzing and becomes a story.
The Internet has canceled the time dimension. On YouTube you can find the old Carousel and the trailer for the film that is yet to come out. The biggest diffuser of musical amarcord is Spotify, the new fictions repeat the archetypes of all time: The Good, the Evil, the Power. Maybe something new will come out of the mix. Maybe Maria Grazia Cucinotta is right: “Basically the feelings are the same, only the clothes change.” Yesterday and Tomorrow are not that far off.
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED