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The 2010s Are Back: ‘Soft Grunge’ is Trendy Again

Why people are nostalgic for a 7 year old trend.

EsLaModa / Pinterest, ecto_fun / Twitter

Gen-Z has already sparked a revival in the ’90s and early 2000’s fashion, music, and aesthetics, bringing back low-rise jeans and emo culture. However, now the retro-obsession seems to be focusing on an era much closer to the present: the 2010s. There’s been a resurgence in the interest in 2010’s online aesthetics, such as ‘soft grunge. This new fascination in still relatively new aesthetics has been termed ‘Newstalgia’.

The spike in interest in soft grunge Tumblr is part of a wave of early to mid-2010s nostalgia. Rebecca Jennings, who writes for Vox, commented that soft grunge is:

” a very specific subculture from the period that roughly spans from 2009 to 2014 — the era of indie pop, ironically oversize eyeglasses, and late-wave finger moustache tattoos”.

Soft grunge fashion brings together 90’s grunge styles (slip dresses, oversized flannel shirts, chokers, and ripped jeans) with the popular 2010 silhouette of high-waist skinny jeans or pleated skirts and crop tops or T-shirts.

The interest in the 2010’s trend of soft grunge was noticed when, at the beginning of October this year, a Tweet went viral. It featured a disposable camera-style photo of a young girl with bright pink hair, holding a game controller attached to a bulky ’90s TV. Additionally, the Tweet had the caption ‘I want to live in this era’. This wasn’t a hark back to the bygone days of the ’90s as some first assumed. The picture was directly from a Tumblr page called mvnicx.

The owner of mvnicx also has Instagram (@m0n1lu) and Pinterest pages, both with a huge following. All her posts are edited to appear like film photo uploads, intended to look like they were taken at some point during the late 1990s. The picture that went viral on Twitter was uploaded in 2020, so long after either the ’90s or the peak of soft grunge.

Ryan Broderick, an internet reporter at Garbage Day, in his article on the soft grunge rejuvenation, said that this particular Tweet is:

“not about being nostalgic for the 90s, nor is it about being nostalgic for the early-2010s. Instead, it’s about being nostalgic for being in the early-2010s being nostalgic for the 90s. It’s a lot to wrap your head around.”

Credit: EsLaModa / Pinterest, ecto_fun / Twitter

What Exactly Is ‘Newstalgia’?

‘Newstalgia’ is defined on Urban Dictionary as “something new that harkens back to something old”, where nostalgic elements like certain brands or media are combined with present-day trends. This creates a mix of old and new trends, styles, and fashion. Even now, certain trends like E-girl can be considered a form of Newstalgia, as it combines components of 70’s punk fashion with 80’s goth and 2000’s emo fashion.

What is interesting about this sudden nostalgia for soft grunge is that it’s only in part about 2014. The combining of 90’s elements with 2020s hair and makeup makes the aesthetic feel unstuck from time. It’s timeless in the sense that it combines so many strands of different eras that it can’t exactly be placed in a box. Moreover, its sudden spike in popularity goes to show that the trending look is always just a rehashing of styles from previous decades. At this point, it’s difficult to differentiate the style in an image from the ’90s and one from the 2020s taken on a disposable camera.

Written By

Postgraduate student studying journalism at Edinburgh Napier University. Fandom enthusiast and ex-Wattpad writer.

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