On A Closer Look, Those New Kids On The Block Resemble The Old Ones

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 13, 2007

Lisa Pryor

Fluoro came and went two weeks ago. The trend for ultra bright clothing peaked on the Sunday night of the long weekend. Like a pack of highlighters made human - in orange, yellow, pink and purple - partygoers spilled from the Parklife dance party at Centennial Park. All along Oxford Street they swarmed in fluorescent T-shirts and denim shorts, some friendship groups wearing identical outfits, crawling down Wentworth Avenue, as far as Goulburn Street even, unsteadily hailing cabs without luck.

Ever since this moment of overkill, fluoro is officially out. One moment fluoro was as fashionable as a holiday in Dubrovnik, the next it was naff as a Crazy Frog ring tone. As yesterday as a trucker cap. As two days ago as a cowboy hat.

Few will mourn the passing of fluoro. Just as, by the end of the summer, few will mourn the passing of high-waisted shorts, which do bottoms no favours - even 19-year-old bottoms.

Although the fluoro fashion blip is over before it began, let us pause to consider the broader trend that this blip represents. As I stood on Oxford Street that Sunday night, I realised that the funloving trashbags I was gawking at resembled a pack of schoolchildren who had escaped from a sport and rec camp circa 1989. With their oversized tops, shorts and sneakers they looked as if they could be on their way to an orienteering session, or a talent night rehearsal. Which made me wonder: why has it become so fashionable for adults, young ones, to channel the spirit of primary school kids from the '80s?

I'm not talking about mere retro or nostalgia. I'm talking about a specific fetish for childhood. It has been happening for a while. Ten years ago we had grown-ups getting along to dance parties with hair in pigtails, lollies in mouths.

Dress is not the only sign. Consider the rise of the word "kid". It has become completely normal for hipsters pushing 30 to go around calling their friends "kids". As in "Hey, what are you kids up to on Sunday?" Or "Hey, do you kids know a good architect to renovate our kitchen?" Or even "Hey, do you think you kids can get a babysitter for the kids so that we can go really hard at Daft Punk?"

Incorporating the word "kid" into your DJ or band stage name is also popular. Witness: Kid Kenobi, Kid Koala, Kid Confucius.

Even contemporary art is childlike. Stuffed animals, computer games and toys abound in the work of young artists. Ricky Swallow makes models of BMX bikes and crash hats. Del Kathryn Barton draws disturbing pictures of girls with teddy bears and birds and deers.

Rabbits are everywhere. You can hardly move for all the rabbits, especially evil-looking rabbits. The artist Amanda Marburg, whose work is featured in the Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, paints a dejected stuffed bunny in her 2005 painting Rabbit. The cult film Donnie Darko features a recurring figure dressed in a giant rabbit suit.

We are a generation obsessed with our childhoods. Where once it was cool to escape the bounds of childhood, now it is cool to revisit it. On the social networking site which is now so ubiquitous that I dare not speak its name, we join fairy-bread appreciation societies, link up with primary school classmates to joke about when handball champions ruled the playground and contribute to lists like "you know you were a kid of the '80s if ..."

Perhaps this nostalgia is a sign of an unwillingness to grow up; perhaps it is simply a vote of confidence in our own childhoods. When life gets tough and serious, we reminisce about times when things were simple and Full House was still on television, when mixed lollies cost two cents, when photos had rounded corners and were developed at the chemist. When mums still had time to make birthday cakes in the shape of swimming pools, with lime jelly representing the water, or cakes in the shape of castles with upturned ice-cream cones for turrets. Or those really cool train cakes where every carriage was made of cake and every carriage was stuffed full of lollies and the whole thing ran on tracks made of licorice.

A time when mums wore jumpsuits and massive sunglasses ... just like the girls at dance parties now.