Picture this: it’s November 2014, and you’re in the familiar comfort of your childhood bedroom. You’re deciding between filling the silence with reruns of Skins UK or Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence. You’ve spent the day at American Apparel sifting through the racks wearing a tennis skirt, knee socks, and a chunky pair of Doc Martens. Sporting the canonical brown shopping bag adorned with a slurry of city names rendered in their iconic sans serif font – you are the it girl, you are Shades of Cool. You return home armed with your latest finds. As you settle into your adolescent sanctuary, the glow of your screen illuminates the room as you log onto Tumblr.
Fast forward to 2024. You’re in your first apartment, the décor a departure from the band posters and fairy lights that once adorned your teenage sanctuary. You lay in your bed, doomscrolling TikTok.
Between the videos of nonsensically named trends like glazed donut nails, cinnamon cookie butter hair, and the discourse of tomato vs. strawberry girls, you come across something different. It’s a montage of photos – ripped stockings peeking out from under denim shorts, dainty hands with painted black fingernails holding a cigarette over a dimly lit skyline.
As you soak in the imagery, a wave of nostalgia washes over you. Then, it hits you: this is a nostalgia post. But it’s only been a decade.
It begs the question: what is it about today that makes us go through these hyper-quick cycles of trends, aesthetics, and cultural phenomena?
First, let’s dig into the social conditions that set the stage for 2014 soft grunge – the arguable origin and genesis of the grunge movement – the 1990s.
The early 1990s were marked by economic uncertainty feeding into the growing disillusionment of Gen X following the ostentatious materialism and consumerism that permeated and characterized the 1980s.
The financial crisis of the 80s was widely considered to have been the most severe recession since the Second World War. By the late 1980’s more than half of the homes on the market were the product of foreclosures and unemployment reached a high of 11%. In the backdrop of this crisis, it became clear amongst youth that the promises of the American Dream were not only unattainable but fundamentally flawed.
The political climate of this time included the end of the Cold War, the Gulf War, and the policies of the Reagan administration, which were grounded in the belief that reducing the role of government in the economy would boost economic growth and increase efficiency. Commonly referred to as “Reaganomics,” these policies contributed to the deregulation of the free market, tax cuts, and a reduction in government spending on domestic programs such as social welfare, education, housing, and urban development. By neglecting government funding in the securities of everyday Americans, this further festered a sense of skepticism and distrust in government and authority figures. It was time to Rage Against the Machine.
In turn, fashion and music began to reflect this disillusionment, favouring authenticity and raw emotion over the polished and colourful superficial pop that pervaded throughout the 80s.
Girls didn’t want to have fun anymore, girls wanted to own property and the possibility of retiring with a healthy 401k.
Think Kurt Cobain and Radiohead, a stick-it-to-the-man attitude, ripped jeans, and thrifted flannels, the antithesis to the suits and ties that crashed Wall Street, the uniform of the dejected working class. This was the birth of a sartorial and sonic embodiment of a countercultural ethos that emphasized anti-establishment principles. This was 90’s grunge.
The early 90s saw significant changes in media and technology, with the rise of MTV, which provided platforms for grunge and other alternative music scenes. Let’s not act like VJ’s weren’t the first iteration of social media influencers and MTV wasn’t a nascent iteration of Tumblr and its ability to connect like-minded individuals through music and pop culture, which in turn provided the necessary environmental factors that fostered the genesis of grunge subculture.
So how does 2014 soft grunge feed into this? Quite similarly actually. If we analyze it through the same social conditions we examined in the ’90s grunge, the parallels are stark.
The soft grunge movement was a digital-era reinterpretation of the original grunge culture of the 90s, blending its aesthetics and ethos with new elements reflective of the times.
A significant factor in the rise of soft grunge was a growing nostalgia for the 1990s among younger generations who did not directly experience the decade but were drawn to its cultural phenomena.
Soft grunge also emerged in the context of economic uncertainty. The late 2000s and early 2010s were marked by the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. No longer did the 80’s recession hold the title of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, 2008 had entered the chat.
This led to heightened anxiety about the future, job prospects, and skepticism towards government, authority, and traditional paths to success. Again, we see an environment defined by the collapse of economic stability fostering a sense of disillusionment in the American Dream.
In the wake of the crisis, over six million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure, and by 2009 more than 15 million Americans were unemployed. Yes, this means our parents suffered more than us, but being teenagers in the wake of a global economic disaster left us feeling helpless without the agency to do anything that could actually make a difference. Unfortunately, working at the mall part-time after school for minimum wage wasn’t going to pay off the mortgage.
The original grunge movement was a response to the materialism and excesses of the 1980s. Soft grunge, while more diffuse in its expressions of rebellion, echoed the same sense of dissatisfaction of the hyperconsumerism in the early aughts.
The early 2000s was defined by Juicy Couture tracksuits and Coach wristlets, we idealized wealthy socialites like Paris Hilton, the very embodiment of hyper-consumption. There was a surge of saccharine pop music from the likes of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Everyone was going to clubs sporting tiger striped orange foundation, peplum tops, and pencil skirts, ostentatiously colourful costume jewelry, armed with their point-and-shoot cameras ready to document [ThE NiGhTs wE’LL nEvEr ReMeMbEr WiTh FriEnDs We’LL nEvEr FoRgEt] &heartss;
By the time 2014 rolls around, Lorde’s track Team off her album Pure Heroine said it best, “I’m kind of over gettin’ told to throw my hands up in the air.” The pendulum begins to swing back.
We start to see a romanticization of 90s fashion, music, and attitudes, filtered through a contemporary lens that often softened or idealized the original grunge movement’s rawness and rebellion. We start to see the resurgence of flannels, ripped denim, band tees, DIY black manicures, and combat boots.
The proliferation of the internet and the rise of social media platforms, especially Tumblr, were pivotal to the soft grunge movement. These platforms allow for the easy sharing and dissemination of specific aesthetics and ideas. Tumblr, in particular, became a hub for the soft grunge community, where users curated content that embodied the movement’s ethos, including fashion, music, and art, creating a distinct digital subculture. This was grunge post-Y2K.
In the wake of the aught’s obnoxious hyper-consumerism, we craved authenticity. Tumblr was a haven where we could anonymously voice our innermost thoughts, fears, and desires, and where we could curate our nostalgia and our emotions. Let’s not forget the film revival of 2014. Tumblr was riddled with grainy, emotive images, a direct recall to the 90’s. You couldn’t take a film camera to the club and take endless photos of your friends, if at all. You had 24 shots in your disposable, and you had to make each one count.
Youth was focused on living in the present, not for tomorrow. We idealized the ephemeral chaos of Skins UK, living like we’re doomed anyway. Blogging and reblogging our innermost feelings of dread and despair, adding pale contrast filters to photos holding cigarettes, listening to new age angst like Cage the Elephant riddled with yearning for the past we never quite appreciated.
We were alienated from our reality, unable to help our parents in the face of economic chaos, and we turned to the digital world to seek convalescence, a place to heal.
So what’s going on today? Gen Z and older Gen Alpha are on the internet romanticizing 2014 the way we romanticized the ethos of 90’s grunge. Let’s get to the bottom of why the children are yearning.
The 2024 grunge revival, much like its predecessors, emerges as a cultural and aesthetic response to a confluence of socio-political stressors.
A decade later we find ourselves amidst more global unrest and economic uncertainty. Thus, 2024 sees a resurgence in the idealization of the soft grunge aesthetic. TikTok is flooded with “to be alive during 2014” romanticized videos reminiscent of the “I-was-born-in-the-wrong-era” discourse of the 2010s. The Effy smoky eye is rolling back into fashion, thrifting is cooler than buying anything brand new. But this nostalgia is not just for fashion or music but for the sense of community and shared understanding that came with it. In an era dominated by concerns over global conflicts and financial instability, the soft grunge movement represents a time of relative peace and creativity.
The context of 2024 is marked by heightened global tensions, including the escalation of conflicts like Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, the United States withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran infringing on the liberties of women, censoring journalists, and jailing or executing those that criticize the regime. And in the wake of social media’s hyperglobalization, this keeps us in the loop of political turmoil that the 90s never really had. We’re so in tune with the world, but the world is out of tune with us. Inflation, a deepening housing crisis and a cost of living crisis have us feeling that we will never be able to feel secure. We’re so behind with no hope of catching up.
These stressors echo the same factors that exacerbated the feelings of instability and concern for the future that Gen X feared in the 90s and millennials faced in the mid-2010s.
In 2024, we find ourselves now just reeling in from the unprecedented levels of physical and emotional isolation during COVID-19. Lockdowns and social distancing, while necessary for public health, led to a profound sense of disconnection from the community and normal life. Much like the 2014 soft grunge era, we turned to the digital world to feel connected. The obsolescence of Tumblr has left Gen Z turning to TikTok as the platform to share off-the-cuff glimpses into their psyche. We see the romanticization of prior decades, fantasizing about the fashion and culture of yesteryear.
During the COVID crisis, distrust in the government was at an all-time high in the narratives online. The mixed messages from political leaders—urging the public to stay home for safety while they themselves engaged in travel or retreated to private estates—only intensified feelings of alienation, distrust, and skepticism towards those in power. This scenario mirrors the themes of isolation and disillusionment that were central to the original grunge movement during Reagan’s time in office.
The idealization of 2014’s soft grunge in 2024 reflects a yearning for a time when expressions of vulnerability and authenticity were celebrated. Amidst the current climate of uncertainty and conflict, there’s a collective longing for the sense of community and the simpler, more personal connections that the movement epitomized. A cultural need to seek solace in collectivized shared experiences of apathy. We’re sharing imagery that evokes feelings of dejection, disillusionment, disempowerment, and self-destruction. We’re glamorizing being a mess and caving into your feelings, because look around you – the world’s a mess anyway. And we feel less alone when we see this being shared with others, it’s oddly hopeful.
In essence, the idealization of 2014’s soft grunge in the context of 2024 is a reflection of the human tendency to seek refuge in the past during times of crisis. It’s a yearning not just for the aesthetic or fashion trends of the era but for the emotional resonance and sense of community that it represented, serving as a counterpoint to the challenges and complexities of the contemporary world.
So yes, your thrifted flannel is a security blanket, and Ronald Reagan made you buy it.
Jenny is a creative director, full-time, art historian, sometimes. Film photographer in her spare time. Writer when she has the time.