The clean aesthetic to the reign of the grunge girl is a modern mirror to the pipeline of the early 2010’s. It’s the antithesis to the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic Then came the ‘normcore’ and ‘gorpcore’ aesthetics, which offered wiggle room for young people to dress down, promoting looks that felt a touch grittier - a touch more real.īella Hadid and Vittoria Ceretti for Ports 1961’s F/W 22 campaign | PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN MEISEL VIA INSTAGRAM / it has been a slippery slope from the more maximalist ‘core’ aesthetics into what can only be described as messy minimalism - a look that takes elements of the pared-back 2014 Tumblr grunge style and gives it a contemporary anti-capitalist, anti-consumption (on the surface, at least) undertone. Movements such as ‘quiet quitting’, ‘act your wage’ and the post-pandemic party fever (also dubbed dopamine dressing) have been early signs that a refutation of this glossy ideal was inbound.

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 saw a mass uptake of wellness culture - the ‘clean girl aesthetic’ was practically unavoidable for almost two years - and lockdowns made incredibly evident the gap between the privileged and those less so.Īs time as passed, we began to peel back the facade of these hyper-productive ideals and young people online have become increasingly disillusioned with hustle culture and the concept of living a perfectly curated life. Hustle culture dies - 2014 Tumblr grunge is revived Those who came of age in the peak era of Tumblr (myself included) may be wondering how the hell did we end up back here? While the time period (and the platform) was notorious for its glamorisation of unhealthy behaviours (a time before it was widely recognised that specific body types are not trends nor anything to aspire to or promote) the time was also paramount in defining the new youth culture through music, fashion and art, and - arguably - shaped the nature of what social media as a whole would evolve into.īut, despite the flaws of the era, there is something to be said for the way its grainy imagery, pastel accents and grunge-inspired notes became a hallmark of the first social media generation. IMAGINE BEING A TEENAGER IN 2014 I WOULD ACTUALLY KILL FOR THAT- Anna-Maria ♡’s 400yow August 3, 2022 So, dig out your tattoo chokers, pastel record players and Doc Martens because Gen Z have discovered the look - and they want in. In fact, #2014Tumblr has now garnered more than 232 million uses on TikTok, with #GrungeAesthetic and #TumblrAesthetic amassing 611 million and 46.6 million uses respectively. If social media is telling us anything right now, it is that a portal has opened and it is taking us right back to the mid-2010s - specifically, the era dubbed ‘2014 Tumblr grunge’. TUMBLR / / / YOU BEEN noticing suspiciously grainy photos popping up on your Instagram feed as of late? Or perhaps you’ve seen the Teenage Dirtbag trend sweeping TikTok? Or suddenly clicked that everyone is into wired headphones, messy makeup and pastel pink hair again?

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