The 90's were the main proponent of #normcore. They gave birth to the philosophy, the ethos, and the trend even before the term entered the fashion lexicon. But then again, the people who were in the forefront, especially those in popular sitcoms and music videos, were not aware of what they were on to – the normcore that we know now was just the normal zeitgeist then. Looking back – there really was nothing special about it.

As a child who grew up in those years, normcore was typically your everyday conventional and unpretentious outerwear. I remember it so well. Those denim overalls, sports team shirts and jackets, Nike sneakers and baseball cap among others. Loose, shapeless and blah! Even in the world of entertainment, fashion statement then not necessarily ranked high when all people wanted was someone they can relate to. When Friends, Seinfeld and their contemporaries came around – everyone were tuning in because the shows were fun to watch, the characters were relatable and the actors behind them were likeable while the lives they lead were, in some ways, aspirational.


But at the turn of the millennium – the whole landscape has evolved… Even too quickly that it left no room to step back and see things from a different angle. It became a culture of individualism, consumerism and one-upmanship. It seems that every parents’ comforting advice of ‘Be Yourself!’ to their kids took a drastic turn.

And so with the oversaturation of individuals trying to stand out – then came the inevitable emergence of people trying to blend in. To paint a better picture about this logic, there’s this line in Singles by Cameron Crowe that really springs to mind –

“I think that (A) You have an act; and that, (B) Not having an act is your act.”
– Linda Powell


The line where normcore begins and individualism ends is quite hard to define. Convoluted at best. But in a world where changes take place at incredible warp speed, sometimes a little bit of slowing down is not so bad. Or perhaps because of the speed, all of us might have been forced to cut the 90's experience really short in order to keep up with the changes. Hence, it is just our romantic effort to revisit the decade and hold on to it for a little while longer.

Good thing #normcore managed to get a little bit of place in today's pop culture especially when the world is overwhelmed with too much of anything and everything. And there’s no better time to enjoy the phenomenon than now.

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Photos via Huff Post, Baeble, HITC Lifestyle and The Window