Retro

Retro is a term used to describe the revival and revaluing of past styles that are usually less than one hundred years old. It can be applied to almost anything from clothing, furniture, and interiors to music, film, food, events, and advertising. It is a relatively global concept, and cultural products or styles that are categorized as retro appear in many different contexts including in art galleries, on lifestyle television, and on the shelves of main street retailers, as well as in fanzines, on the Internet, and in market stalls. Unlike terms such as vintage or antique, retro does not specify its origin and thus includes the old and the new, the original and the reproduction, the singular and the commodity, and high and popular culture. Consequently, definitions and discussions of retro style are dispersed across academic disciplines and multifarious in their nature.

The term derives from the Latin prefix meaning backward; however, it was first used to describe French avant-garde cinema and items sold in flea markets in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s. It was introduced into English shortly after; for example, a shop bearing the name retro first appeared in London in 1974 (Samuel 1994, 85). While the revival, reproduction, and reuse of old objects and styles has been common throughout history, the arrival of retro and the specific characteristics of the style have been linked with postmodernism.

Both Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard have suggested that retro style is a symptom of postmodern nostalgia. Drawing on films such as American Graffiti, they both argue that although retro style references the past, history is a “lost referential.” According to Jameson, retro cultural products are indicative of “the transformation of reality into images,” of which one of the characteristics is pastiche (parody without a sense of humor), and “the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents,” which he considers evokes a condition similar to schizophrenia. The schizophrenic self has a vivid and material experience of the present, but is lacking capacity to “retain its own past” and has thus lost a cohesive identity (Jameson 1985, 119). Jameson considers this, and the retro styles that are its symptom, to be negative and calls for a return to the ideals of modernism. The arguments of both Jameson and Baudrillard consider retro only as reproduction (as pastiche and simulacrum). However, other theorists such as Angela McRobbie have made this discussion more complex by exploring a wider range of examples of retro style.

In Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Music and Fashion, Angela McRobbie argues that it is “unwise to place retro style unproblematically within the cultural terrain marked out by Jameson” as retro should be seen in the context of postwar youth subcultures (1989, 48). She uses the examples of teddy boy jackets, the Laura Ashley “tea dress,” Peter Blake's sleeve for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album, and punk do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion, to argue that the production and consumption of retro style should be seen as innovative rather than nostalgic. Unlike Jameson, McRobbie argues that schizophrenic or fragmented subjectivity can be positive. She suggests that retro style viewed in relation to postwar subcultures is potentially subversive, as it allows young women and working-class youth to participate in the fashion scene. This is made possible by the availability of inexpensive retro clothing at jumble, or rummage, sales and from mainstream [Page 1223]retailers and is illustrated by the new unofficial job market that the rediscovery of old items and their imaginative recreation can create. These arguments are partly an outcome of McRobbie's emphasis on the consumption and production of retro style as well as the qualities of cultural products themselves.

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