Tag: the90s

On Giorgio Armani, Kate Moss, and other great things from the 80s and 90s

I don’t write as much about the 80s these days, possibly because the media has shifted their nostalgic articles and stories from that decade to the one that follows. So I have decided to combine both decades in this one post. Hey it’s my annual indulgence, so bear with me. 🙂

The fashion giant Giorgio Armani passed away last week. While his greatness spanned decades, he really dominated the 80s with his flowing and beautifully cut clothing. There was a number of things written about him on the day of his death, but this piece in Wallpaper I found was the best. I’d also recommend this older piece that explains why 80s Armani still matters. And while I was a huge fan of his back in the 80s, as this piece in the New York Times showed, the man never stopped.

I was not the only fan of Armani obviously. Scott Schuman a/k/a The Sartorialist had a special Instagram account dedicated to him. Worth visiting.

If you are in the mood for more great photos of the 80s, I think this photo essay is excellent:  the 1980s turned out to be magic… david bailey on the era of excess in pictures.

Not as many photos in it, but this essay on  The Cameron Public House and 1980s Toronto is a fine remembrance of the beginning of an era at that famous Torontoian establishment. Another famous Toronto establishment, By the Way cafe, also began then. Sadly that restaurant will be closing after 40 years. It won’t be quite the same on the corner of Bloor and Brunswick with it gone.

If you want to know what we were eating in the 80s, read this. If you want to know what were listening too, go here.

One of the people I was listening to back in the day was Tracey Thorn. Nowadays she has a reoccurring column in The Independent where she writes about our current times, such as this: seeing endless faces in the city brings me comfort and relief. Always worth a read. Check out her books too.

Did Tracey Thorn go to clubs like the Limelight in London? Possibly. Did I go into one of the clubs that Sharon Smith captured with her polaroids of NYC nightlife in the 1980s? Definitely. Was I happy to see ‘The Breakfast Club’ stars reunite for the first time in 40 years? You know it. Am I glad that Giancarlo Esposito found happiness and success after a difficult struggle? Most certainly.

Moving from the 80s nightclub scene to the 90s, I give you this story on the famous cafe tabac in NYC. If you had gone during that time, you might have seen Kate Moss there. Zara had a special collection devoted to her not so long ago: Collection Kate Moss. This led to coverage in places like British Vogue and  The Guardian. It may be the reason why someone decided to write this: why fashion keeps selling us the 90s.

PeeWee Herman was another celebrity who rose to the top in that era. Even if you are not a fan of the 90s or Herman, I recommend a recent documentary on him…it’s brilliant.

Finally, here’s a piece on technology that was big at the end of the 20th century. Also big at the end of the 20th century: Friends. For fans of that 90s show, here a recent review of  friends at 30…inside story writers and producers tell all. More friends at 30 sitcom cultural phenomenon here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On BECKHAM, the documentary

BECKHAM the documentary is very good. So good, it won an Emmy. Very good, but not flawless. Indeed, this piece argues, Netflix’s ‘Beckham’ Is a Very Good Docuseries with Two Glaring Flaws. I’d say it has one overriding flaw,and it has to do with any documentary like this.

With a documentary like this, the documentarian (Stevens) is dependent on the subject (the Beckhams) to tell the story. And whatever story he meant to tell, the Beckhams also had a story they wanted to tell. I felt those stories were in sync up until the end.

Then the ending occurred and I felt a bit betrayed. I thought David Beckham was telling a story about wanting to settle down with his family, but then it ends with him in Miami, seeming to do anything but settle. I thought he wanted to be different than his dad when it came to football, but getting a glimpse of how he talks to his son, I heard echos of his dad talking to him.

That ending made me wonder if the Beckhams were using the documentary to tell a certain story they wanted to tell in a way they wanted to tell it. A way of maintaining the brand, the way they had been maintaining a brand for many years.

I think there’s alot of sincerity in the film, and it’s a great story, well told. But I felt there was more going on than the narrative driving the film, and I think that slipped away from us.

Some basic thoughts on “Friends”: it’s roots and its relationship to screwball comedy


It’s the 25th anniversary of “Friends”, and a number of reviews I read talk about it looking backwards.This piece, though, does something better: it looks at where the series came up from.  Key quote to me was this:

Chandler, who is so indifferent about what he does that he is unable to pay his job even the small courtesy of hating it—Chandler, besuited and bedraggled, whose work in computer-something-or-other summons the amorphous anxieties of the coming digital age. … It is through Chandler, in the end, that Reality Bites finds its way into Friends’ otherwise chipper cosmology. His work is simply there, looming, draining, tautological. His laconic resentments of it invoke the precise strain of Gen Xed ennui the novelist Douglas Coupland had described earlier in the decade: the mistrust of institutions, the mistrust of professions, the mistrust of meaning itself.

You can see in the quote the tie to Douglas Coupland’s  book Generation X and the film Reality Bites. These are the roots of “Friends”. ‘Friends’ at 25: The Prescience of Chandler Bing’s Job – The Atlantic. That generation after the boomers needed a show, and many of them found it in “Friends”. Now people look back at it and many mock a show about six well dressed people living in an amazing apartment in NYC. But “Friends” then tried to make sense of becoming an adult, or “adulting”, to use a word that came along later. The fact that people have such fondness for it makes me think it resonated with them and it represents part of their lives.

I always liked “Friends”, but for a different reason. I am a fan of screwball comedy, and that series often went there. Seinfeld did absurdist comedy well, but I loved that this series did a comedic style I loved so much. Watch some episodes of “Friends” and then watch a classic screwball comedy like “Bringing Up Baby” or “His Girl Friday” and you will see the similarities.

All comedy series go pear shaped after a time, and the things that made it originally great fades. For a time “Friends” was one of the best comedies on TV, and it was great then because of the form of comedy it aspired to and because of the way it represented the time it was rooted in.