Beauty as a time capsule.
Written by Matilda Oduntan
In the past two years as a trend researcher and anthropologist, I have understood ‘aesthetic’ as a time capsule. These aesthetic choices become markers of a time and markers of a community. Presently, one marker of the time and space I live in is the UK Black Girl Aesthetic. This is the bussdown HD lace frontal, the 35mm lashes, nail extensions and the like. She (the aesthetic, that is) has gotten a lot of bad press in the last few months because many people are preoccupied with the fact that ‘everybody looks the same these days.’ And that bothered me. I think we, the people, reflect the time and space we exist in through our appearance.
Back in the sixth form, I had a velvet choker phase. I had been dying for one for so long, and once I finally bought it from New Look, I wore it everywhere. School, church, birthday dinners, you name it. Me and that choker go way back. At the time, I was a die-hard for box braids too. Colour 1B, colour 4, and even one time, 99J (a reddish-purple for the uninitiated among us). I probably wouldn’t wear the box braids and choker combo again, but any time I see someone wearing that today, I’m transported to 2017.
And I bet if you open up your older sister’s Facebook photo albums from 2012, you’ll probably see lots of relaxed hair in buns with a side swoop and bandana. You’ll probably see Vans, snapbacks and shambalas. And then, take a look at your parent’s photo album. I suspect you would see her and her friends in many muted brown blouses with shoulder pads, Nia Long-esque haircuts, and not a lot of eyebrows. We travel back in time through aesthetics constantly, but we can be antagonistic to the aesthetics of our now. I think we’ve all seen the shade at the ‘UK Black girl aesthetic’, which pretends that we are in a crisis of no ingenuity. But I think this shade doesn’t offer the whole story.
For instance, I was looking at my mum’s old photos recently. And asked my mum about a particular picture of her in bicycle shorts, a black t-shirt and an oversized patterned brown shirt layered on top. She told me it was the nineties, back when she was living in Nigeria, and as she spoke, I watched her flash through who she had been in her youth. She was resourceful, liked to layer, and enjoyed a baggy t-shirt. She described rummaging through her dad’s wardrobe for oversized shirts, some with gaudy prints and others very on trend at the time. She said it was an easy fit to wear on a hot day and a cheap fit to pull together without buying anything new. She spoke about how she was surprised the fashion trend had come back, as people today wear the same short and oversized shirt combo. She smirked as she spoke because she felt proud to be the generation that popularised the style. But there was a glint in her eye that revealed that she felt slighted that her generation didn’t get enough credit for their innovation.
In our present, I think we have a nostalgia bias that taints the validity of our present beauty aesthetic, as we fall into the belief that we are in a novel epidemic of similarity. But it’s likely that you can relate to my choker phase, and it’s likely your sister looked like my sister back in the day, and your mum looked like my mum. Truthfully, there are no glory days to return to because trends have always existed and will always exist. And following trends is not a bad thing. We cannot escape some level of similarity with others, and within that, the resemblance is not necessarily something that needs to be escaped. We think we have to escape because of fear. We fear that we will fade into the crowd. We fear that we will lose a grip on our personhood if we mirror someone else’s personhood. But the remedy to that fear is to remember that who we are permeates through everything, even our similarities.
And drawing back to the fashion flashback with my mum, I recognise a story about her relationship with her dad, her resourcefulness, and how they connected over clothes even when they would butt heads. A story about legacy and how history repeats itself. A story about how my mum sees parts of herself in the women she sees wearing the same fits today. All of that, from an oversized shirt that was quintessentially nineties and indistinguishably hers.
I tell this story with a smile, as she told this story with a smile. With all of this, the fear of similarity feels inconsequential. We have so many stories that make us unique, even when we inevitably look the same as others. I no longer want to treat beauty and fashion as something I must resist. Each piece I collect says something about me and has a story behind it. You can pull a thread on a piece of clothing, and it unravels into tales from a former life.
What other useful discussion can we have about the ’UK Black girl’ look? I ask because I don’t want to shit on the UK Black girl aesthetic anymore, not out of the fear of everyone looking the same. What if we reframe our response to similarity? What if we can highlight cultural ingenuity and innovation in our time? I know I have so many stories about engaging with and around this aesthetic, and I’m sure I will have many more stories to tell when I am older and the aesthetics of the time and space I live in change.
Imagine when future generations look at our photos, the same way I felt looking at my mum looking at herself. How will they feel? How will you feel looking back?
