All the aesthetics…

At no time in history before has it been possible to “choose” an aesthetic. 

Maybe the last ten years. 

Oh, sure, kids and adults in the 19 twenties could choose this or that outfit, this or that makeup style, and build a kind of an aesthetic. Girls could go full flapper, for example, in the 1920s, if they could afford to do so. 

dreaming of developing a more dadaist and surreal aesthetic

It starts being easier by the time you get to the 60s and 70s when mainstream culture has become so prevalent and iron of grip that wearing flowers and pursuing peace and listening to Bob Dylan was a chosen alternative aesthetic; similar as disco became a thing, and the 80s birthed their whole brat pack and American psycho scenarios, etc. into grunge 90s and cyber cartoon spice girl early 2000s. But I posit these are not the same. These are each a prevalent and explicitly fashionable aesthetic that appears as a single alternative to the prevalent winds of the time. Either you do mainstream khakis/suits/working class jumpsuit basics OR you spring the cash to buy jnco jeans. 

It’s not like people were able to wake up in 1970 and trying to decide whether they were goblincore vs dark academia. The impulse, the human impulse to wake up and worry about who you are and how you fit into society and trying in vain to grasp whether you are actually alone or if you will ever truly truly truly be able to communicate with your lovers and loved ones all the fathomless nuances of your feelings. That is not new. 

What I love about so many many different niches and aesthetics blooming right now is that people can make thoughtful and deliberate choices about how to more perfectly express themselves on a rolling daily changeable whimsical basis depending on those minute nuances of feeling. 

My point is that this is the first time in history the supply chain of goods is wide and fast enough and the scope of history/culture/anthropology is wide and available enough that anyone with a little pocket change can wake up and express their love of paleontology one day, being Egypt core or something, their love of poetry and wine with some dark academia bags, tartan, bows etc., and by Friday you’re nostalgic for home and can appear fully normcore or suburban gothic. 

I can feel heat growing saying that your soul can only express one, there can only be one of these that a single person just IS. And while I disagree with that premise entirely, that impulse still proves that this is the first time in history that even THAT is possible.