Reference Board Final Bosses and The Irony Epidemic
You are laughing? Everything feels recycled, and you are laughing?
Sabrina Carpenter is the perfect popstar. From her custom baby blue JW Anderson dress, ironed to perfection, with a huge Chopard diamond hanging down her bare back to the charming Grammys performance with quirky prop malfunctions, she looks and acts like an old Hollywood glamour doll that came alive, Life-Size style. It’s already ironic for a walking representation of a bygone era of show tunes and big blond blowouts to be taking over every speaker and screen in the country as big movie studios and record labels are losing their grip on pop culture — her and the three other pop stars that would have never ended up at The Grammys if it wasn’t for social media were the only reason anyone tuned in. But the whole thing gets even more uncanny when you realize that the JW Anderson dress is a direct reference to Shirley MacLaine in a 60s comedy What a Way to Go! and the double staircase bit is a likely homage to The Goldie Hawn Special and well…so many other classic Hollywood performances. And if that wasn’t enough, Vogue just unveiled a Sabrina Carpenter cover for their March 2025 issue that references Madonna who famously referenced Marilyn Monroe who, in turn, referenced Jean Harlow. It’s almost like her whole public persona was engineered in a lab out of the DNA strands of five generations of Hollywood stars that came before her, creating the optimal popstar specimen.
This never-ending chain of referencing is a common theme in today’s pop culture. Ayo Edebiri’s Golden Globes Loewe suit referenced Julia Roberts’ off-the-rack Armani that she wore to receive the same award for Pretty Woman back when boxy shoulders and a wide pant were a bold choice for a Hollywood starlet. Cosmopolitan’s love issue features a photo of Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song that’s a direct reference to the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Rolling Stone cover photographed by Annie Leibovitz hours before Lennon was assassinated. Charli XCX and Troye Sivan posed for i-D in Stella McCartney ‘About Fucking Time!’ tank tops which are reproductions of the top Stella herself wore to her dad’s induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 — a playful wink at both of these artists finally getting the mainstream recognition they deserve. Rhode replicated the iconic Versace FW 1994 campaign for the launch of Lip Shape, and Skims 2023 winter campaign, which made us all do a double take on Kim and polyester underwear, referenced the mischievous covers of a French adult-entertainment magazine Lui. Take anything you like, and chances are, it’s a reference to something everyone lost their minds about decades ago.
That’s not to say that every piece of art and creative that references something that came before it is automatically unremarkable or unoriginal. Dropped in the right place at the right time, a good reference, both widely known and obscure, can be a powerful storytelling tool that adds depth to the message or winks at a certain demo while flying over everyone else’s heads. The problem is that more often than not, what the public discourse refers to as a reference is actually just a blatant copy of something ripped out of its original context for the sake of visual aesthetics. And if out of our collective empathy for braving through the big content rat race, we’ve gotten used to the two-people marketing teams at small fashion, beauty, and DTC brands recreating Tumblr and Pinterest images that by now, have been practically burnt into every creative’s brain, things still get tense when a big celebrity moment is a carbon copy of something that came before it. If the people who have access to the best global talent and resources can’t execute something original and thoughtful, what does it mean for the rest of us down the creative food chain? Are young artists and brands robbing themselves of a chance to create their own legacy by associating themselves too closely with the big names of the past? And what does all of this say about the state of the culture at large?
“I give it two more years or red carpets before the girlies completely run out of looks to reference,” writer, editor, and the host of The New Garde podcast
tweeted out in response to a side-by-side of Tate McRae’s and Britney Spears’s identical lacy mini dresses that they wore to the VMAs — decades apart from each other. She can’t take full credit for it, but Alyssa’s best theory for why Hollywood starlets keep replicating iconic 90s looks is a deadly mix of fearing criticism and craving public attention at the same time. “I think because there is so much content and so many red carpets and so many step-and-repeat moments that if you are a celebrity, an influencer, or whatever, and you want to guarantee that press moment for yourself, going the reference route — because you know that ‘your outfit and then the reference outfit' post will go viral — is an easy way to get talked about,” she explained to me.
There is a similar media strategy behind archival pulls for young stars, aged brand identities, marketing campaigns that draw inspiration from old magazines and editorials, and even self-referential brand revival moments, like J.Crew’s catalogue relaunch and Gap’s dancing commercial. All of these things generate buzz around young celebrities, small brands, and sleeping corporate giants before their creative output is strong enough to generate the same level of buzz on its own. You don’t have to understand the hype around Olivia Rodrigo and her music to appreciate the fact that she copped her 73 Questions with Vogue Versace mini dress at Chloe Sevigny’s closet sale. Suddenly, she feels more sophisticated and culturally savvy than an average twenty-year-old pop star that blew up on TikTok. Suddenly, Drivers License could just be a girlhood anthem of a generation you don’t quite understand.
But while successful in terms of generating engagement and scoring street credit, creating direct associations between young artists or brands and prominent cultural artifacts can quickly backfire and rob them of something that is such more important than magazine headlines and social media impressions — an opportunity to create their own legacy. “We need those early career red carpet moments, even if they are bad, to look back on,” Alyssa told me. “That is part of your lore, that is part of your creative process to get where you are today. And I feel like we are losing that now because a lot of these young stars’ first forays on the red carpet are not an original, kind of crazy, moment.” And it goes beyond the red carpet — since attention became the primary currency over artistry and craft, the goalpost for a lot of young creatives has shifted from pushing their own limits and the limits of their industries by making something avant-garde to reverse-engineering brand campaigns, editorials, music, and fashion shows that have the potential to do well online. The same way young people are copying mature people’s outfits, young creatives are reproducing mature creatives’ style as a shortcut for getting the look and feel that only years of trial and error can amount to. Which is a shame, since every young creative that’s having a proper moment right now has at least a decade of fearlessly putting out their rough, early work behind them. There would be no Forever Yung without Ginseng Strip 2002, no Chicken Shop Date without Amelia Dimoldenberg’s student magazine column, and no custom JPG looks for Emma Chamberlain without her 2016 VSCO girl internet persona. Very few people are willing to put themselves at the risk of public ridicule and stick with it for years quite like that and to a certain degree, the public at large is directly responsible for it.
Every pop culture moment, be it a red carpet, an album release, or a brand campaign, gets swallowed as a whole and spit back at us in a never-ending stream of hot takes, live reaction videos, memes, headlines, think pieces, and perhaps worst of all — LinkedIn strategy lessons. If this is how an average person interacts with pop culture, and if this is the type of environment we’ve cultivated for young creatives to work in, is it really that surprising that everything new feels depressingly recycled? Literacy rates are abysmal, commerce is stomping all over culture, young artists don’t have access to health insurance, Maya Hawke can’t get funding for a movie if her cast doesn’t meet a collective Instagram follower quota — and the best commentary the public at large can offer on all of this is joking about whose “nachos” are getting reheated by whom. “Not enough of you talking about annie lennox’s nachos but people can’t get enough of them!!” someone said in response to a side-by-side of Chappell Roan and Halsey both of which are referencing Annie Lennox. “she is reheating supernanny’s nachos,” another person wrote about the same picture of Chappell. To quote Ethel Cain’s viral Tumblr rant: “i LOVE to laugh and i love funny shit but like. we are in an irony epidemic…i feel like no matter what i make or what i do, it will always get turned into a fucking joke.” It’s a tough pill to swallow but perhaps, as a culture at large, we are asking for art and creatives we don’t quite deserve.
“I do think that there is a real hunger out these for something fresh,” Alyssa assured me. “And I do think we're in a time that's ripe for disruption, and I'm hoping that as the fashion month goes on, as the Oscars season comes to a close, and we move into the Met Gala, which offers some more opportunities for risk-taking, some people are going to shake it up.” And as I nodded along throughout our conversation, I also couldn’t help but hope that when these brave creatives decide to do something different, their managers will be brave enough to trust their intuition, their peers will be brave enough to support and work alongside them, and their audiences will be brave enough to be earnest and thoughtful in spite of the irony and thought leadership epidemic.
IN THE MARGINS:
A bunch of new references in the Busy Corner Reference Bank this week: a sweaty dance editorial I picked up in
’s newsletter, a vintage Puma archivist, and a photobook dedicated to cartel influencers among other things.
Thank you for all the love on the Mass and Luxury Fashion Report! Since I published it a couple of weeks ago, Alec Leach speculated about the near future of the luxury market, Aaron Levine curated some pieces for Zara, and Style Not Com got slammed for making a fashion week capsule with Zara and then landed a spot on the LVMH Prize panel the following week. I am going to be rounding up the free report giveaway today at 11:59 PM EST and notifying the five lucky winners early next week. So, if you don’t hear from me by Wednesday, I hope you can ask your manager to expense it and get your copy here.
First of all, I'd like to see someone reference Henry Rollins' "look" when he ran to grab his Grammy in between setting up a gig or something and almost got stopped by the security (HR was wearing a sweaty grey tee and Nike shorts). Secondly, that made me think of what they talk about on my most fav pop-culture podcast, Every Outfit, when they lament that celebs don't style themselves anymore for red carpets and other events. It's all curated, it's all delegated to stylists, and there might be some blood-oath to Chanel or Loewe involved. Which is also why there's little personality behind the looks, it's mere "aesthetic". How can anything fresh spring in that environment?
Great read Vik. I often observe and think about this in the world and context of photography. The referencing is getting out of hand. As you say it’s like a guarantee to be seen or spoke about but it’s also quite lazy. I’m not sure if the laziness is coming from brand briefs (if is) and also artists who are afraid and are deluded into thinking what they are making is original by justifying the reference in some abstract way.