Tattoos and piercings as fashion statements
The nineties was a decade when minimalism was supreme in all branches
of 90’s fashion, whether it was the clothes, the hair or furniture. Fads
and trends came and went, none of them leaving much of a mark except
maybe in your dresser where things would pile up as the decade
progressed, some would get slashed up, some would get progressively
shorter or baggier. However there was one such fad of 90’s fashion that
was so much more permanent than any of the others and this was of course
the trend that saw piercings and tattoos enter the mainstream.
Piercings and tattoos have been a part of human culture since time
immemorial but they only entered the Western Civilization relatively
recent and the nineties where the time when tattoos and piercings made
the crucial jump from the realm of bikers, sailors and prison yards to
the mainstream. Piercings became popular as the Indie and Grunge trends
gained momentum, ears being pierced multiple times, for both boys and
girls, and noses and faces weren’t spared the scrutiny of piercings.
Probably the biggest trend in this piercing fad was the belly button
piercing which in turn gave birth to the trend of extremely short tops,
yet another staple of 90’s fashion. Interesting to see how one trend
creates another which in turn creates another. The bare-midriff trend
started in the 90’s and exploded into popularity thanks to rap and
hip-hop videos which became extremely popular and mainstream du ring
that that. Those videos, but not only those, showed the hottest women
around wearing very short shirts and incredibly small hot pants. The
midriff continued to be popular as the decade progressed being sported
by the then sixteen year old Britney Spears in her debut video back in
1998; however as the nineties drew to a close so did the midriff trend,
possibly due to the fact that the year 2000 came with a more
conservative style of dress as well as a more conservative American
president, however that is one fad that not a lot of people miss.
Tattoos became popular at the same time because many of the idols that
teenagers had were sporting them, whether they were performers or
actors. Women started getting tattooed more and more especially thanks
to the increasing popularity of the lower back tattoo which actually has
been gaining more and more ground in recent years. Most people didn’t
see it coming, but tattoos and piercings have grown to be fashion
statements in this period and if you had the right idea, you could have
easily come up with a tattoo which goes with any type of clothing. |
