POSTCARDPOSTING #3
Ad for a jewelry line sold via the online clothing retailer girlshop (dot) com; date unknown, but no earlier than 1997, no later than 2007, and probably toward the earlier end of the range. More info after the cut!
The site itself was a now-defunct online retailer founded by designer/entrepreneur/former iVillage person Laura Eisman. Wikipedia -- perhaps commandeered by a brand rep -- calls it "the first website for indie-designer, trend making style." (A month after she started the site, the New York Times happened to write it up. What sudden serendipity!) They had a physical flagship NYC store at one point that mildly disappointed The Village Voice. Think Club Libby Lu meets TheRealReal.
This particular ad is designed by Seventeen/Teen magazine illustrator Sara Schwartz, whose circa-2000 website is still extant, and which is a phenomenal time capsule of the era. Specifically, it marks the point in the era when this zine-y aesthetic, already mainstreamed somewhat by Sassy magazine, had diffused even further, into the even-more-mildly-political world of huge fashion ads in huge teen magazines. The kind of magazines marketed to girls who read their teen magazines via getting them in the grocery-store checkout line, Borders, and/or the hair salon, to sell them body glitter and future girlbossing. (Note: Me. I did all these things, although I was much better at the glitter than the girlbossing.) I mention all this not to shit on it -- I wouldn't collect these if I didn't have a (guilty, nostalgic) love for the design and wasn't fascinated by the somewhat-forgotten history. But this, like most such postcards, is ultimately an ad, selling you something.
Speaking of nostalgia: Part of what I'm fascinated by is how actual '90s (or whatever) media differs from the #rememberthe90s nostalgiabait, which excises from its remembered decade anything no longer deemed cool. So:
SIGNS THIS IS ACTUALLY A 2000-ISH WEBSITE AND NOT A MODERN RECREATION:
- This is kind of cheating, but the source code mentions Microsoft FrontPage 3.0 and JavaScript 1.2, both circa the late '90s.
- The first listed band "fave" is "Coldplay!!!!!!!" (This would have been around the time "Yellow" came out.) Other favorite bands: Tricky; Filter; Luscious Jackson; Eve; Ofra Haza; "'THE' Willaim Orbit"; "Dance Club Remixes!!!" Like most lists of its nature -- see also: Kesha's favorite artists from her old MySpace profile -- it is a hyper-curated but also ephemeral thing: a time capsule of what was considered cool at a very exact point in time.
- Various parts of the portfolio pieces: the peak of celebrity being Minnie Driver; the peak of pop culture being PaRappa the Rapper with a speech bubble mentioning Snoop Doggy Dogg (by that name); the peak of fragrance being Tommy Girl; the circa-2000 ad campaign for Japanese label Trans Continents with doodle people exclaiming "Femme!" and "Homme!" at the pink-and-blue Trans Cafe, which I assume was not intended to come off how it now comes off.
- The appearance of Norman Vincent Peale gets his own bullet point. For the "this fucking guy" factor and also for his being mentioned in any aspirational, hip context.
- Another separate bullet point goes to the "equal billing" Spice Girls counterpart: Mark Wahlberg as Sporty Spice, Tyson Beckford as Posh Spice, Busta Rhymes as Ginger Spice, Marilyn Manson (ugh, see above) as Scary Spice, and Zac Hanson (at least I assume it's Zac and not the Spindrift drummer) as Baby Spice.
- I'm not saying a modern writer making some "omg Y2K" thing couldn't write something as utterly of-its-era as this sentence, but they'd have to get a lot of fine points right: "these wacky illos. spring to life with the gift of gab and are on the pulse of our popular culture. sara's work is, no doubt, hot, fresh, fly and insightful just in time for the millennium."
- Likewise, describing another writer as "the koolest NYC gen-X'er."
- The autoplaying peanuts.mid is probably not actually a sign, since it absolutely is in the web design arsenal of the average ironic 2020s memester. But I nevertheless want to point out its existence, if only because it will be downloaded onto your phone.
Again, I mention all this not to shit on the design, but because I kind of love all of this and am genuinely surprised that at no point in the decade of Rookie Magazine was it rediscovered or reappreciated -- despite the feeling that I'm being successfully marketed to from beyond the brands' grave.