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Good place for images of clothing, furniture, appliances, etc. from the 1990s?
Duffel
jacobkoshRegistered User regular
jacobkoshRegistered User regular
This may be a bit of a strange request, but I have seen this board find stranger things, so I thought I might as well ask.
So, I'm currently cooking up a writing project that begins in the mid-late 1990s. I'd like to get a lot of period details right for thematic reasons - stuff like people's clothes/haircuts, the stuff they have in their houses and the way those houses are decorated, all that sort of stuff. This is the time period I myself grew up, but it's been 15-20+ years, and I don't really trust my memory for specific details.
Searching for this sort of thing on Google seems rather fruitless. Usually what you end up finding are buzzfeed-esque articles which show the most cartoonish incarnations of those styles and fads, usually from celebrity media and what have you (stuff like all the members of N'Sync wearing matching overalls... not what I remember people wearing on a daily basis!), and all the other stuff I'd like to look into basically aren't there at all.
I actually thought about ordering some old catalogs to look through. Sears and JC Penney were the ones that sprung immediately to my mind, since those were fairly "average" companies (ie, not cutting-edge fashion) and they also sold a lot of home appliances, electronics, furniture, etc. But getting on ebay and looking through those things, a lot of those catalogs sell for between 60-70 dollars apiece(!). Why the sellers think a catalog that's been obsolete since the spring of 1998 is worth that much money I have no idea, but that seems to be the going rate. I guess they assume the only people who would want them are aspiring fashion designers. I have no desire to spend that kind of money on a personal project that I'm just doing for my own enjoyment, and I'd also like to have a wider range of "data" than a single catalog to show change over time, etc., so that is not really practical.
Photos seems like the only other available option, but 1) I don't have access to my own family's photos at the moment, since I'm living in another state 2) Most of the photos you can find online from that time period are stuff that people post for humor, and aren't really what I'm looking for (stuff like awkward family photos...), and 3) This was all of course up to ten years before social media became a thing, so as far as the Internet is concerned it's sort of from a "dark age".
So, does anybody know where you can find this sort of thing without paying through the nose for it? Any other kind of 1990s general reference would also be appreciated (stuff like wayback-ed news articles, contemporary culture and opinion pieces, retrospectives/autobiographies, all that kind of stuff).
So, I'm currently cooking up a writing project that begins in the mid-late 1990s. I'd like to get a lot of period details right for thematic reasons - stuff like people's clothes/haircuts, the stuff they have in their houses and the way those houses are decorated, all that sort of stuff. This is the time period I myself grew up, but it's been 15-20+ years, and I don't really trust my memory for specific details.
Searching for this sort of thing on Google seems rather fruitless. Usually what you end up finding are buzzfeed-esque articles which show the most cartoonish incarnations of those styles and fads, usually from celebrity media and what have you (stuff like all the members of N'Sync wearing matching overalls... not what I remember people wearing on a daily basis!), and all the other stuff I'd like to look into basically aren't there at all.
I actually thought about ordering some old catalogs to look through. Sears and JC Penney were the ones that sprung immediately to my mind, since those were fairly "average" companies (ie, not cutting-edge fashion) and they also sold a lot of home appliances, electronics, furniture, etc. But getting on ebay and looking through those things, a lot of those catalogs sell for between 60-70 dollars apiece(!). Why the sellers think a catalog that's been obsolete since the spring of 1998 is worth that much money I have no idea, but that seems to be the going rate. I guess they assume the only people who would want them are aspiring fashion designers. I have no desire to spend that kind of money on a personal project that I'm just doing for my own enjoyment, and I'd also like to have a wider range of "data" than a single catalog to show change over time, etc., so that is not really practical.
Photos seems like the only other available option, but 1) I don't have access to my own family's photos at the moment, since I'm living in another state 2) Most of the photos you can find online from that time period are stuff that people post for humor, and aren't really what I'm looking for (stuff like awkward family photos...), and 3) This was all of course up to ten years before social media became a thing, so as far as the Internet is concerned it's sort of from a "dark age".
So, does anybody know where you can find this sort of thing without paying through the nose for it? Any other kind of 1990s general reference would also be appreciated (stuff like wayback-ed news articles, contemporary culture and opinion pieces, retrospectives/autobiographies, all that kind of stuff).
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Also keep in mind that a family is not just from the current decade. I still have an 8-track radio and a bunch of cassettes somewhere, and I was using the former up until 1997 as a radio.
Oh, I'm aware of that IRL, but (without getting into irrelevant detail about the story itself) it's kind of important for the characters to start off as being very emblematic/representative of that specific era in time, at least in their external appearance, the way they customized their personal space and what have you.
I'll definitely check out my local library. I haven't been there in a while and I do remember some of their stuff in the nonfiction section being a bit dated :biggrin: Not sure how long they keep the magazines, but I think they have a ton of stuff on digital archive.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
and
are both from 1991.
edit: And Goth/Emo/Manson etc all also hit in the mid 90's.
Think about it: Things you mention like appliances and such, well most people in the 90s were still living in houses made in the 80s so they had those floorpans and those kitchens. People didn't buy new televisions all the time, so you either had a cutting edge massively heavy Sony Vega television or you had crappy rear projection big screen or you still had your 80s console tv.
Cell phones were magic, you saw one or two a day at most in the late 90s depending on where you were.
Cars are once again going to be late 80s early 90s models all the way up to the 00s.
We simply spend money differently now then back then. We were disposable culture but not as bad as now.
OOOOh remember CARS... SUVs weren't a thing quite yet. The ones that were out there were more like trucks then mini van/station wagon replacements like today.
Internet was dial up at best, floppies were a thing.
Flannel was awesome.
Great movies for visual references: (JUST for the looks of the movie, no other comment on the movies watch at your own risk)
SFW for the grungier side
Higher Learning for the mainstream fashion, music, multiculturalism
Hackers for what hollywood thought the 90s looked like
Welcome to the Dollhouse for what being a teen really looked like
Go for what the last days of 90s looked like before we fell into what ever the hell happened in the 00s
TV shows:
Real World early seasons- can't stress this enough.
For teen fashions watch Boy Meets World the high school/college years
Grunge was my favorite trend, suddenly all of us poor kids were high fashion.