Tag: celebrity

Reference board final bosses and the irony epidemic – Vik’s Busy Corner

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. […]

“I give it two more years of red carpets before the girlies completely run out of looks to reference,” writer, editor, and the host of The New Garde podcast Alyssa Vingan 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.