They found the country much changed.
Having left the Champagne-soaked fes-
tivities early, by the time they returned,
all that was left was an empty dance hall
with glitter on the floor. They’d been so
busy careering around Europe in a dizzy-
ing cloud of cocksure charisma—and per-
sonal drama—that they didn’t notice the
moment things began to unravel. After
the stock market plummeted in 1929,
the Fitzgeralds were on holiday in North
Africa. As Fitzgerald later wrote, “We
heard a dull distant crash which echoed
to the farthest wastes of the desert.” But
they kept drinking, seeing no need to sail
home. The crash echoed through their
lives nonetheless. That year, Zelda’s men-
tal health declined, and she checked into
the Swiss clinic Les Rives de Prangins,
where she scribbled letters about spend-
ing her days “writing soggy words in the
rain and feeling dank inside.” Fitzgerald,
for his part, was unable to finish his next
novel. When they finally arrived home on
a steamer, Fitzgerald wrote, they found
that several of their most buoyant friends
had also begun to sink. “Somebody had
blundered,” he wrote in an essay that
year. “And the most expensive orgy in
history was over.”
It is never easy to pinpoint the exact
moment that a party begins to wind down.
But, as Fitzgerald noted looking back on
the Jazz Age, the party is usually over
before anyone notices. It is ending all the
time, from the moment someone kicks off
their first heel. Decadence—that state of
ecstatic, almost sublime decay—is really
just opulence with an expiration date.
Fitzgerald wrote that friends were living
far beyond their means, and they knew it,
and they simply didn’t care. “Even when
you were broke you didn’t worry about
money, because it was in such profusion
around you,” he wrote. “Now once more
the belt is tight and we summon the prop-
er expression of horror as we look back at
our wasted youth.”
We are living in the ’20s again. But our
times are not roaring; at least not with
giddy, boozy elation. Who can afford
the performative nihilism of doing the
foxtrot into oblivion? Wasted youth is a
privilege, one that so many young peo-
ple today cannot access; the planet is
crumbling, right-wing extremism is on
the rise, wealth disparity is worse than it
has been in a century. (This we do have
in common with Fitzgerald’s time.) The
party is very much over—or at least the
record player is snagging and people have
started to grab their coats. The biggest
drinking trend among people under 30
these days is sobriety. If fashion is flirt-
ing with decadence—the recent runway
shows glittered with grandiosity and raz-
zle-dazzle—then at least this decadence
is gimlet-eyed and somewhat sobering.
There is a kind of winking meta-maximal-
ism happening at the moment; a luxury
that knows itself and its own limitations,
knows how precarious it all is. Fashion ishaving riotous fun, but it is not blithe or
indulgent. This is sartorial raging against
a dying light; this is eating a chocolate
cake at two in the morning because who
can say when the sun will rise?
In entertainment, we are in a clear
period of heady excess. The streaming
revolution has led to an explosion of
new stories with monumental production
values—and opportunities for fresh faces
seeking stardom. This may be a scary
time to be a person, but it is an excellent
time to be in Hollywood; there has never
been a more diverse, textured, exciting
array of projects and talent, with real
money and energy fueling their devel-
opment. How long can it last? No one
can say, but for now, we should revel in
it, and in the thrilling crop of newcomers
that have bubbled up in this new era. So
what if the party’s dwindling, let’s dance.
And so here is a portfolio reveling in
willful decadence, about the velvet and
brocade and baubles that you put on not
as a distraction from the world, but in cel-
ebration of your potential within it‚ and in
spite of it. These are not times to retreat
into spartan asceticism. These are days
for sparkle, for ruffles, for amulets and
waistcoats. Fashion should feel a little bit
gaudy, a little bit unstable, perhaps incau-
tious and maybe even fleeting. Nothing is
permanent; no decade roars forever. The
new ’20s are about not ignoring the dull
distant crashes, but facing them head-on.
In a party dress. nK elvin
H ARRISON JR.SEEN IN
The Photograph and Wa ves
UP NEXT
The Trial of the Chicago 7,
in October
Dream closet:
A$AP Rocky’s
Favorite destination:
Budapest
Greatest indulgence:
Chocolate lava cake
Prized possession:
His grandfather’s necklaceClothing by CELINE by
Hedi Slimane.