McBling - Aesthetic Highlight #9

[Emmy Fitz]

McBling (c. early-late 2000s)

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McBling is was an aesthetic from the 2000s, and one of the most popular and identifiable of the decade. A hard shift from late-90s minimalism, McBling is characterized by garishness, boujee, and excess. It was mostly seen in marketing, fashion, television promos, and interior design.

This aesthetic is EXTREMELY nostalgic for me. It reminds me of a time when I was younger, when celebrities were larger than life and their exploitative lives were front and center. My mom loved watching E! pre-Kardashian era and I was always putting MTV on in the background. And whenever I would go down to the city, various building interiors were decorated like this until around the Recession. Not super aesthetically pleasing, but damn nostalgic.
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[vaporwavemaster1]

私はこれを本当に覚えていません、それは確かにここ日本ではそれほど一般的ではありませんでした。しかし、それでも非常に興味深い傾向です。これらの古い美学は誰にも気付かれずに時代遅れになっているように見えます、そして突然誰もが彼らが当たり前と思っていたことに気づきます

 

[kultra]

I have a nostalgia for this kind of thing, but I sincerely hope it doesn't make a comeback.

 

[naa]

I never really got exposed to this aesthetic at all as a kid, but man I kind of love it. I can definitely see it more now that I'm an adult, especially in hiphop music videos and album covers from the 2000s, it's really prevalent but in a different way.

I think it's definitely tied to the culture of making obvious, intense knockoffs of branded items that cropped up in the late 90s. Notably there was a guy who started illegally making clothing with the Louis Vuitton logo printed literally all over it, which got crazy popular in the hiphop community, then this craze for super branded knockoffs started in general. It actually circled back and influenced the brand itself to start doing this. I can't remember the name of the guy who started that offhand.

This aesthetic was also on the rise right when rappers started making their own luxury clothing brands, and collaborating with preexisting ones more prevalently. Shoutout Kanye's first Louis Vuitton collab with the pink polo, Pharrell's Billionaire Boys Club brand started in 2005 and leading to a whole movement of brands, and Cam'ron just in general.

 

[Emmy Fitz]

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[elia925-6]

I never really got exposed to this aesthetic at all as a kid, but man I kind of love it. I can definitely see it more now that I'm an adult, especially in hiphop music videos and album covers from the 2000s, it's really prevalent but in a different way.

I think it's definitely tied to the culture of making obvious, intense knockoffs of branded items that cropped up in the late 90s. Notably there was a guy who started illegally making clothing with the Louis Vuitton logo printed literally all over it, which got crazy popular in the hiphop community, then this craze for super branded knockoffs started in general. It actually circled back and influenced the brand itself to start doing this. I can't remember the name of the guy who started that offhand.

This aesthetic was also on the rise right when rappers started making their own luxury clothing brands, and collaborating with preexisting ones more prevalently. Shoutout Kanye's first Louis Vuitton collab with the pink polo, Pharrell's Billionaire Boys Club brand started in 2005 and leading to a whole movement of brands, and Cam'ron just in general.
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Reminds me of modern streetwear.

 

[brentw]

Ugh I hate this aesthetic almost as much as calarts animation and corporate memphis.

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

Ugh I hate this aesthetic almost as much as calarts animation and corporate memphis.

I feel it. This aesthetic is too hardly trying to be cool

 

[elia925-6]

I feel it. This aesthetic is too hardly trying to be cool

I think Y2K looks better.