The 1970s never really left the building.
It just keeps getting re-invited to the party, most recently by every stylist in Hollywood who discovered that nothing photographs better than a bias-cut slip dress and a pair of platforms high enough to require a permit.
But here's the detail that's been quietly bugging archivists and vintage dealers alike: for all the Halston, the Studio 54 polaroids, and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses that survived, almost nobody kept the decade's single most ubiquitous accessory.
The good stuff — the stuff that actually touched skin.
We're talking about the 1970s obsession with body oil.
Specifically, the gleaming, coconut-scented, baby-oil-by-the-gallon ritual that turned every disco floor into a slip hazard and every beach photo into a glare problem.
It was the decade's version of a filter: you didn't need good lighting when you were essentially laminated.
Farrah Fawcett's feathered halo practically required it.
And yet, ask any costume archive today and they'll tell you the same thing — the oil-stained garments from that era are the hardest to preserve, which is exactly why so few pristine examples exist.
The look that defined a decade was, chemically speaking, self-destructing.
Now fast-forward to 2024, where the pendulum has swung all the way back.
TikTok's "glazed donut" skin, Hailey Bieber's Rhode empire, the sheer bodysuits on every red carpet from the Met Gala to the Vanity Fair afterparty — it's 1977 again, just with better SPF and a dermatologist on retainer.
The difference is that this time, the shine is engineered to last.
Last time, it was engineered to disappear by sunrise.
The music tells the same story. "Dancing Queen" turned fifty and got a full victory lap.
Fleetwood Mac's *Rumours* still moves vinyl units like it was released last month.
Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" got a Stranger Things resurrection that introduced a 1985 song to an audience younger than the streaming platform it played on.
The 1970s keep proving they're not nostalgia — they're inventory.
What's genuinely fascinating is how the decade's aesthetic keeps getting rebranded as "effortless." It was anything but.
Those Studio 54 nights required hours of prep, a team of hairdressers, and a willingness to dance in shoes that could double as construction equipment.
The "I just rolled out of bed looking like this" energy was, as always, a full-time job.
When Liza Minnelli or Debbie Harry or Elton John talk about that era, they don't romanticize the ease — they romanticize the excess.
The sheer audacity of wearing a see-through blouse to a black-tie dinner and calling it Tuesday.
That's the part modern red carpets can't quite replicate, no matter how many archival Mugler gowns get pulled.
So here's the takeaway, and it's a little bittersweet: the 1970s gave us the blueprint for basically everything we're wearing, streaming, and dancing to right now.
But the actual artifacts — the oiled silk, the stained satin, the garments that lived as hard as the people who wore them — are mostly gone.
Final Thoughts
Maybe that's the most 1970s thing of all.