When I first heard (or more appropriately saw) “steampunk,” I didn’t know what it was. I just assumed it is a sort of a costume style in movies like The Time Machine, Mad Max, or A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. However, there are a group of very fashionable, forward-thinking people wearing these sorts of clothes and gadgets on a daily basis. The copper gears in a gadget or article of jewelry, the worn leather boots reminiscent of WWI soldiers, the round spectacles from the pre-war era, all make up the very hip, new click that refuses to be anything but ordinary.

The idea of steampunk is mixing the old nostalgia with the new. So you may have a new style of jewelry in a vintage copper or wood, or you may have an iPod with a wood cover or a cover that shows it is working with “gears” like a clock. It is the idea of something that is not electronic, but rather mechanical. In today’s world of everything electronic, steampunk is a logical backlash–a return to all things honest, in a sense. Mechanisms can sometimes be more reliable than a fussy electronic invention.

Although many of the influences of steampunk are rooted in the Victorian age, there are elements of the future that make all of it most interesting. The Victorian age has sparked a number of fashion trends, from Goth to Victorian pop-punk (the style I personally prefer most), but steampunk seems to be the most recent. The steampunk movement is not strict to fashion only, but also the way of living and interior decoration. There are living spaces decorated with rusty pre-war artifacts, but always with a twist of today’s modern technology.

Perhaps it’s the irony of a Victorian computer that makes this genre of underground fashion so intriguing, but there actually is one (see photo)—a steampunk fan outfitted a computer monitor in an elaborate Victorian wooden frame with brass detailing. The keyboard was ingeniously re-fitted with vintage typewriter keys.

This sort of dystopia is sparking a fashion trend that is trickling out of the big cities and into suburbia (as fashion usually does). Jodhpurs, distressed leather bomber jackets, waistcoats from the Civil War era, copper hardware, over-the-knee leather boots, parasols, and anything with gears all account for the unique steampunk look. And if you have a hard time finding stuff, etsy.com has a few steampunk stores.

Remember, the most creative fashion is when artists, not the runways, start it in the streets. When fashion is started on the streets, it is usually out of necessity and in response to a specific frame of mind, whether it be nostalgia for the early 1900s, or against a repressive regime (in this case, the “electronic regime”). This sort of retro-futurism is not an accident but a response to our seemingly cold, computer-driven world. A little ingenuity can go a long way in a world where creativity is already thought up for you. The runways will soon look onto this refreshing trend as inspiration, I predict by next year and in mainstream fashion (the mall) in the next two years. So let the countdown begin before we have to look for something new! Then again, we can always go back in a time machine…

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