Andy, did you hear about this one?

I was twenty-one on the steamy July evening we crowded into Phil's airless student apartment to watch a man walk on the moon. If you had asked me then what I'd predict we'd see fifty years later, I'd have said regular lunar landings, maybe even an outpost. We would be wearing Paco Rabanne-ish jumpsuits made of discs that you snapped together like pop-beads; surely the zipper would be obsolete.

That evening, I wore nothing that young women of fifty years earlier, in 1921, would have worn and yet, this past summer, I saw twenty-one year olds in exactly what I was wearing in '71: tank tops, a miniskirt or cut offs—no one was in what was not around then unless you count stretch denim and the logos of brands whose designers were not yet born.

What year is this?

All of these clothes are from Summer 2019: left, Acne Studios dress; upper right, skirt, Ralph Lauren; lower right, shoes, Isabel Marant.

Kurt Anderson, in a 2008 Vanity Fair article, said that the recent past, since the '00s, looks like the present—that we are in a design rut, "consuming the past instead of creating the new".  I'd say the pause stretches even further back to sometime in the '60s, when design and culture shifted simultaneously and seismically. Young women wore what they pleased—shorts and tees, little shift dresses, bell bottoms—except to the stuffiest establishments, and who wanted to go there anyway? My sister and I begged our mother, then in her fifties, to shorten her skirts so her knees showed.

In 2019, we hear hype about "gender-neutral clothes"; brands such as Céline Dion's children's line are dedicated to the idea. (Recall OshKosh B'gosh?) In '71, the term unisex was today's gender-neutral. I'm not sure the new brands will survive; badly-cut shirts are not pleasing to wear no matter how you identify.

There is talk about a return to the moon by around 2024 (Project Artemis), and in the meantime can't they make shoe lifts made of super-tech material so they don't wear down? Could women get trouser and shirt sizing like men's—or for that matter just standardized sizing?

Why in 2019 is a pair of cotton trousers sold with a "dry clean only" label? And why do we have dry cleaning at all? Fifty years ago, did you expect to still be paying for your clothes to be cleaned with chemicals, and have to lug them there and back?

Even "green drycleaning" has its issues. Shouldn't everyday clothing be made so owners can maintain it? (We know that "dry clean only" labels are placed in pieces that are entirely washable, just a horrible CYA move.)

The moonwalk was the most dramatic experience of the future literally landing that I will likely witness. I will not be here to ponder the fashion of the day fifty years from now—as REM's song goes, "Let's play Twister, Let's play Risk/See you in heaven if you make the list." But at some point, there has to be a visible shift. Could it be that the young person of 2069 will look like today's? That would be a century of stasis.

For now, still offered what we saw in '71 give or take a shoulder pad, we should demand that the apparel industry catch up to the times in terms of ethical manufacturing.

Here is a terrific article on the industry's contribution to environmental degradation. If anything will keep a woman out of certain well-known chains, this ought to: "Fast Fashion Lies:  Will they really change their ways in a climate crisis?" by Anika Kozlowski, Assistant Professor of Fashion Design, Ethics and Sustainability at Ryerson University, Toronto.

We should also refuse to overbuy so that we keep goods out of the landfills on this precious planet, no matter what we choose to wear.