The roaring 20s are back in this Vogue Scandinavia editorial

Isn’t it about time we had some fun? Can’t you just hear it, just in the distance, like the thrumming baseline of a house party on the top floor of a building you’re gradually ascending? We’re nearly there…our very own Roaring Twenties.

When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve 2019, we imagined the dawning of an era of Gatsby exuberance that, very swiftly, became anything but. This decade already has a lot of making up to do. Yet, in many ways, it is neatly mirroring its predecessor. There is a reason the twenties roared when they did. The ravages of the first world war were followed, almost cruelly, by the Spanish Flu pandemic, making the giddy, gilded opulence of the Jazz Age that followed a craved antidote to the horrors of what came before.

Through the slow regeneration of life this year, we are approaching our very own needy exhale. Building within us is the same spirit that hiked up flapper girls’ hemlines, caused the gin to flow and the saxophone to blare. When life has been traumatically altered and restricted, it is only natural that we should find new joy in the art of living, once it returns. Those who lost loved ones to this virus can once more find solace in the arms of others, can celebrate the lives of those who have departed, not feel trapped in the grief of isolation. Those who have felt the trauma of last year’s seismic cultural shifts can perhaps feel their spirits raised by new beginnings.

What lies ahead of us is a renewed appreciation for everything we took for granted. The touch of another human being, the smell of champagne on warm breath, the eroticism of sexual possibility, the thrill of dressing up, the simple brilliance of having somewhere to go. As our very own Roaring Twenties settle in, we will find that parties and excess no longer feel hedonistic, but necessary. Single people shall tumble into dating once more with the feverish anticipation of delayed gratification. Mothers shall appreciate the beauty of a night without their children, teenagers a night without their parents. Friends will reunite with a reckless delirium that comes from the pain of separation. The value of togetherness and celebration, the beauty of music and dancing in a tangle of limbs and smiles: we missed these snapshots of happiness, and we shall seek them out once more, with an appetite more voracious than ever before.

Liberation means far more than just a good party. For the women of the 1920s, the decadent revelry and sartorial nonconformity of the era - shorter hemlines, longer necklines and androgynous hair - reflected a spirit of change. Norway led the charge in the late nineteenth-century, but for much of Scandinavia, Great Britain and the United States, female suffrage was finally granted in the dawning of the twenties. Women’s voices were ultimately heard.

This yearning for transformation is brewing for us too. We have lived through the ‘New Normal’ of the last year and, while we feel desperate for a return to the halcyon moments of the pre-Covid world, most of us are eager for a reset. This new decade presents an opportunity for a fresh start; for a world which tackles the inequality and injustices that were exposed by the pandemic. For women of colour, the last year has forced the world to finally see life through their eyes. We are more alert to the ills of society but more desirous than ever before to make things right. As we open up once more, this time, our eyes are wider, more alert. Hope feels as tangible as the pleasures of a party.

“It is never too late to be whoever you want to be,” said that doyenne of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald. And perhaps this is as true of the world as it is for us and our Roaring Twenties. So, I beg of you, put on your finest clothes, pop open the champagne, invite all your friends and turn up the volume. The past year has been about surviving. Now it is about time we start living.