Introducing Bistro Vibes, the Throwback Lifestyle for the Happily Washed

Once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s the 1989 BMW 325i buzzing down your street with the top down, piloted by a guy wearing a vintage Armani suit like Richard Gere would have worn in 1991 and blasting a Thundercat song that sounds like it’s from 1986. It’s the billboard promoting John Mayer’s new album with the instruction to “Make every drive a road trip.” (It’s the fact that Mayer’s new album will be released on CD, too.) It’s the return of seltzer with some lime—not purely for sobriety, but not not, either. It’s the rise of the era-fetishizing streetwear brand Aimé Leon Dore. It’s the resurgent look and feel of movies like Pretty Woman and L.A. Story. It’s Chris Paul shouting out literally Billy Crystal during the NBA playoffs. It’s being so happily washed that you’re now cleaned up.

It is Bistro Vibes, and it’s here to take over your summer.

The quickest way to explain Bistro Vibes is by reference to a place and time: Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s iconic Beverly Hills restaurant—in its ‘80s and ‘90s heyday—is the spiritual center of Bistro Vibes. It’s the clothes, the sounds, and the overall vibe. It’s not just about the restaurant’s dated-but-elevated food, or about the genial, mass-culture version of celebrity that thrived there. It’s also about the clothes famous people wore to places like Spago, and about the way that they wore them. As Dave Schilling, host of the “Galaxy Brains” podcast, points out that during the late 1980s and early ’90s, “Everyone seemed comfortable, but still put together.” He mentions Winona Ryder wearing a Dodgers cap and a baggy jacket to the premier of the movie Parenthood in 1989 and men wearing looser blazers with jeans and t-shirts. “I can look to this Spago era and see people who look like adults, whose looks I can easily recreate,” says Karina Longworth, writer and host of the “You Must Remember This” podcast. She notes that “People showed up dressed in Gap separates, but they also showed up dressed like the girls from the ‘Addicted to Love’ video, or the ‘Cradle of Love’ video,” in 1985 and 1990, respectively. “Chill, but cool. Laid back, but obviously thoughtful.”

Bistro Vibes belong to the generation that came of age during that period. Schilling, for example, is a dad and an older millennial, but he dressed more like a guy I’d try to sneak a script to in 1990. That’s to say: he looks exactly what I thought everybody in L.A. looked like when I was 8. Like a cool adult. I felt a certain resonance to my own life. I grew up on Cobain and Biggie, but I was secretly listening to Billy Joel. I was eyeballing the Vintage Contemporary paperbacks at the library, thinking of Billy Crystal, Denzel Washington, and Richard Gere as my style heroes. It all seemed mature. This wasn’t “adulting;” adults were just adults, and adulting was simply existing. And it feels really good now: After years of going to noise shows in basements with sitting water up to my ankles, I now want to turn the radio up real loud in my car when “Wishing Well” by Terence Trent D’Arby comes on. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. The people in their 30s and 40s I’ve talked to finally want to be just that: in their 30s and 40s.

Helpfully, the signifiers of Bistro Vibes—of the good life—are easy enough to track down. Longworth owns a mint green 1987 Mercedes SL. Schilling says he draws style inspiration from Jonah Hill and Lakeith Stanfield, but also from Jon Lovitz and the @Nightopenings Instagram account that features red carpet looks from yesteryear. He has the vintage Gucci loafers to prove it. It extends even further, into a never ending search for chill. You could be telling people you’re “sober curious,” that you’re really into making drinks from the non-alcoholic cocktail bible by Julia Brainbridge, Good Drinks, but weed is legal now so you and your friends can step out to smoke a joint at dinner. That setup alone sounds like something out of L.A. Story, or a tossed-off conversation you may have heard at some Keith McNally spot in 1991. And if you want to end the evening on decadent-yet-casual note, just pull a Viennetta out of the freezer since Good Humor is making the popular dessert once again and then go pull up the Wolfgang Puck documentary that’s streaming on Disney+.

There’s also a soundtrack. For years now, the musician Mike Pace has been preaching the gospel of what he calls “Spago Rock.” (Consider Spago Rock the musical manifestation of Bistro Vibes.) Spago Rock is the sound of musicians who started out in the ‘60s or ‘70s, mellowed out, but still wanted to seem hip and with it in the Reagan era. Cue the synthesizers and the long hair slicked back and pulled into a ponytail. And over the last few years, there has been no shortage of music that sounds like it could be playing from the speakers an outdoor restaurant on a sunny day in 1991. Last year alone, the Blood Orange remix of the Tame Impala song “Borderline,” the Washed Out album Purple Noon, a few songs off the new album by the Weeknd, Jesse Kivel’s Infinite Jess all screamed Bistro Vibes. John Mayer, always a canny observer and instigator of trends, is joining the fray with his Last Train Home. The album’s cover (with its “The Nice Price” sticker), the pastel color palette, Mayer’s leaning-against-a-window pose all contribute to the effect.

Of course, part of the reason you can afford your ‘80s Bimmer is that you’re renting your cramped two-bedroom apartment, the prospect of home ownership a far-off dream. Bistro Vibes are the attainable runoff of a lifestyle, pioneered by the Baby Boomers, that’s simply not quite as attainable for my geriatric millennials. That doesn’t mean it’s bankrupt, though. Where a divorced dad buying a sports car used to suggest a sort of desperation, an irresponsible car purchase today feels something more like carefree carelessness. Bistro Vibes is about cultivating that sort of bad decision, aware that the only real consequences are monetary. “Americans were still huffing the fumes of prosperity back then, and I think all of us want to get high on their supply right now,” Schilling says. Today, hustle culture predominates. Bistro Vibes is about taking the afternoon off and cracking a cold Zima.

So go ahead, get a baggy pair of pleated chinos and toss a t-shirt and blazer on. Go to a bar with an outdoor patio and order an espresso Martini (they’re back). Wait patiently for the next Banana Republic Vintage drop, and let your freak flag fly by blasting a compilation of sounds from the “smooth jazz underground” curated by America’s best reissue label. Or, if you’re hungry and don’t feel like going out, just do what Longworth did, and recreate some of Spago’s most iconic meals in your own home: She bought a Boboli pizza shell and topped it with creme fraiche, smoked salmon, and caviar. On the drink menu? “We drank supermarket white wine, which is the only alcohol I remember adults drinking at dinner parties during that era.”

I tried the bistro life myself a couple of weeks ago. On my first full post-vax day out, I went into Manhattan and spent a day like a tourist in the city I’ve called home for half my life. I put on an old Audi dealership shirt and draped a vintage Armani sport coat I got for practically nothing over my shoulders and got on the train. But before my first visit to Barney Greengrass in over a year, and before going to any museums, I had to stop at the Aimé Leon Dore store, not because I figured I had any chance to cop anything from the latest drop, but because I wanted to see the olive green 1978 Porsche 911 Super Carrera the brand restored and had parked right out front while a line stretched down Mulberry St.

A funny thing happened while I was looking at the Porsche. I am a total sucker for nearly any German or Italian sports car from roughly 1977-1993, but 911s are a powerful symbol for me. All the cool dads had one when I was a kid in the late-1980s and early-’90s. I wanted to be a cool dad. I think I still do. And I also think other millennials who grew up watching some boomers enjoy “the good life” that so many of us might never be able to experience feel somewhat similar, even if they won’t admit it. So a few hours later, as I took in the Alice Neel exhibit at the Met, I couldn’t stop thinking about that Porsche. About how I’m part of a group that is approaching middle age, but we’ve all spent our 20s and 30s worrying about one horrific thing after another. It’s really no way to grow old, always worrying. So what do people in their 30s and early 40s do? We look back to the things our parents had: their cars were cool, their clothes were comfortable, and their music was better than we remember. Of course our parents had plenty to worry about, but they also grew up with promise, with hope. They could get one of their own into the White House, and the theme song was “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac. What I wouldn’t give for a second of that sort of diluted confidence that tomorrow will be better than today.

Things do seem a little better. But that’s all: a little. We’re all in the same car headed down a road to nowhere, so we might as well put “The King of Wishful Thinking” by Go West on the car stereo. We’re hoping for the best, but we’ll take better. Put the top down and let the breeze blow through your hair. Pour yourself a tall glass of Bistro Vibes, and try to enjoy yourself.