IT’S NOT A PHASE, MUM

(it was a phase. at least, it was for these writers.)

The year was 2007. Apple had just announced the iphone. Timbaland and Sean Kingston were enjoying their 15 minutes. And grey fedoras were considered cool.

If you were born in a year starting with a “2”, it might be hard to imagine a world where fedoras didn’t make you look like the sort of guy who regularly mimes taking out earbuds. But that world did exist – it was called the noughties.

Nowadays, grey fedoras are a really efficient identifier of people you’ll regret sitting next to on public transport. It’s hard to imagine a more universally hated fashion accessory. But the early 2000s represented what Vice called the “fedora renaissance”, which I guess makes me a renaissance man. I wore a grey fedora, unironically and in public, for about three years. Me and some other people, like Pete Doherty and Johnny Depp (which, I realise as I write this, probably isn’t the most ringing celebrity endorsement).

Now, on its own, a grey fedora in the noughties isn’t the worst fashion crime imaginable. As I said, lots of people were inflicting fedoras on the general public back then. But for some reason I decided, as I awkwardly moved into my formative early 20s, that the ‘look’ I was going to ‘rock’ would be a grey fedora and a goatee. I know. I know. You can practically smell the Lynx Africa.

See, I’d spent most of my teenage years actively trying to disappear. And I thought that my 20s was a good time to swap invisibility for extreme visibility. In short, I overcompensated. For a few years, every Saturday night, I’d head out with a freshly shaved goatee and a grey fedora, ready to experience whatever the world had to offer. It mostly offered loneliness.

Interestingly, both these choices hark back to different periods of the 20th century. Goatees technically date back to ancient Greece and Rome – the god Pan was the OG goatee sex pest, and yes, the name comes from the tuft of hair on a goat’s chin – but they didn’t gain widespread popularity until the 1940s, when they became associated with beatnik counterculture. Fedoras, on the other hand, were the go-to look for Prohibition-era gangsters. You wouldn’t be caught dead smuggling whiskey into a Chicago speakeasy wearing anything else. This means my regular Saturday night ensemble for about three years in the mid-noughties was half beatnik goat boy, and half Al Capone. I’m genuinely surprised I made it past the bouncers.

One of the things you realise as you get older is that you’re always moving towards a more ‘complete’ version of you. As time grinds us under its boot heel, we start to accept certain inalienable things about ourselves. That’s why old people are so wonderfully unburdened by self-consciousness – they’ll wear carpet slippers, a dressing gown, and not much else (even on a windy day) because who cares, right? They’ve finally realised that living for other people’s validation is a waste of time.

The catch is that you only appreciate this personal growth after the fact. In other words, there’s no way to know if you currently look ridiculous. I have no doubt that 50-year-old James will be embarrassed by the antics of 36-year-old James, just as I look back on my fedora-clad younger self with bafflement and shame. That’s just how it goes. There’s a road from You Then to You Now, and one of the rocky patches on that road is wearing a grey fedora, and shaving your beard so that it resembles something you’d find in a shower drain. Man. Was I ever that young?

By Wendy Syfret –

The summer after you finish school is a magical time. You’re (briefly) liberated from the shackles of education and the identity you spent the last 13 years building. In that golden wedge, anything feels possible. Or at least it did to me in December 2005.

I’d been 18 for a month, free of year 12 for a few weeks and I was itching at the chance to reinvent myself. I’d long imagined who this post-school person would be. This new self would be wild, driven by adventure, hungry for love, unbound and confident. Sure, nothing in my previous 18 years had suggested an instinct for any of these qualities, but I was sure that in this glowing season I’d be reborn.

Luckily, my long-planned transformation coincided with a family trip overseas. But as I packed my suitcase I picked over my adolescent wardrobe and found it deeply ill-suited for the kind of exploits I was expecting. How could I explore new horizons in the sneakers that dragged me through PE? Who would kiss me in the moonlight while I sported the Dangerfield ruffle skirt I bought with my pay from Woolies? Sadly that checkout chick salary didn’t allow for any kind of fashion evolution. I’d have to craft a new persona from the fragments of my old one. Some things could stay: The beat-up cowboy boots, studded waist belts, clattering bangles and smudged eyeliner felt appropriate. But instinctively I knew to leave one thing in my childhood bedroom: bras.

I was of course not the first woman to consider shrugging off social pressures by slipping off her underwear. At the crest of a fresh century, going braless was hardly a statement. Especially considering my AA cups meant the garment’s role was largely ceremonial. But for teen me, the exclusion felt revolutionary.

Unfortunately, I was not a revolutionary. Secretly knowing this I made a private compromise. The bras would stay home, and instead I would wear a bikini top all summer. Fuelled by my millennial fashion diet of The OC and Dolly-era Miranda Kerr, I was confident I could pull it off. I may have imagined Marissa Cooper – golden-skinned, blonde-streaked, two triangles of bathers peeping out from my boob tube – but the reality was less timeless. Every photo of me from that trip tells the same story. Not of a vivacious young woman on the cusp of something extraordinary. But rather, an eternally awkward teen still very much out of step with style and herself.

Looking back, I struggle to find a snap where at best a bikini string isn’t snaking out of a sleeve, or at worst my nipples are just fully visible through my shirt. Maybe for Miranda Kerr this read as carefree and unfussed. But for me, wet bathers soaking through oversized souvenir tees, the effect was more breastfeeding teen mother.

To make things more awkward, that summer we had a professional intergenerational family portrait taken. As such this brief flirtation with being a wild (aka partially braless) young adult was immortalised in a number of enlarged and framed photos currently hanging around the world.

Looking at that image today, almost 20 years later, you’d think I’d cringe. But considering that damp-boobed almost-revolutionary, I’m not embarrassed. Sure, I see where she went wrong – not even AAS are supported by a bandeau. But even knowing she’d be back to a Bonds crop top and her regular self as soon as the plane hit the tarmac, I still love her for having the confidence and enthusiasm to try something new. Although I would also love it if my nipples weren’t visible in a photo with my grandpa.

By Tiara Swain –

I’ve always had my finger on the pulse when it comes to fashion trends. In my teenage years, I had stacks of fashion magazines guiding me towards the hottest new looks. I distinctly recall the frenzy of needing to own a trucker hat like Paris Hilton’s, the “useless belt” trend of wearing thick belts around the waist, gladiator sandals that would leave peculiar tan lines, and braided headbands worn across the forehead. All questionable style phases, but also all the rage in the 2000s. But as I progressed through high school, I grew tired of following the crowd and craved individuality.

Enter my indie phase: being alternative was the goal and some interesting fashion choices were made. While other girls sported ballet flats and micro skirts, I wore a long pleated skirt and ten-hole Doc Martens. My science teacher was most impressed with my sensible footwear choice. I embraced eyeliner and chunky rings and carried my books in a vintage doctor's bag. Now that I think of it, that bag probably contributed to my slightly lopsided posture. My brother would say I looked like a grandma as I dressed in old-fashioned cotton nighties and leather laceup shoes, often resembling a child librarian who moonlighted as a farmhand. He wasn’t wrong.

Then came my Tim Burton era, when I wanted to look like Helena Bonham Carter and date guys who looked like Edward Scissorhands. I wore thick lace tulle skirts with a Cranberries band shirt tucked in. My playlist consisted solely of The Smiths and The Cure, with songs like “Girlfriend in a Coma” serving as the soundtrack to my angsty walks to class. I was a caricature of teenage rebellion.

While my hair was too curly to have a spikey mullet cut, it didn’t

stop me from attempting to replicate one of those fringes that covers your whole face. I would swoop my thick curls across my brow and secure them with multiple bobby pins to form a makeshift fringe. I idolised Agyness Deyn (It Girl of the 2000s) and strove to embody her level of coolness. But instead, I became the epitome of try-hardness. I wanted to be so alternative it hurt. If people copied me, I’d get agitated. I didn’t take it as a compliment like my mother said I should. She obviously didn’t understand how hard it was to try to be different (angsty sigh).

On weekends, I’d hop on the train from the Gold Coast to Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, eager to explore all the best vintage shops and bring home unique pieces that smelt like mothballs. One of my go-to outfits featured a shirt with a howling wolf on the front, paired with a black bowler hat – both treasures from General Pants Co (at the time, the holy grail of indie fashion stores, but looking back, just another fast fashion establishment). I completed the look with shiny patent black brogues, worn without socks. While I thought it exuded a certain 'cool' factor, my stinky, sweaty feet were another story altogether.

As I reflect on this phase of my life, I can’t help but see myself as a bit ridiculous and lost. I now realise that I was deeply insecure and seeking validation from others while trying to align my outward presentation with my inner self. Ah, the classic teenage dilemma. Luckily, my approach to fashion has evolved. Nowadays, I prioritise authenticity over eccentricity, finding joy in dressing for myself rather than for the sake of being different. And although my love for The Smiths and Tim Burton films lived beyond this phase, I no longer feel the need to emulate Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice – unless it’s for Halloween, of course.

By Jack Vening –

For all the damage it’s inflicting on young people’s mental health, I envy what it must be like growing up with access to smartphones and social media.

Growing up in the 2000s without a constant, terror-inducing style panopticon meant having few guidelines about how one was meant to look. As a guy, BMX magazines were the closest thing we had to Dolly. Skaters may seem like a safe touchstone now, but skatewear was as expensive then as it is today, and every skater seemed to be an adult man who turned up at high-school parties because “we’re more fun”.

The result, for me, was chaos. It was an age of past-the-knee jorts and cargo pants large enough to serve as an emergency shelter. Clown-like Converse low-tops, twee colour-block tees, oversized Rip Curl button-ups with embroidered black flames. The t-shirt/overshirt combo was king – a fundamental part of my “if someone observes my body, I’ll die” fashion strategy.

Nobody knew what they were doing. Everything felt like a message written in a lost language: even when you could decipher it, it was too late to be of any use. Which is why I hope you’ll have sympathy when I tell you that, at 16 years old, I bought a fedora from Dangerfield and wore it for the remainder of my precious high school years. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I haven’t forgiven myself.

As with most things in life, being a nerd made everything harder. For years I venerated characters from detective films nobody in my generation, including me, had ever seen. I wore suit jackets to parties, bumming cigarettes so I could affect a Bogart silhouette. I had no idea who he was, but the decaying Casablanca poster at my local video store sure made me want to base my whole personality on him.

Then the worst happened. At Year 11 drama camp, while we rehearsed our upcoming production of 1984 (ambitious considering none of us could read), an older kid named Sam went AWOL for several hours. He’d been to the mall, he told us when he returned. What’s more, he was wearing a fucking fedora.

Despite my begging, he was reluctant to give up where he’d found it. Sam was semi-anomalous within the cast – a jockish older kid who split his spare time between rehearsals and kickboxing, like a weird High School Musical where Troy is torn between his love for theatre and getting kicked repeatedly in the brain. He didn’t deserve the hat. He didn’t believe in the magic of how it could change his life as I knew it could change mine. In truth, thanks to his big thick fighter’s neck, the fedora sort of suited Sam. He looked like a Mafia goon who’d dangle someone by their ankles from a high office window. When I finally squeezed the information out of him and returned to rehearsals the next day with my own fedora, on my frame (bread-stick skinny, posture like an earthworm) I must have struck a very different image.

Still, I wore it close to every day. I wore it with oversized blazers and my brother’s black metal t-shirts and kooky Avril Lavigne business ties. I wore it long after it was battered out of its already modest shape. Help me, I wore it to the formal.

Sam was pissed I’d aped his innovation, wearing his own fedora only once or twice that trip and never bringing it into rotation at school. But I think he must have been grateful in the end. He got to witness in real time the immediate and devastating effect that a single style choice could have on someone’s social credit, and pull the plug before it was too late.

He got a second chance: the gift of what not to do. A chance to avoid catastrophe in a time when everything felt permanent, and everything in life was trial and error.