Forget me nought
The nostalgia of the noughties has a hold over the style set right here, right now. See how fashion caught the millennium bug all over again. By Liam Hess.
The noughties are back. See how fashion caught the millennium bug all over again.
Picture this: a midriff-baring lacy camisole paired with camouflage cargo pants, and a Fendi baguette nonchalantly slung over the shoulder; frayed denim shorts belted by an oversized round buckle, paired with strappy kitten heels and a baker-boy cap; a pair of pink velour trackpants with a Gothic font spelling ‘Nasty’ in rhinestones across the rear, topped off with a pair of Matrix-style sunglasses. What might initially sound like sartorial relics from a bygone era are all looks you will find worn on Instagram over the past year by the biggest models of the moment – and, as of this season, it’s a style that seems to have permeated all the way up to the runways.
Yes, you read that right: the 2000s have returned to the catwalk with a vengeance. Whether it was Miu Miu’s furry knee-high boots, Blumarine’s chokers and crystal-embellished camisoles, or even the grand dame of high-low noughties style, Paris Hilton, appearing in the latest Lanvin campaign, the kitsch glamour and head-spinning eclecticism of this divisive decade in fashion have become all but inescapable. So, too, have some of the decade’s most notorious brands, whether the 2020 relaunch of Juicy Couture, or the resurgence of the Ugg through collaborations with the likes of Y/Project and Molly Goddard. Meanwhile, some of the most influential pop-culture phenomena to define post-Y2K style are set to return, from Gossip Girl to Sex and the City, with the Friends reunion having recently aired.
So where did it all begin? Like most trends right now, it started bubbling under – with a little help from Gen Z fashion obsessives – on TikTok, where you’ll find e-girls with frosty blue eyeshadow and butterfly clips happily dancing to Mr Brightside and lamenting that they were “born in the wrong decade”. It’s also been a popular tag on every teenager’s favourite resale app, Depop, where it doesn’t take much trawling to find Miss Sixty jeans (a brand now fronted by Bella Hadid), a Blink-182 T-shirt or a pair of Skechers fetching hundreds of dollars. If this doesn’t make you feel old already, the fact that many of them are labelled as ‘vintage’ might.
As for its absorption into the upper echelons of fashion, it’s perhaps little surprise that Marc Jacobs – one of the industry’s most reliable bellwethers for where trends are moving next – was among the first to embrace it. With his Heaven diffusion, launched last year in collaboration with creative Ava Nirui as a more accessible counterpart to his collections, Jacobs returned to a number of formative influences spanning the late 1990s and 2000s, whether the films of Gregg Araki or the Japanese street style of Shoichi Aoki’s Fruits magazine.
“It’s very personal to me, because the first designer items that I owned were from Marc by Marc Jacobs. That was like the pinnacle of luxury for me at the time,” says Nirui from Los Angeles, where the pair recently launched their first pop-up store, stocked with not only pieces from the line but also vintage books, magazines and ephemera, many of which are direct products of the noughties countercultural scenes that informed the Heaven aesthetic.
“This is the first trend that I’ve actually lived through and that I was a teenager for, so I feel super-connected to all of these vintage brands that are being recirculated,” she continues.
This nostalgic appeal also holds true for Nicola Brognano, the 30-year-old designer who took the reins at the relatively stagnant house of Blumarine at the end of 2019, with ambitions to return the brand to its 90s and 00s heyday heights. For his autumn/winter ’21/’22 collection, Brognano doubled down on the noughties aesthetic in all its outlandish glory, with more pastel-hued faux-fur stoles and lavishly sequined mini dresses than you could shake a stick at.
“I feel very close to that period because I grew up in those years, but I wanted to relive it with a modern sensibility,” says Brognano. “I wanted to show a collection that touches on happiness, sexiness, freedom. Something that breaks the rules, without being vulgar.” While the timing of the current noughties revival neatly fits the theory of trends operating on 20-year cycles, for Brognano it runs deeper than that. “It was the right moment to talk about it because people need happiness and carefree moments in their lives more than ever right now,” he adds.
Brognano isn’t wrong. Revivalism isn’t necessarily about creating a perfect facsimile of a look from a moment in time, but about pulling together a pastiche that reflects our present needs and wants. How we understand the style of a decade comes into focus only with hindsight, and the disparate elements of the noughties that designers are pulling from to form a cohesive picture are largely those of pre-recession decadence and unbridled party-ready glamour. As Brognano puts it, “At a time like this, we’re all seeking joy where we can find it.”
This is a spirit enthusiastically captured in the campaign video for Lanvin’s autumn/winter ’21/’22 collection, which offered a carnivalesque celebration of the decade’s famed excess. Models including Paloma Elsesser and Sora Choi cavorted around a luxurious Paris hotel suite loaded with Lanvin shopping bags to a soundtrack of Gwen Stefani’s 2004 classic Rich Girl, before a cameo appearance from none other than featured rapper Eve herself. As Lanvin creative director Bruno Sialelli, 34, is quick to emphasise, though, his approach was lightly tongue-in-cheek. “The lyrics are ‘If I was a rich girl,’” he notes. “It’s still aspirational.”
As Sialelli sees it, the resurgence of interest in the 2000s is simply a natural swinging of the pendulum as a new generation moves up the ranks to become creative directors of some of the biggest fashion houses, revisiting their own youth in the process. “The revival of the 2000s is alive through talents that are from the same generation as me,” he says. “To me personally, that era of MTV culture was very important. As a teenager, that outlet was my access to culture. It was the way I discovered fashion, through musicians and actors.”
It’s hard to disagree: whether it’s Nicolas Ghesquière or Raf Simons revisiting the music and style of their teenage years in the 80s, or the edgier corners of 90s style that recur through the work of designers such as Demna Gvasalia and Glenn Martens, it’s only natural that a new guard of millennial designers should be working with the nostalgic touchstones of their own misspent youths. “We’re in a time where there’s shame associated with opulence and being over the top, so it feels almost radical in a way,” Sialelli adds.
Of course, this resurgence of interest in the 00s goes further than fashion. The fabulously tacky aesthetic revisited by designers has coincided with a broader cultural re-evaluation of the icons that populated the decade, and the thinly veiled misogyny of the tabloid press of that time. From the recent New York Times documentary on Britney Spears, which exposed the ruthlessness of the paparazzi and its impact on her mental health, or the reassessment of the cruel public response to Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, it’s clear the lack of empathy afforded to the women whose style defined the decade can sometimes be lost through fashion’s narrower lens.
Yet while the less savoury aspects of 00s pop culture deserve to be left in the past, there’s a way in which the decade’s style makes a strange kind of sense for now. After a year of sweatpants and sneakers, who wouldn’t want to get dressed up in the spirit of the noughties’ blindingly glitzy, so-bad-it’s-good glamour? When lockdown lifts and you’re getting dressed for your first night out, could there be a more appropriate outfit than a pair of vertiginous strappy heels and a shimmering mini dress?
Perhaps the reason the decade has made such a full-throated return lies in the simple fact that by the time these collections hit the stores towards the end of the winter, we’ll all be seeking some fun from our fashion. Where the
Roaring Twenties had flappers dripping with beads and feathers, there’s every chance we’ll be wearing glittering sequinned crop tops, stick-on diamanté tattoos and jeans slung dangerously low across our hips. So see you on the other side, living our very best Y2K fantasy on the dance floor. After the past year, we’ve earned it.