Fashion and icons from the 1990s became objects of fascination for Generation Z

The New York Times

When Tora Northman, 23, scours Instagram, which happens several times a day, she often sees a photo of Gwyneth Paltrow at a 1996 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony; the actress is wearing a burgundy velvet Gucci suit.

Sometimes the photo appears because one of your friends posted it; in other cases, it appears on one of the pages that are themed around the 1990s and 2000s that proliferate online, including @early2000sbabes, @90sanxiety, @90smilk and @literally.iconic, the owner of which, in the description of the says, that “I was raised by Paris and Britney”.

“Whenever I see her in that velvet outfit, I immediately like it, and I almost always share the image,” Northman said. Gen Z’s obsession with 1990s and 2000s fashion is well documented.

Just remember Olivia Rodrigo’s visit to the White House wearing a Chanel ensemble inspired by 1995’s “The Little Girls of Beverly Hills”, or Bella Hadid celebrating her birthday wearing the look that opened the Gucci spring collection show in 1998.

Look at any group of teenagers and you’re likely to find “vintage” camouflage pants, platform shoes, spaghetti strap tops, waist chains, T-shirts with slogans (“boys lie!”), dresses with hibiscus prints, and butterfly shape.

On the Depop reseller platform, there were 290,000 searches for the term Y2K in September, October and November 2021, according to the company. (It’s one of the most popular search terms on the platform, according to a Depop spokesperson.) Over the same period, there were 92,561 searches for “low-rise jeans” and 150,133 searches for “Ed Hardy.”

Images and videos recorded by paparazzi at the time circulate online as curiosities from a seemingly simpler but at the same time decadent era: Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Princess Diana, Britney Spears.

There are photos of young Nami Campbell on the catwalks, walking for the brands Chanel, Gaultier and Versace; from Victoria Beckham, gleaming in her past as a pop star; of Paris Hilton wearing a t-shirt that says “don’t be jealous”.

For those old enough to remember dancing to Prince’s “1999” at midnight on the turn of the millennium, wearing glittering sunglasses emblazoned with the number 2000, the idea of ​​aspiring to the stars (and fashion) of an era characterized by financial and technological uncertainty can seem mind-boggling.

But many of the people who came into the world later indicate that the appeal of the idea involves much more than the simple fun of trying on clothes from another era, and may represent more than an indication of the start of a new 20-year cycle. in the fashion industry.

“LIVE MORE IN THE MOMENT”

One of the most successful sellers on Depop, according to the platform, is Isabella Vrana, 24, whose store promises “pearls of the 90s and 00s for you angels”. She lives in London, has three employees and has sold over 16,000 pieces to people eager to cosplay in the costumes of a previous existence.

In a recent podcast, Vrana talks about finding out about the fear of a “millennium bug” that existed in the late 1990s. The disaster could cause the world’s infrastructure to collapse due to data formatting errors. The idea that technology could fail came as a shock to her.

She remembers a boyfriend’s mother telling her about the pre-cell phone era, when if you found yourself separated from a friend for a night out, you had to go home and wait by the landline. “That struck me as very cool,” said Vrana. “I like the idea that people live in the moment more.”

A crush on the past is a way of escaping, she says, “from things we do a lot but hate, like being on the phone all the time, or taking 50 nearly identical photos and then obsessively studying them until you find your favorite.”

(There is, of course, a vivid irony in a generation that uses smartphones and the internet as a gateway to an era when online life was less important, and to fantasizing about being less dependent on technology.)

Vrana knows that things were not so great in the past; that homophobia, racism and sexism were more tolerated, and that many women were harassed and controlled, in the celebrity world. But still, she said, “people, to some extent, seemed more relaxed.”

James Abraham, 35, who has operated the popular Instagram account @90sanxiety since 2016, sees the fascination as having to do with a sense that there was something indomitable about that period — “the raw side, the real side,” Abraham said. “I think the keyword is purity.”

“YUMMY AND CAREFUL”

In the 1990s and 2000s, Northman said, “people seemed more authentic.” Of course, celebrities today try to demonstrate that they are open people via social media, but often, she points out, they are actually the opposite of that: strategic and controlled.

Northman loves the way celebrities seemed to effortlessly dress in the 1990s, wearing oversized suits and unbuttoned shirts, thong-revealing jeans, tongue-in-cheek T-shirts and glittery tops.

And the way they appeared in the arms of new partners, smoking on the red carpet or getting drunk and saying sarcastic and reckless things in public. The impression, she says, was that everyone was “hot and carefree.”

For Northman, images such as, say, a teenage Kate Moss taking a drag on a cigarette arouse a strange yearning for sensations and scenes she can’t quite remember but imagines would please her: nights of fun without selfies; the smell of cigarette smoke in a nightclub; the sound of a friend knocking on the door for an unexpected visit, or to invite the person out for a night out.

Charlotte Mitchell, 21, a law student in Manchester, England, said she imagines the 1990s and 2000s were “like now, but without social media in control, so everyone could dress however they wanted.”

Last year, Urban Outfitters, the retail chain where she works part-time, bet heavily on a revival of the Von Dutch brand, offering a line of sleeveless T-shirts and caps for sale. She bought a cute top with the brand’s logo, thinking it was a cool new brand. His boss, who is 30 years old, disapproved: “You weren’t even born,” she said dismissively.

Born in the 2000s, Mitchell understandably knows little about the details of the styles she likes to emulate, and prefers, like most people her age, to visualize the era through the random but beautiful images that are popular online.

As with most of the people I spoke to for this article, she had never heard of “Seinfeld” or “Will & Grace.” Nor has he watched any episode of “Friends”. Mitchell said that “those things never interested me”.

(Vrana disagrees. One of her style icons is young Jennifer Aniston, in her role as Rachel Green, “I love 1990s office clothes,” she said.)

“My childhood was the Hannah Montana era,” Mitchell said. Asked if she had ever heard of “The OC”, a series that debuted in 2003, she replied “I don’t know what that is. Sorry.” What about the OJ Simpson trial? “I don’t think I would have heard of him if it weren’t for the Kardashians,” she said.

THE POWER OF PARIS

Harriet Russell, 21, wears three gleaming jewelry pieces on her teeth, straightens her hair and buys her 1990s products on eBay. “Usually it’s some mother who decides to clean the attic and doesn’t know what those things are really worth,” said Russell, who lives in east London. The search list saved on your computer includes D&G, Walé Adeyemi, “vintage” Burberry parts, Air Max 95 and Miss Sixty.

For a while, her friends tried to relish the image, if not the reality, of a life where technology was scarce, she said. Some bought “flip phones” to use as a prop for selfies they took with their smartphones. Many, last summer, fell in love with an Instagram filter that made images look like they were captured by a primitive cell phone camera.

“For a brief period, everyone seemed to be living in the age of the photo-on-film,” Russell said. Now some of his friends, eager to stay ahead of the curve, have gone back to digital, and carry small cameras to capture photos of their nighttime expeditions.

“I think it was a thing from the 2000s, when there was no iPhone and you used a camera to take pictures and then you exported them to a computer or something,” she said. “I don’t even know how that could work.”

Russell said he likes to invoke Paris Hilton’s rich girl persona. She likes the “sunglasses at night” look, the “designer bags with big logos”, the exposed body. For her, that kind of fashion seems “liberating,” she said. “We need, and want, to live without worry.”

Indeed, the Paris Hilton of yesteryear (she is now 40), once a bastion of playful nihilism, has become an unlikely heroine for some people half her age. Nicole Stark, 19, whose Depop store, GlowNic, promises “90s and 2000s clothing, black owner,” agrees that Hilton, the daughter of a billionaire and with a persona built on blatantly ignoring her own privileges, would likely have been cancelled, if it gained fame nowadays. Even so, Stark loves her, and sees her as a “power woman” who refused to fit in.

For Stark and many of the people interviewed, the stories of women who became celebrities, like Hilton, who rose to fame at a time when the entertainment world was dominated by men, offer examples not only of flamboyant behavior as a form of rebellion, but also from women more attuned than many people believed at the time.

To many Gen Z observers, Hilton, in her glittery clothes, smug refusal to accept a conventional job or capitulate to behavior seen as appropriate, something that was immortalized on the reality show “The Simple Life” epitomizes the freedom of an era — humor, relaxation and irreverence. “She just did what she wanted,” Mitchell said admiringly. “He was not influenced by anyone.”