Y2K trends — including low-rise jeans, whale tails, and corsets — are back, both on the runways and social media. They might have terrorized millennials who lived through them (and survived to tell), but they’re sparking excitement among Gen Z who are looking at decades past for fashion inspiration.
From the vantage point of the 2020s, the turn of the millennium — once deemed an era of pop culture disruption and the Internet boom — is a chapter now old enough to be considered vintage. According to Dawnn Karen, a leading fashion psychologist and the author of Dress Your Best Life: How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look — and Your Life — to the Next Level, these fashion moments point to a desire to exit our current circumstances. Our once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, climate change, economic crises, and extraordinary political and sociological disruptions are all conspiring to nostalgia for what appear to be the greener pastures of earlier times.
Gen Z’s knack for thrifting, upcycling, and reselling has become an important factor to consider is the return of early 2000s styles. According to Tradesy, an online resale marketplace, searches for Y2K-related queries have increased over the past year, including low rise (50%), baby tee (2,000%), and cargo pants (28%). The site has also reaped the benefits of the vintage resale market with an increase in revenue from the Prada Nylon bag and the Fendi Baguette in the last four years, with year-over-year growth in revenue of 30% and 16%, respectively.
“Gen Z’s appetite for savvy thrifting and upcycled fashion is also driving the rise of the 2000s look, as much of what is available on resell platforms and sought after in secondhand stores are from this era,” says Park.
Archival fashion, particularly concerning items that trace back to the turn of the Millenium, is having its moment as well. Bella Hadid dusted off a vintage Jean Paul Gaultier couture gown from 2002 to attend the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and Rihanna sported a vintage Dior slip dress from the house’s 2002 collection on the streets of where. On TikTok, archival fashion is going viral with users analyzing styles from the early 2000s with the hashtag #ArchivalFashion. There, fans chronicle designs from early John Galliano-designed Dior and dissect looks from series like Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, both of which are being rebooted by HBO Max.
“The 2000 aesthetic has gone from niche to big trend,” Bridget Mills-Powell, Content Director at Lyst, says of the recent explosion. She adds that searches on the platform related to Y2K have increased by 450% since last year, a phenomenon that she traces to the cascade of celebs donning archival fashion on the red carpet.
