Nostalgia 200s12/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Black women literally invented the whole aesthetic, Wearing a crop top and low waisted jeans is not Y2K!!! /lAtlFJV02I- M – □ December 12, 2020 Reminder that the Y2K fashion aesthetic is a trend that originated from black women’s style in the 90s and 2000’s. Trends such as the velour tracksuit and the iconic chainmail dress, integral to the modern Y2K aesthetic, were pioneered by Black women – yet, in popular memory, many would attribute such trends to white celebrities like the ‘Holy Trinity’ of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan, while erasing the fashion influence of Black celebrities like Beyonce and Lil Kim. In the process of this abstraction, the roots of the 2000’s trends emulated by those with a ‘Y2K aesthetic’ have also been whitewashed. Trends such as the velour tracksuit and the iconic chainmail dress, integral to the modern Y2K aesthetic, were pioneered by Black women. In the last twenty-four hours alone, 3,946 items tagged Y2K were uploaded to the platform. As arguably the most popular tag on the app, almost any item can be described as Y2K for searchability purposes. On Depop, Gen-Z’s favourite shopping platform, Y2K has little meaning at all. This is perhaps best exemplified on Tumblr’s spiritual successor, TikTok – the “What I would wear if I was a character in Skins” trend recreates outfits that look little like anything Cassie, Jal, or Michele would wear. To Gen-Z, dressing Y2K means taking certain elements of 2000’s fashion – plaid mini skirts, crop cardigans, baby tees – and redressing them in a thoroughly modern way. On the ever popular Y2K tag on Pinterest, images branded as 2000’s inspiration bear more resemblance to contemporary fashion than to that of the 2000s. ![]() In this time, Y2K has been abstracted even further from ‘authentic’ 2000’s culture. Hyperpop artists such as Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama have also revived the 2000’s in a form of ‘cyber Y2K’ and retro-futurism as their signature aesthetics. This fascination with the decade extends beyond fashion – Instagram accounts such as 2000sanxiety have accrued hundreds of thousands of followers posting inspiration images of 2000’s celebrity culture. As its name would suggest, the 2020 ‘it’ bag – the Prada nylon re-edition 2000 – was a style first made in the aughts. Juicy Couture, the brand behind the iconic velour tracksuit, recently added Parade to a roster of collaborations including Vetements, Kappa, and Urban Outfitters (it would be disingenuous, I feel, not to mention that I am wearing a pair of Juicy flares as I write this). A quick google of “Y2K clothing” suggests pieces stocked by large fast-fashion retailers such as ASOS, Topshop, Missguided, and Shein. This was the 2000s re-remembered by other teens who had also experienced the decade as children and christened with a shiny new name Y2K.įive years later, and the Y2K aesthetic has entered the mainstream. ![]() Under the curation of aesthetic blogs, the essence of the 2000s was distilled to a series of references: Paris Hilton, Mean Girls, Bratz dolls, diamante playboy bunnies, hot pink flip phones, a GIF of Megan Fox holding a lighter to her tongue in Jennifer’s Body. The 2000s of Tumblr did not look like this. I now recognised authentic 2000s fashion for what it was – a mess, sure, but also irritatingly charming in the way that only someone with the gall to wear a fully coordinated denim outfit must have. In the four years since the turn of the decade, my fashion memory had been consolidated through the medium of television once again, an education by late-noughties teen shows such as Skins and Gossip Girl I had streamed on my baby blue Dell laptop. Logging onto Tumblr in 2014, then in the middle of my teens, I was struck with a new kind of 2000s. Yet, as 2010 turned to 2011, I joined the world quietly un-snapping my butterfly clips and moving on to the next decade. This is to say that I had not yet gained any kind of fashion awareness in the 2000s – or about as much awareness as anyone could expect from a child. When I returned, I would repeat it to my friends with all the sagacity an eight-year-old whose mum had just made her stop wearing light-up trainers could muster: purple is in. My awareness of clothing extended only as far as what Miley Cyrus wore on Hannah Montana my most sophisticated fashion opinion came from a morning TV show segment I had watched when I was homesick from school. When I think of the 2000s, I think of the television – as an only child, it was pretty much my replacement sibling. I don’t suppose I should I was born in 1999, four months before the turn of the Millenium.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |