Bennifer has re-emerged, SATC is officially having a reboot, and girls are wearing mini-skirts again. It’s official: the ’90s are back, and by the looks of it, the Gen Z’s can’t get enough.
If you were born between 1997 and the early 2010s, then you officially fall under the Gen Z category and with that comes a responsibility. Due to growing up with a cell phone in hand at every waking moment, you’ve most likely been able to adapt to new technology and trends. With that sense of immediacy, the younger generation has easily celebrated and discarded trends to their likings. With the heavy impact of social media, the Gen Z’s have again shown that the Y2K trend and the ’90s nostalgia are well and alive, leading to complete domination within recent years.
Both generations have latched onto their perspective of the nostalgia-fulled trend, but if there’s one thing we can agree on it’s that even though millennials can be risk-takers, it seems they would rather return to a tried and trued trend instead of creating their own. But nonetheless, asides from millennials highlighting the iconic era, ’90s style has dominated the runways for over a decade, with collections from Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs and Versace adding their own take of grunge and minimalism which has reflected in the street style millennial influencers are wearing on repeat.
On social media, the ’90s lives on, from influencers like Bella Hadid to Dua Lipa and endless style inspiration from accounts like @90sanxiety, @2000sanxiety and many more – giving us our daily dose of inspiration.
The early era has brought endless selections of butterfly clips, velour tracksuits and tinted sunglasses all over TikTok. Dua Lipa may be born one year too soon, but she technically is a member of the Gen Z family with her bleached bangs and Christina Aguilera highlights.
While personal memory drives a love for the 2000s fashion amongst millennials, the Gen Z’s appeals to the iconic aesthetic it portrays. Today, Gen Z embraces the vintage and resale market, making the “Y2K” hashtag a popular search on Depop and many resale platforms.
Nostalgia fashion is not by any means a new phenomenon, but Gen Z’s growing interest in the early 2000s is a repeat in pattern. The Y2K obsession is similar to Michael Kor’s love for all things ’60s, or even Tom Fords admiration for the ’70s, and just like the next generation to come – it’ll follow the pattern of taking something old and making it something new.
