Y2K Fashion 101: How 2023 Got the Millennium Bug All Over Again (2024)

What comes after Y2K fashion? More Y2K fashion!

Picture this: a midriff-baring ribbed tank top paired with camouflage cargo pants, and a Fendi baguette bag nonchalantly slung over the shoulder; frayed denim shorts belted by a chunky round buckle, paired with strappy kitten heels and a Von Dutch trucker hat; a pink velour tracksuit with a Gothic font spelling NASTY in rhinestones across the rear, topped off with a pair of Matrix-style sunglasses. What might sound like fashion 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 is still going strong on the runways.

Yes, you read that right: the early 2000s are ruling the catwalk with a vengeance. Whether it's Miu Miu’s ballet flats, Blumarine's dresses over bell-bottoms, or even an appearance from the grande dame of high-low Y2K fashion herself, Paris Hilton, in the Versace spring 2023 show, 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, from the recent revival of Baby Phat to the rebirth of Juicy Couture to the resurgence of the Ugg through modish collaborations with the likes of Feng Chen Wang and Madhappy. Meanwhile, this year marked the 20-year anniversaries of some of the most influential pop-culture phenomena of Y2K style, from The O.C. to One Tree Hill to That's So Raven.

So where did it all begin? Like most fashion trends right now, it started bubbling under—with a little help from Gen-Z influencers—on TikTok, where you’ll find e-girls with retro hairstyles, beaded chokers, 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 favorite 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 pounds. If this doesn’t make you feel old already, the fact that many of them are labelled as “vintage” might.

As for Y2K's absorption into the upper echelons of fashion, it’s perhaps little surprise that Marc Jacobs—one of the industry’s most reliable bellwethers—was among the first to embrace it. With his Heaven diffusion, launched in 2020 in collaboration with multi-hyphenate creative Ava Nirui as a more accessible counterpart to his mainline collections, Jacobs returned to a number of formative influences spanning the late ’90s and ’00s, such as the films of Gregg Araki and 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 that time,” says Nirui from Los Angeles, where the pair have just 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 early aughts subculture 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 the heights of its ’90s and ’00s heyday. For his spring 2023 collection, Brognano doubled down on the femme grunge aesthetic in all its outlandish glory, with a shimmering abundance of flared low-rise jeans and sheer minidresses, reminiscent of the ocean's siren-like allure.

“I feel very close to that period because I grew up in those years, but I wanted to relive it with a modern sensibility,” Brognano says. “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.”

Brognano is onto something. Revivalism isn’t necessarily about creating a perfect facsimile of a look from a specific moment in time, but about pulling together a pastiche that reflects our needs and wants in the present day. How we understand the style of a decade really comes into focus only with hindsight, and the disparate elements of 2000s fashion 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.”

As Bruno Sialelli, the former creative director of Lanvin, sees it, the resurgence of interest in the Y2K aesthetic is 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 ’00s is alive through talents that are from the same generation as me,” he told British Vogue in 2021. “To me personally, that era of MTV culture was very important. I was raised in the south of France, and 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 Casey Cadwallader 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 says.

Celebrities aren't ready to give up the 2000s aesthetic, either. Ice Spice, the princess of rap and Gen Z's It Girl, redefined streetwear with her ultra-girly McBling ensembles, reviving matching tracksuits, bedazzled baby tees, and bubblegum pink. Embracing a more nostalgic model-off-duty vibe, Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski swapped out their leather blazers for boxy bomber jackets. Anne Hathaway single-handedly brought back the controversial newsboy cap, and for those who have reservations regarding the return of Moon Boots, Rihanna owns a pair, so they must be trendy.

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 that decade, and the thinly veiled misogyny of the tabloid press of that time. Whether it's Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me, which exposed the ruthlessness of the paparazzi and its impact on her mental health; the rebrand of Mattel's Barbie; or the reassessment of the public perception of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's relationship, it’s clear the lack of empathy afforded to the women whose style defined the decade was sometimes lost through fashion’s narrower lens.

Yet while the less savory 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. Y2K has been taken over by Gen Z, a cyber generation navigating the perpetual doom and gloom on social media. Their embodiment of the style reflects their internal conflict amid these times. On one hand, they're angry, burdened by the sense of obligation to reverse the apocalyptic millennial mess. Simultaneously, they're *tired—*tired of the pressure to be perfect, wanting to just let loose. Besides, who wouldn’t want to channel that Mean Girls-esque glitzy, so-bad-it’s-good glamour? So fetch!

Perhaps the reason the decade has made such a full-throated return lies in the simple fact that by 2024, 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 sequined crop tops, mini cardigans we crocheted ourselves, and baggy jeans slung dangerously low across our hips. So we'll see you on the other side, living our very best Y2K fantasy on the dance floor. After the past year, we’ve earned it.