What Are The Kids Wearing?

In every person’s life, the time must come when they look at teenagers and feel baffled; Emily Watkins didn’t think she’d be in her twenties when it really hit her.

Sitting outside a self-consciously cool bar last weekend, a gaggle of gazelle-like girls took the table next to ours. Radiating skittish energy, drunk on the sheer excitement of being out as well as booze-proper, they were so cool I nearly withered by comparison – not least because I did not understand their clothes any better than I understand particle physics. God knows I want to (the outfits, not the neutrons), and I can only hope you want to watch me try.

That I’ve now heard the term ‘y2k’ (to describe rehashed styles from the 2000s, keep up granddad) means it’s already redundant – nonetheless, I can just about compute the return of Juicy Couture tracksuits and low-rise jeans, co-ords and baguette bags. Primary school, Top of the Pops, pre-broadband: my memories are vague enough, the era itself distinct enough, that dragging clothing from its cultural archive seems reasonable. What’s more, y2k is behaving itself as far as fashion’s ’20-year-rule’ is concerned: it might feel premature to those who remember it, but resurrecting aesthetics every two decades is how the industry has worked for at least a century.

The 90s loved the 70s just as the 90s were beloved by the 2010s in turn; as one cohort ages out of something, a crop of bright young things encounters it for the first time. Their parents might cringe, remembering a trend’s first rodeo – and for the generation who missed out the first-time round, that’s part of the appeal. Being able to take something at face value (fringe, flares, midiskirts, shoulder pads), rather than shudder beneath an icy pail of flashbacks, cements youth’s position at the core of COOL. You? Old! Me? Young! Actually, I’m old – but only because someone’s put their finger on fast-forward. I think it’s TikTok’s fault.

@ageoramais this anyone else? Lmao!! #BiggerIsBetter #ShowerWithMoxie #stylish #urbanoutfitters #stylist #y2kfashion #jadedldn #tiktokstyle IB: @oliviabeeeee♬ son original – hanan@??

TikTok is the latest in a parade of online arenas, beloved and then left to the vultures (old people) when they get too mainstream. MySpace died, Facebook became where your mum checks her neighbourhood noticeboards, Twitter is for arguing, and I don’t even know what SnapChat is. Somewhere in the middle of Social Media gladiatorial showdowns came Instagram, an instant titan and the first time a platform truly superseded mainstream publications as our primary trendsetter.

@ttaanyaaWhich fit is your fav? #fashioninspo #springfashion #y2k♬ Let’s Party – shetdawg

Picture the scene: it’s 2015. On your iPhone 6, everyone from your best friend to bona fide celebrities are pretending to eat brightly coloured donuts, carrying those funny little Fendi ‘bug’ bags with faces and overdrawing their eyebrows. Suddenly, you are overcome by an urge for sugar, a friendly looking purse, a brow makeover: and bam! the modern-day influencer is born. In a couple of months, the online weathervanes will have swung again, but that’s all part of the fun – no need to wait for seasonal catwalks, just scroll. Although Instagram’s since been ousted, it set fashion’s wheels into overdrive for today’s break-neck pace. Now TikTok is where the internet lives, and trends last a week at most.

@whowhatwearEarly #2000s styling tips with @viennaskye  ??? #y2k #y2kfashion #outfitinspo #lizziemcguire♬ to be so sweet by dynamo and joseph james – ✨

Forget y2k – the hopelessly cool girls at the bar were dressing way beyond the year 2000, especially galling when you consider that they must have been born this side of it. One even had 2015 eyebrows (those formidable arches, fading in from the middle) on purpose: just six years old and already a relic. But the statute of limitations can’t possibly have elapsed, I shriek, running into fashion court with a pile of folders slipping from under my arm, waving documents in the air, hair plastered to my sweaty face. No one cares, says the Cool Judge. Instagram is for grandmas, six years is an impassable gulf, time is an illusion and we are but dust. 

Much like the idea of measuring a dog’s life at a seven-fold acceleration, a year in TikTok terms is practically a century in the real world – and that sheer speed means that the repository of fashion references is running decidedly low. Moving chronologically through the 90s, 2000s, and now the 2010s, we’ll come up to last month – which was probably riffing on vintage 2018 looks – before we know it. Fashion is eating itself, the clothes are cannibalising each other, and soon we’ll be ‘referencing’ what we wore last week, to ourselves. Help!

Here’s the thing. References (to eras, specific pieces) only work if people ‘get’ them – otherwise they’re just in-jokes. By that logic, 2015 insta-brows are maybe the last frontier: the final example of something we all saw enough times for it to be seared into the collective vaults of memory. Trends that last a week on one app, not so much (though on the plus side, charity shops are going to get very cool indeed; no more digging out authentic seventies gems, this Zara top from last season is so retro!) 

A thought. After a confusing spate of ouroboros self-adornment, maybe Gen Z will break the 20-year-rule for good and start inventing things which are all together new. Special jackets with… holes in the back! Shoes which are not high heeled but low heeled, and make you shorter! Or maybe they’ll do away with shoes altogether, and start wearing bananas instead. 

This is why I am not a fashion designer, but I have faith in those plucky kids. And if all else fails, maybe we could start right from the beginning with animal skins and togas. It’d probably take them a whole year to get through the full millennia of sartorial history and catch up with the rest of us again while we work out what’s going on; keep ‘em busy, eh?

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