Trends that you just can't "do" because of the fashions of your youth

[EoinMcLovesCakeJumper]

Not a very snappy thread title, but I shall try to explain! I was a teenager throughout most of the 90s and all the fashion magazines I read during my impressionable years said that:

Slim, properly shaped eyebrows are as good as a facelift
Bootcut jeans balance out a pear shape or heavy thighs
Tucking in your top emphasises your tummy
Ankle boots with skirts make your legs look shorter and chunkier

Consequently, I will never be able to embrace thick, drawn-on eyebrows, skinny jeans and jeggings, tops tucked into high-waisted trousers, or ankle boots with skirts. I am aware that this probably dates me pretty accurately to within a couple of years and probably makes some people think of me as frumpy, but I still can't do it!

I do think, though, that the principles I was told still hold true, but people now are just less concerned with "hiding" things like heavy thighs and tummies than they were when I was growing up. I wish I could feel similarly, but I guess it's just ingrained in my thinking now.

What recent or current trends have you struggled with because it went against advice you were given when younger?

Ah my people! I drove past someone this morning wearing red tartan trousers in the same material that I had when I was 5 and had one of those St Michael skirts with a white vest stitched to it. It wasn't trendy then but I guess it is now.

90s teen... can't wear crushed velvet, bootcut trousers, spaghetti straps over tshirts, ribbed polos. Looked crap the first time around.

I love tartan trousers. As I said, still love what I wore as a teenager.

I couldn't do Mom Jeans even though I did way back.
Lycra in jeans was not a regular thing when I was a teenager, and I wore drainpipes not skinny jeans.

Ha! I still think "bootcut" means "thin at the ankles so they fit inside your boots" and can't wear Actual bootcut because they're, let's be honest, FLARES.

Agree with everything OP! I absolutely despise thick eyebrows, skinny jeans, ankle length trousers and tucked in tops. As a size 16, 90's fashion just sits better with me, but I'd liked it more even a few stones lighter.

My MIL (in a kind way) says that I look ok because "now I'm a grown up lady". I don't actually dislike the feeling - I feel more respected this way.

Does anyone struggle with the fashions from when they were little?
I remember flares, tight jumpers, straight hair, false eyelashes, beige lipstick, American Tan tights etc from the early 70s and couldn't contemplate them.

I couldn't do pussy-cat bows or huge shoulders again.

Weren't the bootcuts to hide the enormous heels worn to make legs look longer?

I still have bootcuts, but they aren't flares, just wide enough to go over boots.

I would love some red tartan kecks but suppose that at a very short and wide 40 I would look more like Wee Jimmy Krankie so have compromised with tartan Doc Martens and black skinny jeans. I remember those dresses though, my mum bought them in every colourway and I remember loathing them.

Elllllle interesting - there's two different processes going on here. I don't like fashions that go against the "rules" that I went by when I was younger, and you don't like the reappearance of fashions from your youth because you didn't like them the first time around. I have to say I agree with you to an extent; I wouldn't wear a spaghetti strap dress with a t-shirt underneath, or a skinny-rib jumper, now, but mostly because they are very fashiony and therefore not for somebody of my build and age. I did used to wear them when I was 13 or 14 though!

merryhouse flares are generally fitted to your knee and then start to flare out from there, whereas bootcut are a bit more fitted to mid-calf and then have a small flare around the ankle. They were called that because you were supposed to wear them with heeled boots so that they covered the top of the boot and the hem was nearly to the ground at the back. But a lot of us indie kids wore them with trainers and ended up with tattered, wet hems where they had dragged on the ground.

I still have old clothes from the 90s. I'm probably the same weight but the waists are tiny on them. I wore a lot of straight midi skirts and high waisted flat-fronted tapered chino style trousers. I doubt that I would fit into them because of the tiny waists.
I think a size 10 would have been a 23" waist or something, and no lycra.

Also, there's nowt wrong with flares. I will be all over them when they inevitably come back around. And they will - the dominance of the skinny has been unusually prolonged in fashion terms, so I can imagine that a lot of people in their 20s will think that they're never going to want to wear anything else, but I'm sure that we'll soon start to see styles that are, let's say, a bit roomier around the ankles!

Ah, the long frayed jeans. Was too old for those.

Combats didn't suit me. Not wearing those again.
I did as a teenager but they were called fatigues then.

Big collars are back and I'm tempted.

@31EoinMcLovesCakeJumper it's not that I didn't like them the first time around. I did wear those styles and liked them a lot! I just think now that those fashions are very unflattering on almost everyone. Bootcut jeans are just awful to my eye. They just make you look ten times bigger and frumpier than you are. Velvet is so daggy. Ditto ribbed polo or turtlenecks.

The high waisted, saggy bummed mom jeans are deliberately unflattering, which I appreciate for what it is. Not too tight skinny jeans are the most flattering style of jeans on absolutely everyone to my eye, but maybe just because of the age I grew up in?

But those ‘rules’ were just as much trends as what you are talking about now. They aren’t necessarily more flattering - especially the thin eyebrows.

Flares are already back for the most trendy of teenagers/early 20s

Elllllle I think the idea that skinny jeans are universally flattering is a huge lie that the fashion industry somehow got everyone to swallow - when I try a pair on and see my heavy-thighed, lumpy-kneed legs unforgivingly encased in stretchy denim, I can't understand how anyone could think that was a good look. They are, and always have been, flattering only to women with slim legs. I think the idea that they are for everyone is very much a product of their ubiquity, not vice versa.

I agree with Dr. We often talk about wearing what suits us as if it's some kind of universal, peer reviewed fact, whereas I think it's just as much subject to fashion as other trends.

And many trends flatter one part of the body at the direct expense of another other. I've used this example before but high waisted trousers simultaneously make my legs look longer and my arse look bigger. What changes isn't what they do to my shape but whether or not it looks fashionable.

Skinny jeans or jeggings tend to look dreadful on fat legs.
I think straight jeans are probably the most forgiving, especially if you go for a cut that suits your figure.

The low-rise muffin top jeans especially with the g-string and tattoo showing were not a good look.

Velvet and velour trousers need a toned body.

Oh dear, mid 80s fashion was bad.

Floism well, yes - trousers that make your arse look huge have generally been regarded as unflattering for all but the last 5 years, as big arses have not been considered to be desirable to have. Now things are different, although I'd argue that actual fat arses on fat bodies are still not fashionable and it's only the ones that are toned and which sit just below a tiny waist which you'd want to dress to show off. I say this as a fat-arsed fatty myself, btw... I think it's pretty much always been the case, though, that women don't want any bits of their bodies to look bigger than they actually are (except for their boobs) and it's unlikely that the vast majority will ever want to dress to emphasise their wobbly stomachs and thunder thighs!

MikeUniformMike quite agree about the low-rise jeans. They were awful - a happy medium between those and high-waisted is what I think we want. I had a pair of brown velvet flares in the late 90s and thought I looked pretty damned snazzy in them but I can't say I'm dying to track down any pictures of me wearing them to see if I was right.

Now you mention a photo Eoin, you must share.

Remember sometime in the mid 90s when Brown Is The New Black?
I resisted. I've been wearing a lot of black since I was about 13. With tartan sometimes.

It's not so much that I'm arguing bigger arses have become fashionable. The point about high waisted trousers is that they do something that is both (conventionally) unflattering - make my arse look bigger and yet also (conventionally) flattering - make my legs look longer. (And define my waist too.) Both are true. But when high waisted is on trend, the eye (I mean the fashion eye) can somehow see beyond the bigger arse and appreciate the longer legs. I've seen this trend come in, go out and come back in again and I can't really explain what's going on but I find it fascinating.

I don't have a big bum so I have always liked high waisted trousers, but it's a style that comes back because it works.

The paper bag trousers are a style that suits the lean but tailored high waisted trousers are more flattering.

MikeUniformMike not a chance. I looked like a Draylon sofa in them.

floisme I think it is fair to say that fashion trends are only designed to flatter a fairly narrow range of body shapes, so a tall, thin woman wearing high-waisted trousers will get the long-legged, small-waisted silhouette, and if her bum looks a little bigger it's still not going to look massive. When those of us who are not tall and thin try to emulate the looks, we have to decide whether or not the trade-off in one area is worth what we gain in another - for me, it isn't, because as a pear-shape I'm already disproportionately bigger on my lower half than my top, and if I make it look even fatter I will probably just turn onto a walking arse. I don't know what drives the decisions behind what's going to be fashionable and what's not in any given year and I agree it's fascinating - but also a little annoying when you don't have the sort of body shape that gets clothes designed for it.

Oh Eoin, be a bit kinder to yourself. You did make me laugh though.

Most fashion trends suit people who look like models.
I think that looking at celebs with a similar build, shape, height and weight will often give a better idea. What's Ann Widdecome wearing these days?

I knew when I saw popper-crotched bodies featured in Grazia's fashion pages that Fashion as I knew it had finally eaten itself, and I had permission to step away from the pointless '10 Hottest Trends for A/W18*' features and sink into a peaceful retirement of plain black dresses and whatever shoes I feel like wearing.

• these will always include, in no particular order: animal print, velvet, military coats, red, sludge green, metallics, Victorian Gothic, sequins, and then a couple of wildcards like Medieval Scotland, clairvoyants, and Funk Penguin.

I try not to do this.
I was a teen in the 80s and I remember young women in their 30s who worked for my mum looking very dated with long centre parted hair and plucked to oblivion eyebrows which were fashionable when they were teens.

Mind you I don’t Follow trends so much, more just wear what suits me.