If you look at the Girl’s Aloud “Jump” video, that Spring all us young uns were wearing puffball skirts again and off the shoulder Fame style tops. And fluorescent leg warmers. There was an 80s revival that people seem to forget in the early 00s…although it was quite short lived. Thankfully. By the Summer it was all Sienna Miller Boho long skirts, floppy hats and Cowboy boots. That Winter I dressed like an Inuit. Furry boots, furry waistcoat with folky embroidery on, prairie skirt.
Satin skirt trouser combinations. Lisa from Steps and I had the exact same outfit.
Mid 90s, gingham strappy or dungaree dresses with white ribbed crop tops and canvas lace up shoes with a huge block rubber heel or glittery jelly Mary Janes (which also came back in the 00s and as recently as 2015). Dummy necklaces. T-shirts with ecstasy tablets printed on! Even for tweens. Fat Willys T-shirts with fluorescent cycling shorts.
The “Indian Summer” in about 2002 or 3. I was wearing corsets made out of sari fabric with cropped flared pants with mirror discs and embroidery on and a triangular shawl round one hip, Indian bangles and a bindi on my head.
After Hearsay won Popstars everyone was wearing Yankees baseball caps with thin satin baseball/bomber jackets and boyfriend jeans. Look at Kym Marsh around that time, that’s what I mean.
Von Dutch.
Ed Hardy.
I had an Apple Bottoms phase…and House of Dereon
In the mid 00s…layering t-shirts and especially polo shirts became a thing…usually Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie or Hollister. Why did anyone want to wear two polo shirts? Or even one?
The weird hair quiff thing…we’d back comb or even have huge plastic “pompadour” makers or deconstructed bun rings. An ex colleague who works in a school is 30 and STILL does her hair like this along with concealer lips and Urban Decay racoon eyes and can’t understand why the kids call her “Granny teacher”. She’s just trying to be EMO. She looks like she’s jumped out of 2008 MySpace.
Jack Wills gilets with the huge fur hood.
Indie boys in little straw boater hats, stripy t-shirts, necklaces and cargo shorts who never wore socks but always smoked roll ups and were almost always called Jack.
Again around the year 2000, what my granny described as “plus fours”. They were cropped pants that ended about 6inches below the knee and had a tight band there but sort of ballooned out…often in satin fabric and sometimes with buttons or press studs on the bottom of the legs - like Little Lord Fauntleroy. That winter they also did them in tweed. I saw old footage of Celine Dion wearing them the other night and it took me back. Around the same time I had several Afghan coats which were my pride and joy…one denim with a white shaggy collar and cuffs. Always worn with a skinny glittery scarf and my “hippy” velvet bags which I bought from a street stall in Monmartre because I wanted to be Penny Lane from Almost Famous.
Satin shirts in acid colours with black velvet pants and “blossom” hats in the earlier/mid 90s. Embroidered waistcoats with shirts and pleated skirts.
I regret being such a fashionista while young! Some awful fashions. And I wore every one of them it seems!