The Y2K Resurgence: A Pendulum Swing Back to the 2000s

It’s official: the return of Y2K fashion is upon us. Across the internet, publications are heralding the surprising return of skinny jeans, which we all thought were well in our past, replaced by the objectively more comfortable mom and boyfriend jeans. Dainty ballet flats and designer mini shoulder bags we once called “cheugy” are populating our Instagram feeds. Influencers who once told us to embrace the overlined matte lip are pushing us to buy the latest $40 lip gloss. This should be no surprise to anyone, as fashion trends typically cycle on a 20 year basis and there is a certain nostalgia to 2000’s trends for Millennials and older Generation Z members. The nostalgia, however, comes with both comforting memories and pain points.

Brands that were once the hallmark of 2000’s fashion have been making strategic comebacks. Abercrombie and Fitch, once a brand deemed dead and confined to our middle school years, has gained surprising relevance again. A store we once knew for heavy cologne, mini shorts that fit 1% of bodies, and a stereotypically thin and white cast of models and sales associates, has rebranded with a company ethos that now prides itself on inclusive sizing and diverse bodies. 

Victoria’s Secret has also made a splashy return with the resurgence of its annual fashion show. Gigi and Bella Hadid and Candice Swanpoel returned with new faces, like Ashley Graham, who once criticized the brand for not including plus-sized models. While outwardly the show sang praises for body diversity and a more inclusive culture, the objectification of the models’ bodies and the inclusion of “token” minorities felt like a relic from another time. 

Maybe it’s not a relic from another time, however. Slowly and silently, the pendulum has swung back into the 2000’s and we are all waking up to a changed world. 

In the fashion industry, the once urgent calls for more inclusive sizes and model diversity on runways have quieted and sample-size thin is back in. Over the past 10 years, designers steadily increased the number of plus and middle sized models in their shows with the insistence of consumers, but 2024 was the first year where the percentage of plus size models on runways dropped. Influencers who once touted body positivity, health and every size, and intuitive eating, are returning to an unabashed embrace of dieting and weight loss. Even the Kardashians, who for better or worse once embraced a more curvy body type, are losing extreme amounts of weight and advertising their concerning methods of attaining an unrealistic body type. It has an impact: as the “body love” posts have been slowly replaced with more “fitspo” and “thinspo”, eating disorders among impressionable adolescents have steadily been increasing. 

In the political and societal realms, we see clear pushback against the 2010’s ethos of “wokeness” and diversity in all forms. Colleges and universities are responding to the ruling on affirmative action by blindly admitting less diverse applicants, while companies that once advertised diverse hiring practices, are rolling back their DEI efforts. These backwards shifts were further emphasized by Trump’s recent executive order to end all federal DEI programs. With all of these incremental, but impactful moves towards a different era, it came as no surprise when Trump claimed in his Presidential speech last Monday, “there are only two genders, male and female”. 

The Y2K era certainly holds some nuggets of gold: I foster fond memories for the endless scented lip glosses I used to tote to school, and I welcome the return of Ugg boots as someone who tends to prefer comfort over style. 

We tend to view the past with rose-tinted glasses, carelessly glossing over the more damaging or negative aspects of a bygone era, but I urge us all to lower the glasses for a moment and ponder. 

Were the skinny jeans we passed on the bread in order to squeeze into doing any miracles for our confidence? Did the endless body shaming, rigid dieting, and weight cycling make us any healthier? Were colleges and companies dominated by white males any more successful or innovative? Do we truly reminisce about a time when there were two genders and those of the same sex could not legally marry? 

You are, of course, entitled to your own answers to these questions, but I know where I stand: feet firmly planted in the present, toting a mini shoulder bag filled with Laneige lip glosses, and my eyes looking towards the future with clear lenses. 

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