panache
← HEART-CENTERED FASHION
A flock of brightly colored butterfly clips accent Alaina Bludworth’s hair. Are they as bright as Alaina’s smile? Not quite. Her sweater has so much heart, it seems to pulsate.
TRENDS
THE AUGHTS ARE HOT, AGAIN Y2K fashions are back, within limits by EMMA WITMER
A
h, the aughts. The 2000s were a time when lip-synching divas reigned supreme, everyone knew their Harry Potter house and MTV somehow convinced us that The Jersey Shore bore some relationship to reality. While the world did not end at the change of millennia, fashion took a few years off. Red carpets were filthy with
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June-July 2022
EMERALDCOASTMAGA ZINE.COM
↑ High-waisted baggy jeans are accessorized with a butterfly chain. Retro heart-patterned knit top is from Etsy. Bracelet is handmade. Model: Alaina Bludworth
dresses over jeans, exposed thongs and layered tank tops. I was in middle school, and those trends did not translate well to everyday life. But for the Gen Z crowd, who narrowly missed out on the trauma of sitting down in low-rise jeans, Y2K is the latest source of fashion inspiration. Not convinced? Check your feed. Hashtags like “Y2Kfashion” or “Y2Kstyle” have accumulated well over a million posts. Popular fastfashion retailers like Shein have entire collections dedicated to the look. Of course, not everything is coming back. Some of the more out-there styles remain safely in the fashion vault, but versatile pieces like plastic hair clips, baby T-shirts and mini-skirts have returned in a big way. Laura Belsinger, owner of Pensacola’s Bluetique, is
reordering claw clips, which I affectionately call “mom clips,” every other day to keep up with demand. Alicia Taylor-Printz, owner of Pensacola’s SoBo Boutique, said satiny crop-tops and spaghetti-string dresses have become some of the shop’s most popular items. As a baby millennial, or older member of Gen Z depending on where you draw the line, it seemed to me like we were not quite far enough removed from the Justin Timberlake/Britney Spears dynamic denim duo to call the comeback of 2000s fashion a “resurgence.” Then, Taylor-Printz, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, reminded me that my early college ’90sinspired grunge phase followed the same pattern. “Fashion really cycles about every 20 years,” Taylor-Printz said. “It’s strange because I remember wearing this stuff as a kid, you know? It’s funny now to see teenagers wearing it. Now, I understand women who come in, look at a more ’70s-inspired top and say, ‘Oh, I can’t do that again.’” When it came to the fashionistas — the Beckhams, Aguileras, the Hiltons — aughts fashions could be a bit extreme. Most of us never hopped on the whaletail train. My school had a dress code, after all, and gym class! The off-runway trends fell somewhere in the middle — inspired by the red carpet but approved by mom. That’s how Belsinger rocked her Y2K trends back in high school. Halter tops were paired with mom jeans instead photography by JOHN HARRINGTON
