I don’t plan my outfits around my bedazzling belly button ring, but there are nice bits of noughties fashion we can cherry pick
Britney and Bennifer. Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United. A new series of Sex and the City. Trucker caps and dresses with peekaboo cutouts. Wait, is it 2021, or 2003?
The noughties are back. Don’t blame me: this isn’t just a fashion thing – it is celebrity culture, TV and even football. Also, do not confuse “the noughties are back” with “the noughties are cool again”, because the two are quite different. When something is ripe for pop culture nostalgia, that means it is ancient history.
Being old enough to remember the actual noughties does not make you any kind of oracle on the noughties revival, because our memories are not the point here. The generation leading this particular revival are reliving memories of their own – childhood ones of their mums picking them up from school in Juicy Couture tracksuits, or of the formative night they came downstairs in their jimjams and saw Christina Aguilera in chaps on late night MTV. “I was there” doesn’t make you hip, it just makes you old.
Were the noughties actually any good, though? Do they warrant a revival? The gold-script name necklaces were solid, to be fair. But if there is glory in cargo pants and Ugg boots, it is as holy relics of the last days of a life that wasn’t ruled by phones and social media. The noughties are the bridge between the pre-internet era, and the life we live now.