Dear fashion, yes we’ve got our heads around the whole 90s thing and it’s going well. But some things are just too terrible to wear twice. So when you’re doing that cyclical thing, could you do us a favour and leave this lot out?
1. Jeans tucked into cowboy boots
It’s hard to work out who to lynch (or who Faith have to thank) for this whole fiasco, but cowboy boots seemed to ‘happen’ around the same time as American Life: Madonna’s auto-tune-midlife-crisis album. Which, however you cut it, is a pretty poor start for any fashion trend. (Maybe, maybe not) consequently you could hear the Cuban-heeled approach of a noughties posh kid for miles. The picture of sophistication, these were always worn with a blazer and ‘pash’ looped through itself in that supremely awful way. Believe it or not, some hockey toffs in their thirties still dress like this.
**2. Boho skirts **
It’s a real shame that you spent your best metabolic years, when you played team sports and your legs weren’t weather and booze-worn, covering them up. Eventually, when ‘Sienna Miller boho’ ceased to be your most used search term and you stopped dressing like an underage palm reader, you unveiled your knees from behind their gypsy curtain. Since then, these skirts have been absorbed by the mum community as a shield for varicose veins and bulging ankles. Luckily, we can be hopeful that any garment that’s been used as sails on Per Una’s flagship for 10 years has a fairly faint chance of revival. But then fashion does have a very dry sense of humour.
3. Coin belts
Another hangover of the boho trend (ffs, Sienna), this coin-laden fanny furniture had you looking and weighing like an extra from Gladiator. Not only did they serve absolutely no purpose as a belt atop your ripped denim skirt, they were held together by some ludicrous pin mechanism that would fling open every time you inhaled.
4. Boleros
Is it a cardigan? Is it a scarf? ‘I don’t know but I really wish you weren’t wearing it,’ should have been the answer when you debuted your first baggy-backed crochet top. The word ‘shrug’ could not more aptly articulate how we all feel about that purchase now.
5. Von Dutch hats
It’s quite impressive really when you think about it – for a couple of years we were all paying through the nose to dress like middle american HGV drivers, fuelling my own conspiracy that Ashton Kutcher’s trucker hat phase was just a really long and elaborate episode of Punk’d. Either way, we all got seriously punk’d by Mr Von Dutch, whose hats made us look absurd. The glory days didn’t last long, though. It all started to go south when Paris and Nicole bitched out on each other, and just like many other things that happen around Lindsay Lohan, the hat hype went cold. Now it’s mutant cousin Ed Hardy is worn by Britney Spears’ extended relatives, but the Von Dutch is over. Long may it never return on our heads.
6. Headscarves etc.
You probably spent a tough period during the early noughties experimenting with headscarves, but there is no excuse for what you did on your head in those years. Just look at Victoria Beckham. She had to launch a whole fashion career just to say sorry for hers.
7. Juicy Couture
Unless you are Katie Price or a Russian Oligarch’s wife, Juicy Couture tracksuitswill have faded from grace as the purveyors of cellulite-grabbing, baby pink flannel. Pastel, tight and woefully absorbent this tracksuit isn’t the wisest choice for a teenage girl’s menstrual wardobe. A fact you won’t need to tell Louise from my Year 11 physics set twice. She wouldn’t wear one again if Anna Wintour herself asked her to.
Follow Lucy on Twitter @lucyannhancock
Pictures: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.