#65 TRENDING IN Beauty & Style 🔥

The Twilight Fashion Renaissance: How Gen Z is Reviving 2000s Fashion

Beauty & Style

February 02, 2022

It is no surprise to anyone these days that trends come and go out of style like that. It's practically a right of passage. Trends fade into fads as fast as trends are recycled.

Within the past few years, there's been a resurgence of 80s fashion, then 90s fashion, and most recently, 2000s fashion. However, as soon as the Y2K fashion trend arose—flooded with halter tops, baby tees, and shimmery lip gloss, tied together by eccentric pastels—a new trend arrived.

There isn't a definite name for the trend—though many people online refer to it as a by product of the "Twilight Renaissance" phenomenon. It can best be defined as clothing from the late 2000s to early 2010s. An influx of henley shirts, bootcut jeans, and converse—a whole phenomenon dedicated to the likes of popular characters from the time such as the Twilight franchise's Bella Swan and The Vampire Dairies series' Elena Gilbert.

@sk1nnyho3 edward cullen is literally the man of my dreams #twilight #bellaswan ♬ ac loverrmore - a

The style as a whole is compromised of many different clothing pieces, notably low rise bootcut jeans, henley shirts, camisoles, peasant blouses, converse, v-necks, boots, and long layered necklaces. Juxtaposed to the current major fashion trends in 2021, this new microtrend rejects the eccentric pastels and bright colors of the Y2K fashion craze and instead embraces more muted, earthy tones to match the autumnal season right when the trend began to make a comeback.

So, lets break this trend down—how it started, when it started, and what it means for the future of microtrends. Your typical cultural analysis.

When Did This Trend Start?

This trend began to build traction around August of 2021, prior to the autumn and back to school season. To no surprise the trend originated off the app TikTok with its huge influence on the fashion industry nowadays. As mentioned previously, the revival of this style is heavily based upon the resurgence of popular media and pop culture influences from the 2000s—two of the most popular ones again being the Twilight franchise and The Vampire Diaries series.

Coincidentally, the uprise of "Bella Swan outfits" and "Elena Gilbert outfits" began to increase in Google searches and popularity around the time when all the Twilight movies and The Vampire Diaries series were released on Netflix. This, alongside the recent popularity the Twilight franchise as a whole has massed these couple of years despite being over a decade old, all pose as viable reasons as to why the style is trending once more.

The Dangers of Microtrends

Despite its popularity, one cannot ignore this style's microtrend status. TikTok is infamous for the creation of microtrends so short that they usually only last for a few months. Before social media's huge impact on fashion, trends would last many years before going out of style—so these microtrends are extremely harmful in the fashion and retail industry for their promotion of over-consumption, wasteful practices, and unsustainable nature. These types of clothes are often made by fast fashion companies also, who often produce their products in unethical ways.

Though, with the clothing items from this style not necessarily being that dated—staple pieces have been worn well into the early 2010s—one can argue that the revival of this fashion does sidestep some of the consequences microtrends usually have. Teens may be able to find some of these pieces within their own closets, or utilize hand-me-downs from their older sibling's or parents' closets. Thrifting is also a viable option!

Social Media's Influence on the Fashion Industry

As mentioned earlier, it comes to no surprise that this trend has been curated by means of social media and the internet—certainly not by the traditional and conventional means of models or fashion magazines. The current teenage demographic has the entire internet at their disposal to help share their fashion tastes and help influence upcoming trends. In an article from wrapcompliance.org, author Mariel Nelson writes the following:

"Before the rise of TikTok and Instagram influencer culture, we looked to models, movies, celebrities, and fashion magazines to set the trends that many people carefully and diligently followed. This group of people was small, and our access to them was neatly curated, which ultimately limited the public's exposure to potential new trends and kept fashion cycles slower. In the past 15 years or so, however, the rise of YouTube bloggers, and more recently, Instagram and TikTok creators, have given almost anyone the ability to influence the masses. Now, there are hundreds of thousands of potential trendsetters who can quickly and easily reach millions of people."

This leads directly into the roles that the teenage demographic plays into the revival of this trend. Now, this type of clothing has quickly grown out of the small corner of the Internet it once occupied. Major fashion retailers and sellers have now hopped onto the bandwagon. Take for example, this viral top from luxury designer brand Dolce and Gabbana:

this dolce & gabbana top is a NEED pic.twitter.com/e2zzkI4H3q

— mariya (@di0rkitten) October 22, 2021

This top sparked quite the debate online, with people either praising it, calling it bland and outdated, or comparing it to Lizzie McGuire (whether that is a good or bad thing is completely up to you). Not only have major fashion brands such as Dolce and Gabbana profited off of this TikTok trend, though. The social media app has also began to foster a space for outdated brands to reinvent their images and rekindle the broken relationships between corporation and consumers, especially within Generation Z.

Take Abercrombie and Fitch for example—the long since forgotten American apparel brand who peaked in the 90s-2000s, but has been dormant ever since.

In an interview with Teen Vogue, Abercrombie Brands' head of marketing and senior vice president Cary Collins talks with the magazine on how TikTok has helped the brand. "Over the past few years, we've been laser-focused on listening to our customers and TikTok has been the perfect platform for fostering that communication," she states. She later adds that the "authenticity innate to TikTok and its entire community [has] allowed us to humanize Abercrombie."

Not only does TikTok allow for clothing brands and retailers to profit off the subcommunities it fosters, but it also seems to be providing a newfound space for such brands to simply become "trendy again." The influence social media has on the fashion industry is huge.

What Does This Mean For the Future of Fashion?

Clearly, microtrends and social media will continue to dominate their roles within the fashion industry. There's no shame in one wanting to partake in trends if they like them, as long as they try their best to partake in it sustainably and ethically. Finding alternatives to fast fashion such as wearing hand-me-downs, thrifting, or investing in fair-trade clothing if one can afford it are all feasible ways in doing so.

What It Means to Dress Up in This Style Today

Though this style is only around 10 years old, it still has a semblance of nostalgia attached to it. With teenagers being the main demographic of this trend, it's evident. With the struggles of the pandemic and the current state of the world, many people have turned back to the media they once enjoyed—things that make them feel comforted, reminiscing upon simpler times. Watching the media that they enjoyed in their childhood brings back comfort, and there's no shame in wanting to recreate those times, even through day-to-day outfits.

Saiyah Cheema
20k+ pageviews

Writer since Aug, 2021 · 6 published articles

Saiyah is an aspiring journalist who likes to write about the latest trends and everything pop culture.

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