9/23/2024
So I myself, an early 2000s kid, am of course obsessed with the visual beauty and aesthetics of the early 2000s, and that especially counts for the fashion of the era. Baggy clothes, butterfly clips, chunky shoes, low-rise bell bottoms, puffy leg warmers, and yes, baggy clothes. I'm sure a plenty of people my age have gone nostalgia-crazy over those styles of the time and it's no wonder why 2000s fashion resurged through a skyrocket in popularity on social media, especially on TikTok and Pinterest. However, its widespread attention got me to notice some sort of forms of oversaturation from many places around the mainstream internet with varying degrees.
When it comes to 2000s fashion, I tend to mostly delve on the more masculine side of it. I'll pair my baggy (slightly) saggin' jeans with a huge shirt or the top of a tracksuit. But I mean, there's a certain kind of style similar to my fashion sense that I've been seeing everywhere on Tiktok. (Not that I have the app installed, I just look up "tiktok alt" on Youtube and I find em' there.) Every image or video posted displaying these outfits have always been tagged with "y2k" or "grunge" or even "emo", but I feel that the style seems too hyperspecific to be labeled as. (Or it could be a combinated concoction of the three.)
The style is usually described as utilizing baggy jeans, B.B. Simmons belts or other diamond-studded belts, Affliction shirts and other similar designs to that brand, and lots of cross and star iconography. Other accessories can include silver rings, wallet chains, piercings, and ushankas. Boy do the love wearing ushankas. One textbook example I found of this kind of fit was from this Pinterest repost of a TikTok.
And whenever I look up the TikTok accounts of the dudes who wear these clothes, they almost always have a link to their depop account listed in their bio, hence why I named them depop boys. I mean, The edgy baggy clothes look is a style that I fucking eat up, but I did wish that these people could also either add something unique to their fashion sense or just take the time to research about other 2000s fashion trends and see how they could utilize them in their fits. For example, I noticed how relavant ringer tees were in the late 90s and early 2000s and thrifted a nice one off of Ebay, which had a graphic of a diagram of an eyeball. It not only fit into my preference for which era of fashion to replicate, but also had iconography that felt individualistic and unique to my personal aesthetic. What I'm pretty much saying is: Sure, you can follow a trend sometimes (And it's why these depop boys kind of inspired me to also get an Affliction tee from Ebay.), but you should also take the time to get creative with what you want to wear.
