Fashion in the early 2000s was about status. The fashion of the early 2000s was defined by celebrity influence.
In the 1990s, the supermodel craze made skinny bodies influential. However, in the later half of the decade, economic downturn via the Great Recession of 2008 defines celebrity and wealth as the standards for Y2K fashion.
Pop stars and celebrity influencers popularize casual wear such as low-rise jeans and tracksuits while showing lots of skin. As e-commerce makes fashion more accessible, copycat retailers become more prevalent, bringing high fashion into everyday wear.
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Early 2000s Fashion
During the recession of 2020, early 2000s style will come back to influence baby Gen Z fashion with the resurgence Y2K. However, there are some values associated with Y2K that Gen Z would rather leave behind.
American girl group Destiny's Child wearing low-rise jeans and showing lots of skin at a Janet Jackson event in 2001.
Socialite Paris Hilton in 2004 sporting a Juicy Couture tracksuit.
Key Trends
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Cyber Y2K
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Grunge
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Low-rise jeans and miniskirts
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Bare stomachs (and flat stomachs in general!)
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Casual wear such as tracksuits
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Demin everything!
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The Buying Power of the Celebrity
In the 1990s, the phenomenon of the supermodel peaked. "Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington. When these four strutted down the catwalk arm in arm during Versace’s 1991 Autumn/Winter fashion show in Milan they were more famous than the clothes.”
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At the start of the 2000s, fashion was no longer just about the clothes, but about the body that wears them and the influence it can amass. Pop culture icons such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Beyonce were most remembered for defining what we now know as Y2K fashion.
Bea Shira, 19
Student
Santa Barbara, CA
"I like the style that she wears. I like how grungy it is. But she's just so small and I feel like that's the majority of people I see."
A thin body was a key accessory in early 2000s fashion.
​The rise of the supermodel in the 1990s came hand in hand with the trend Heroin chic, a look that favored emaciated-looking models with waif-thin figures. Calvin Klein's 1998 campaign with Kate Moss was one of the first to promote the look.
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Throughout the 2000s, thin bodies remained popular in fashion, while bigger bodies were shamed or excluded from the culture and industry. Fashion designers such as Karl Lagerfeld refused to put plus-size models on the runways.
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As the rise of social media sites such as Myspace in 2003 and Youtube in 2005 made fashion more accessible to the masses, the fatphobia of the fashion industry extended into everyday life. Female celebrities endured constant harassment by the tabloids for their shape, and plus-women struggled to access fashion culture as a result.
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Emily Gagan, 24
Makeup Artist
San Francisco, CA
"As a teen.. a problem I ran into was sizing, never really feeling like I was part of the group that was supposed to be wearing those clothes."
Fatphobia and Y2K fashion
go hand-in-hand.
Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most influential designers of the 2000s, once famously told the German magazine Focus in 2009 that "No one wants to see curvy women."
Archival footage of Chanel's 2004 spring/summer collection designed by Karl Lagerfeld.
As the U.S. took an economic downturn during the Great Recession, peaking throughout the 2007-08 stock market crash and economic crisis, idolization of wealth and celebrity became further cemented into fashion culture. Everyone wanted to be their favorite celeb.
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With the prevalence of e-commerce taking hold, affordable copies of high fashion styles trickled down into consumer bases, introducing fast fashion into the industry mainstream.
Recession and Retailing
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The Experiment
This experiment would interest designer brands in collaborating with collaborating with affordable fast-fashion retailers, raising the popularity of brands such as H&M, Wet Seal, and Abercrombie & Fitch. These retailers began to replace staple department stores such as Macy's and Kohls, relying on branding that emulates the lifestyle of the wealthy and beautiful.
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Recession & Retailing
In November of 2004, fashion retailer H&M debuted their first designer collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld. To the surprise of many, the collection was a huge success and sold out in a day. H&M Marketing Director Jörgen Andersson told WWD, “We’ve been operating this business for some 60 years and we’ve never seen anything like it."
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Unethical Production
However, fast fashion retailers are only successful if they are able to produce high input and keep up with rapidly changing fashion trends. To keep up with switching styles, the fast fashion production process outsourced underpaid workers and produced lots of excess waste. The popularity of Karl Lagerfeld's collaboration with H&M was one strong indicator of the direction that mainstream fashion industry was moving in with the growth of a global fast fashion epidemic.
