Retro looks are all about taking the best of what’s passed and giving it a new identity. This makes sense with old looks that we feel vicariously sentimental about through movies, such as sixties dresses, seventies flares or eighties sunglasses, but what about things that have only just passed? The nineties are already making their way into the retro scene, which may seem a little odd, but it’s about a very specific area of the nineties look.
Essentially this revival is about the early nineties and grunge metal. The music scene that pretty much began and ended with Kurt Cobain trying and failing to sound like the Pixies left a legacy of greasy, oversized fashion that’s now seeing new life. The look wasn’t about new clothes as much as how you used them. As such anything that went well with layering was in. For guys this meant flannel coats and baggy shirts along with messy long hair and stubble.
Girls got in on this look with the oversized theme. The cute appeal of this is about making it look like you’re wearing your boyfriend’s clothes. But it’s not all about baggy wear. Babydoll dresses took things super small so as to create a base for further layering. The basic principle of layering is that you choose a base layer of clothes and then get clothes that can be worn open to set on top of that. So that’s cardigans and button shirts. Also ripped jeans added to the general sense of careful carelessness.
The stuff that hasn’t made its way back into fashion is from the late nineties, so avoid anything of that type. This essentially means sportswear that isn’t about preppy appeal but more about track and field. An exception to this is the converse shoe, which has proved to be an evergreen part of the grunge era and beyond – the more worn the better.
So that’s the gist of what you should be trying to achieve with nineties looks, and what you should limit yourself to. If you don’t go back quite far enough you can end up looking like you’re just out of date – it’s a game of reviving looks that people have just forgotten, although thankfully peoples’ fashion memories are getting shorter and shorter all the time.
Every woman should have a good pair of ladies trainers.