With a sentimental connection to the past, fashion enthusiasts are feeling colorful, urban and a lot more sassy.

Fashion trends are a force of never-ending up-cycle/down-cycle, where seasonal trends dictate style and consumer style dictates trends. This Spring season’s trends came from a merry-go-round of time travel, and the early 2000’s is our stop. The fashion is colorful, urban, and a lot more sassy. A sentimentality for the past causes style enthusiasts to cling to these nostalgic pieces, because they create a feeling of bliss.

Behind the proverbial velvet curtain, millennials and their cusps were a generation of kids forced to grow up too fast. Due to malicious geopolitics, competitive market economies, technological advances, and the birth of social media platforms that define beauty and social standards. As we yearn for simpler times, fashion trends bathed in a warm nostalgic light carry a much deeper meaning.

In an age of Vaporwave, the last thing we would’ve forecasted was a rise in the popularity of late 90’s fashion. But one thing we do know is that fashion is cyclical and even the most playful of trends come back around. Our generation has a love affair with nostalgia and the capri-sun-drinking side of us resurfaces while wearing pieces inspired by early 2000’s bubblegum pop or ‘90’s grunge.

What does Nostalgia mean to others?

Hannah Read, who boasts 15k followers on Instagram as a fashion blogger, is never without her all time favorite “dad” shoe. Her blog cultivates fresh trends with notes of early 2000’s pieces.

 Read said “I think our generation is always looking for the next new trend – it’s a blessing and a curse but I like to focus on the way it makes us a progressive generation. I think our fascination with these older trends comes from us wanting something new & different while drawing from what we all knew as kids – it’s almost like a way of camaraderie and finding something we can all relate to. Whether it is from tv stars we loved or the celebrities we saw in magazines next to the check out stand at the grocery store with our mom, we all want inspiration and to bring newness/trendiness to what we already know.”

Apparel design major Payton Smyer, who is also a co-owner of Suite Zero Vintage said, “Most current mainstream fashion influencers grew up in the 90s/2000s, so this time segment is a major source of inspiration for the products and designs that they are producing. Because of that, everyone else is catching on to that “trickle down” trend that is based around 90s/2000 culture.”

Alexis Suazo, an fashion merchandising student at Oregon State remembers, “My favorite trend from the early 2000’s was Avril Lavigne’s style because her don’t care attitude played into my confident teen angst.” Inspired by Lavigne, Suazo began incorporating edgy or punk type pieces like “doc martens, graphic tees, and fishnets.”

When we were younger our world was so slow, growing up seemed like it was taking forever, and once we did we realized it all came too quickly. We couldn’t hold onto feelings, cherish in them, because we were so young, so unknowing of what lied ahead of us. When you’re a child your world exists in a bubble, the sky’s the biggest thing in the world and the only issue you face is remembering to double knot your shoelaces. Media was birthed into our generations ideals and we idolized the lives of figures that plastered issues of Tiger Beat, J-14, and Teen Vogue wanting to be just like them.

We are a sentimental generation, growing up in a rapidly changing society, we traded our flip phones for smartphones in the blink of an eye, and we don’t know what to do with that fact.As the ‘90’s trends come back around, we have a second chance to wear things that we’ve always to, like sparkly bellbottoms and platform shoes. We can jump back into that scheme of childhood with just a quick change of clothes.