Why do the ugly fashion trends from our youth keep coming back?

Vox reader Stephanie asks: I will grant you that at 43, I am old. However, I am scratching my head about why fashion that I have seen already in my lifetime is recycling itself? Mom jeans were bad the first time — why are we doing it again when they look good on literally no one? The ’90s are bad but worse this time? Have we lost creativity in fashion? This didn’t seem to happen before, but then again, maybe I’m wrong …

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that kids rediscovering the fashions of your youth will always be bizarre and inexplicably kind of annoying.

My personal nightmare manifested around 2018 in the form of ’90s-style tiny sunglasses (and later, eyeglasses), after what felt like a solid two decades of the wayfarers and oversized frames that suited my very round face. But guess what kind of sunglasses I wear now?

So you’re not wrong that it’s weird — but new, it is not. Conventional wisdom holds that trends tend to be recycled every 20 years, because that’s how long it takes for a new generation to come of age and rediscover the aesthetics and style that were popular when they were too young to enjoy them.

To truly understand why mom jeans have returned, however, you’ve got to grasp a fundamental truth about fashion that has existed for nearly a century, as well as some context about the way the industry — and our own modes of attention — work now.

There’s been a lot of internet discourse in recent years that the trend cycle is speeding up because of the way social media regurgitates trends in ever-shortening time spans: At the beginning of the pandemic, for instance, kids on the internet were expressing their nostalgia for the year 2014, a mere six years before.

Part of why it feels this way is because everything is trendy online now, and therefore nothing is. You could choose a random fashion item from any point in the last 50 years and you’ll find a community of people on the internet who still love it. An incomplete list of things I was certain would never return but somehow have: mullets, kitten heels, thongs sticking out of jeans, ’80s blush.

But we’re also seeing the 20-year cycle play out right on schedule in the form of relentless Y2K-inspired trends in fashion, beauty, and music, as well as those very ’90s mom jeans you’re referring to. Those actually started gaining steam around 2016, reaching their peak Google search interest in 2021.

Does that mean that fashion is undergoing a crisis of creativity? Maybe — but I think there’s also something more interesting going on.

As has been the pattern in countless other industries, corporate consolidation and cost cutting are driving fashion brands to produce cheaply (read: unethically) made clothing that caters to algorithms and sales data. Your clothes are, in fact, worse now.

At the same time, consumers are pushing back on poor quality and unimaginative fast fashion by thrifting, which has never been more popular. In addition to being a really fun way to spend an afternoon, scouring racks of vintage allows shoppers to think more sustainably about where their stuff comes from, while also injecting a bit of that much-needed individuality into fashion. Right now, one of the biggest fashion trends on TikTok is all about finding your personal style, which reflects a widespread interest in opting out of the viral fad hamster wheel.

One piece of fashion writing that I think might help you understand is the sociologist Angela McRobbie’s 1989 work on how the rise of the secondhand market after World War II completely changed the way cool young people have dressed ever since.

Basically, in the ’50s and ’60s, kids began flocking to “ragmarkets” and fleas, repurposing items everybody else thought were outdated: army coats, old-fashioned furs, petticoats, items made of higher-quality fabrics than the ones being sold at department stores of the time (the more things change!). Thrifting created the hippie look, with its peasant-style blouses and bohemian draping, borrowed from items from the 1940s but styled them in a way that evoked the present.

Not only have kids been repurposing past fashions for generations — they’re also specifically drawn to items that mainstream tastes find ugly or unflattering.

McRobbie references two women in the 1970s who popularized arty, androgynous dressing but in very different ways: Patti Smith, who appeared malnourished and unkempt in leather jackets and T-shirts, and Diane Keaton as the “frumpy” Annie Hall. Both wore clothing typically associated with men, but neither, she argues, “conferred true androgyny.” In both cases, part of the purpose of the masculine silhouette was to accentuate just how much of an unmistakably female form lied underneath.

The same can be said for mom jeans, which, of course, only read as matronly if the wearer possesses what is considered to be a “mom bod.” Because beneath all fashion trends is a deeply unsatisfying truth: When young, hot people start wearing something, it makes the rest of us believe that the item itself is magic.

But really, that’s just the magic of being hot.

Bella Hadid, for instance, can wear jorts and a tank top and people will call her a fashion icon because even regular clothes look extremely sexy on her. When enough people try to recreate that look in the hopes it’ll confer hotness, it just becomes what everyone’s wearing.

Which means that if I had to guess, at some point in the next few years, you might find yourself buying what your current self would consider to be mom jeans. But by that point, of course, they’ll just read as “jeans” to you.

That’s kind of lovely, I think! It shows us that fashion, and by extension culture, is constantly challenging our notions of what’s acceptable, and the things we find beautiful and pleasurable are entirely subjective.

You don’t have to like mom jeans, just as all of us are free to ignore what all the cool young people are doing and dress however we want. But just because you’re “old” (you’re not!) doesn’t mean your style preferences have to remain the same for the rest of your life. Sometimes, rediscovering the clothing items you never thought you’d see again is exactly the novelty a wardrobe needs.

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