In Defense of Millennial Fashion

I don't care if it's cringe now--it was objectively good!

We’ve heard a lot about millennial feminism recently (in part from the best writer and most profound intellectual voice in media today: me) and now that I’ve gotten my share of attention, I hereby declare this discourse cycle done.

But all this talk about millennial feminism got me thinking more about the era that defined it: the 2010s. Otherwise known as the era when I, and many other millennials, were in our twenties. Specifically, I started thinking about the fashion of this era, which took up all my headspace that should have been spent learning how to drive or not getting fired from my jobs.

The fashion of any time is defined by its young people (and this is painfully obvious to me now, given my newly-minted status of “chopped unc.”) As a result, when we think about the fashion of the 2010s, we can’t not think about BuzzFeed listicles, TV shows like Girls and Broad City, and brunch restaurants with names like Bacon Skank and Slippery Taco. My generation is infamous for being uniquely “cringe,” and I have to say, the emblems that came out of the 2010s are not doing us any favors in that arena. Plus, it’s a rule of fashion that anything from about ten years ago gives modern-day people a bit of a visceral ick. As a result, it’s hard to be totally objective about 2010s fashion. A lot of it just feels embarrassing.

But some people have nostalgically asked where it went. For example, why don’t we have twee white girls with bangs and skater skirts anymore? I’ll tell you why, as a recovering quirked-up white girl myself: if you present this way in 2026, people make fun of you and call you a quirk chungus cringe millennial, and frankly, there’s only so much of it we can take before we just throw on some dark brown wide leg Aritzia trousers and call it a day.

But, if I dare say so myself, the tryhard-quirk-chungus-cringe that feels unique to the peak millennial era—the very vibe that people conjure up to ridicule us—was why our fashion was so good. Or, better yet, our lack of constant, nail-biting, head-swiveling obsession with cringe was why it was good. Cringe may be bad, but you know what’s worse? Being too afraid of cringe to have fun.