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Has fashion changed? The looks that made the 2000s are still hip in 2019

What fashion era are we in?  Kim Kardashian and Kanye West sport all the looks.

What fashion era are we in? Kim Kardashian and Kanye West sport all the looks. Photo: Getty

I walked into my house last week, about 11pm, after seeing comedian Judith Lucy’s fabulous show at the Opera House, to find my son’s girlfriend and her bestie sharing a bottle of wine and watching music videos before they hit the town.

Having just enjoyed the pleasure of paying $18 for a standard glass of bad riesling at an average CBD bar I empathised with the economising, but I also remembered just how much I loved doing that with my girlfriends when I was in my early 20s before we went out, putting on layers of makeup and watching Rage.

The Pussycat Dolls came on the screen with Don’t Cha, and while we all screamed “Retro!” (the clip came out in 2005) the clothes the Dolls were half-wearing didn’t scream retro to me.

Girls wear the same thing now, it was all low-rise pants and shorts and crop tops and hoodies and exposed bras.

It wasn’t like when you look at a clip from, say, the Eighties and go, ‘Dear God, look at that teased hair, shoulder pads, orange eye shadow.’

“What looks defined the 2000–2010 girls?” I asked because, during those years, I was in the middle of a crazy, busy career while raising twins, so I don’t remember anything except two Helmut Lang pantsuits and a couple of It bags.

“Um, hipster jeans? ” the girls said, both dressed in high-waisted wide-leg jeans and crop tops, with the most perfect makeup you’ve ever seen.

We decided flat stomachs and washboard abs were a key motif of the early part of the 2000s, a la the aforementioned Pussycat Dolls and Fergie, the singer formerly with the Black Eyed Peas, Pink and Gwen Stefani.

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Fergie showed off her washboard abs in 2003. Photo: Getty

We then got onto the subject of what defines now: 2019.

I suggested that it was hard to pinpoint, as seemingly everything is in.

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Kim Kardashian wears all leopard in Paris this month. Photo: Getty

You can pretty much put anything on and walk out the door, and nobody will think you look odd.

The Kardashians and Jenners and those pesky Hadid sisters do it daily.

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Kim Kardashian’s dead straight hair. Photo: Getty

“I think it’s mostly defined by long, dead straight hair,” I put forward, as I noticed a beat too late that both the girls had long, dead straight hair, one blonde with meant-to-be-seen dark roots, the other jet black.

“We used to have real haircuts in the 70s, you know, which suited your hair type, like short and curly or long and layered into a page boy style. We all looked different,” I continued, while they looked at me with an expression that said, ‘uh-oh, she’s getting all wistful and weird now, she should probably go to bed’.

But then I realised that when we look back at now, this period of fashion may mean that we actually look more diverse than ever, with pink hair and dreadlocks and nose-rings, and tattoos and shaved heads, wearing whatever makes us happy.

Which is the very best part of fashion, in any decade.

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