When Fashion Strikes Back!

If a particular fashion choice is left for long enough, does it eventually spring back into style regardless of how naff it was the first time around? History has shown that trends do indeed come full circle.
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Walking through town the other week, I suddenly became convinced I had stumbled into some kind of portal and actually travelled back through time!

A group of girls were walking towards me, all dressed in a very familiar style; crop tops, high-waist jeans, chunky black platform shoes, dark purple lipstick, smoky eyes and black string chokers.

It wasn't the fact they were dressed similarly to each other that struck me - in was the fact that about 20 years ago, I had dressed exactly the same!

It was freaky.

I knew that fashions had a tendency to come back around after a certain amount of time but not to this extent.

After having a quick check of the current date on my phone, I was relieved the find that I had not been cast back into the 90s (although watching Clarissa Explains It All again would have been awesome) but instead, the fashion of my youth had remerged in the present day.

It was an unsettling experience to say the least. Now I understood what my older relatives had felt when they shivered at the sight of neon leggings and oversized t-shirts making a comeback.

If a particular fashion choice is left for long enough, does it eventually spring back into style regardless of how naff it was the first time around? History has shown that trends do indeed come full circle. Take a look at the last 100 years of fashion and you're sure to recognise a few of the styles, even from decades ago.

If that's true, why do only some fashions stage a comeback and others fade into history? Or is it simply the fact that we notice our own throwbacks and fail to stop others from different eras we never belonged to?

We often look back over the fashion choices of our youth with a cringe, amazed that we had the courage to step out the front door in what we considered to be 'on trend'.

If you're anything like me, your sources of fashion influence as teenagers came from glossy magazines and what popstars wore on Top of the Pops.

But here I was, staring at a gaggle of young girls, with access to fashion influences that I could only dream of, wearing my entire teenage wardrobe.

I became very aware that day that fashion is not finite.

We may be of the opinion that it is an ever-flowing and changing industry but the truth is, fashion has its own set of permanent markers that exist within it.

Designers use the popularity of the past to influence modern styles. Last year the hot style of autumn was 80s inspired, even though the decade itself is not considered the most fashionable.

And they're not the only ones to do so; music, food and architecture are a few examples of the area where you'll often see the past influencing the present day.

With so much pressure and competition to find the next 'big thing', is it any wonder that the leaders in fashion will look to the past to find an advantage that puts them ahead?