2010s Fashion Gets Judged Too Harshly, There Was A lot Of Good.

March 27, 2025

Every decade of fashion gets its time in the hot seat, and right now, it’s the 2010s fashion gets judged. People on the internet love to roast the era for being too “basic,” too “hipster,” or just too forgettable. But was it really that bad? Or are we just stuck in the “ew, that’s old” phase of the fashion cycle?

Image Credit: u/Ceazer4L on Reddit

The 2010s: More Than Just Hipsters and Normcore

If you ask someone to describe 2010s fashion, chances are they’ll mention beanies, flannel shirts, and that one dude in your college dorm who wouldn’t shut up about his vinyl collection. While hipster fashion did dominate early in the decade, it wasn’t the only thing happening. The 2010s were a melting pot of revivals, indie influences, and the rise of internet-fueled aesthetics.

Twee: The Zooey Deschanel Effect

For a while, dressing like a quirky indie film character was the move. Think Peter Pan collars, vintage dresses, and knee-high socks. Zooey Deschanel was the undisputed queen of this era, and tons of millennials copied her style (and, let’s be real, her bangs). Aubrey Plaza also played a role in this aesthetics’ popularity, with her sarcastic, deadpan take on the “cool but awkward” indie girl trope.

Revival Fashion: Nostalgia on the Rise

The 2010s weren’t just about creating new looks—they were about bringing old ones back. The internet made nostalgia more accessible than ever, and fashion from the late 20th century came roaring back. High-waisted jeans, oversized sweaters, chokers, and crop tops—sounds familiar, right? That’s because we’re still wearing a lot of these styles today.

The Indie Chick Era

Indie wasn’t just a music genre in the 2010s—it was a whole vibe. Arctic Monkeys, The Lumineers, Alt-J, The 1975, and Lorde took over playlists, and their fans dressed accordingly. Vintage band tees, overalls, messy hair, Doc Martens—if you were listening to indie music in the 2010s, chances are you had at least one of these in your closet.

But Wait, Isn’t Every Decade’s Fashion Initially Hated?

Fashion is cyclical, and every era gets judged before making a comeback. Right now, the 2010s are in their awkward phase—too recent to feel nostalgic but too old to be trendy. Sound familiar? Because the same thing happened to 2000s fashion before Gen Z decided to resurrect it.

What Reddit Thinks About 2010s Fashion

Redditors have a lot of opinions on whether 2010s fashion was actually good or if it deserves the criticism. Here’s what they had to say:

• “It’s only judged harshly because of recency. Give it another 10 or 20 years, and 2020s fashion will be called garbage while 00s and 10s fashion will be back in.”
  • Replies:
    • “How do you describe 2020s fashion?”
    • “Very boxy fits. Short square shirts and big billowy pants. White socks. Tiny Matrix glasses. 90s patterns with more subdued colors. All the stuff I hated wearing as a kid.”
    • “A lot of stuff from 2018-2019 is already pretty out, so I don’t think it’ll define the 2020s as a whole.”
• “Is it just me, or have style differences been relatively minor in recent decades? Fashion from 1975 looked insanely out of place in 1985, but styles from 2004 and 2014 could still pass today.”
  • Replies:
    • “Yeah, ALL of these pictures could have been taken yesterday. Go to any hip local coffee shop, and you’ll see people dressed exactly like this.”
    • “Well, millennials still mostly dress like this. They just won’t be as young as in the pictures.”
• “People only hate on it because it hasn’t really come back yet. Everyone was making fun of 2000s fashion in the 2010s, and here we are now.”
  • Replies:
    • “Flashing back to the mid-2010s where people made fun of skirts over bootcut jeans… and then some of those same fashion influencers brought it back.”
• “It’s alright, it’s just Gen Z being people. I loved 2010s fashion when I was in high school. Younger Zoomers act like 90s and early 00s were peak fashion and wonder what happened in the 2010s. When I was in school, we thought 50s/60s fashion was great and 90s/early 00s was awful.”
  • Replies:
    • “I feel like I was one of the rare 2010s high schoolers who actually missed 2000s fashion.”
    • “I hated 2010s fashion while it was happening. Maybe it’s because I associated 2000s fashion with the cool teenagers I wanted to be as a kid.”

Will 2010s Fashion Make a Comeback?

Absolutely. It’s only a matter of time before people start romanticizing the 2010s the same way they do with the Y2K era now. Millennials might cringe at their old Tumblr outfits, but trust me—Gen Alpha is coming for them next.

So, next time someone bashes 2010s fashion, remind them that every era has its questionable trends—and that high-waisted jeans, oversized sweaters, and chunky boots aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Source: Reddit

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