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Lifestyle & Fashion, News
Nostalgia in Gen Z Pop Culture
Grace Bower
Walk through any college campus right now and it can feel like stepping into a Y2K music video. Low-rise jeans are so back, as are butterfly clips, chunky belts and even flip phones. It’s a full-scale takeover of the trends that defined the early 2000s by Gen Z, a generation that was barely alive, or not even born, when any of it was first considered cool. But where has this obsession with reviving an era they never got to fully experience as teens or young adults come from?
The 20-Year Rule
A theory in pop culture, the “20-year rule,” proposes that cultural trends follow a cyclical pattern. These trends in fashion, music, and aesthetics are thought to re-emerge roughly two decades after reaching their initial peak in popularity, which would explain the 70s reviving 50s rock ‘n’ roll style, or the 90s bringing back the platform heels and bell bottoms of the 70s. Therefore, according to the 20-year rule, trends tend to come back into fashion after roughly two decades, as that’s just enough time for them to feel fresh again rather than outdated.
Of course, some have been known to break that rule, with the 2010s hipster culture, for example, mined from the 60s. But it would explain the Gen Z fascination with Y2K and 90s’ culture.
Anemoia
The phenomenon itself comes down to a feeling called ‘anemoia’ (uh-nee-MOY-uh). It’s the nostalgia for a time you never actually lived through. A 2023 GWI study found that 56% of Gen Z feel nostalgic for the media of the 2000s, while over a third (37%) feel that way about the 1990s. This nostalgia is no longer just a theory, it’s instead something this generation is naming and feeling in real time. And the proof is everywhere.
The GWI study also found that movies are the top trigger. With the wave of live-action Disney remakes offering an excuse to revisit childhood stories as well as the release of sequels to cult classics, there’s no surprise there. But this yearning for the past has even slipped into how movies of today are critiqued, with many turning their nose up at the modern minimalist aesthetic and calling for the warmer, amber glow of movies from the 90s and 00s to replace the cooler, more digital look of today (case in point: The Devil Wears Prada 2)
Fashion and Music
Fashion is perhaps where nostalgia shows up most visibly, with once-retired brands like Juicy Couture and Von Dutch making calculated comebacks, and Gen Z welcoming them with open arms. The rise of thrifting culture only adds to the appeal, offering a two-for-one deal with sustainability points alongside the aesthetic itself.
Music tells a slightly different story. Here, Gen Z has broken from the typical 20-year rule, and TikTok’s to blame for it. With over a billion users, the app has grown to hold a lot of the cards in today’s music industry. Gone are the days of finding your favorite songs over the radio or from YouTube. And artists have caught on too, banking on a simple dance trend set to one of their tracks to land them a shot at the coveted TikTok virality. It’s already happened with songs from the Y2K era, including Mariah Carey’s 2009 track ‘Obsessed’ and Vanessa Carlton’s ‘A Thousand Miles’ (2002), but also with hits like Madonna’s 1989 ‘Like a Prayer’ and, more recently, the late Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ (1983) from over four decades ago. On TikTok, it seems, no song is ever too old to enjoy a revival.
What’s Different This Time?
This time around, Gen Z’s turn on the nostalgia bandwagon that’s circled back for generations wouldn’t look all that different from those before, except for this: it’s moving faster and reaching further than ever before.
In the past, trends spread through films, magazines, and word of mouth. Now, the spread is algorithmic. TikTok microtrends compress what used to take years into weeks or months, with an aesthetic capable of peaking and fading within a single summer. And unlike past generations, who relied on hand-me-downs and talk among social groups, Gen Z has the internet and unlimited access to online archives, old commercials and discographies. Nostalgia is no longer just inherited, it’s entirely searchable, and can be constructed in a matter of clicks.
Is It Genuine or Just Aesthetic?
Some compare it to “fast fashion” – hollow and simply an aesthetic, easily commodified to be sold back to a generation that didn’t live it the first time. Others are less skeptical, framing it instead as a generation raised entirely online reaching for tangibility in a world of algorithmic sameness and AI-generated content.
Be that as it may, the fact stands that every generation ends up borrowing from the one – or ones – before it, and Gen Z is just the newest link in a cycle that’s been repeating for decades. What makes this cycle worth watching however, isn’t that it’s happening yet again, it’s how fast it is and just how self-aware this generation is while doing it.
