Why Are We All So Nostalgic For The Nineties? (2024)

'Do you remember the first time?’ Pulp’s Jarvis co*cker asked back in 1994. Arguably, 30 years later, the question is irrelevant but the era remains crucial.

2023 was a year when we looked back at other years. In amongst the warm fuzzy feelings of looking back, there has been buzz around the Y2K era, and 2007 (hello, Saltburn), but it’s the 1990s - the decade co*cker was in his pomp - that has emerged as the nostalgic favourite.

The era's reign looks set to continue into 2024 too. Expect revivals of everything from baby tees to geek chic glasses to continue at pace, while original designs by names including Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier and Helmut Lang will cement themselves as the vintage flex to add to stories. Miu Miu - a brand founded by Miuccia Prada in 1993 - is currently the coolest brand in the world, according to trend analysts Lyst, while the very current just-pants trend can be traced back to a 1995 collection, where big pants (a Mrs. Prada favourite) were worn underneath transparent skirts. Meanwhile, nineties favourite Diesel, has had an unlikely resurgence under Glenn Martens, after years in the fashion wilderness.

Our personal style is also set to be full of nineties references. See Christy Turlington hair - bouncy mid-length layers - hotly tipped as the cut to have this year. Instagram accounts dedicated to nineties cool girls including Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Winona Ryder have seen their followings soar, while Sofia Coppola, who is back in focus this month with her film Priscilla, is also on the new year moodboard, as is her 1999 film Virgin Suicides (a reference for Sandy Liang's spring/summer 2024 collection).

Culture is onboard too. Netflix's reboot of David Nicholls’ One Day (the bulk of which is set in the nineties) will air in February while Gladiators will return to BBC One this month. Music can also expect a return from some giants of the decade. Green Day will reform to tour, while Shaznay Lewis - the brains behind nineties girl band All Saints - is back with a single this month. Usher, that nineties RnB prince, will perform for the Super Bowl halftime show in February.

The decade’s influence on new stars is also showing itself - expect rave and UK Garage to have something of a resurgence thanks to nineties samples employed by PinkPantheress, who's on tour in February. The nineties revival will continue through very Gen Z artists like Wisp and L’Rain too.

In general, our current love of the past is understandable. In a world with a news cycle that seems to only come with turmoil, and with all of us emerging from the impact of a global pandemic, only to be confronted with a cost of living crisis, the present can be scary. Looking at the culture and style of the past has a buy one, get one free appeal - it provides both reassurance and some kind of levity. It's fun, basically.

Our focus on the nineties can partly be put down to the 30 year theory around nostalgia, which dictates that things start to look interesting rather than just old-fashioned after three decades. The nineties was also a decade strikingly rich with culture - there was Aaliyah, Trainspotting, Tracey Emin, Nirvana, Chloë Sevigny, Lil' Kim, Brit Pop. Fashion ranged from god-tier minimalism from Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang and Jil Sander to Marc Jacobs’ and Miuccia Prada’s pop culture references and genre-bending innovation from Westwood and McQueen. And that’s not even mentioning the Spice Girls, Kate Moss, Friends and the supermodels in George Michael’s Freedom! '90 video.

But while there is lots to discover, this nineties moment isn’t entirely Gen X and millennials having a ‘remember that?’ moment. A report by consumer trends experts GWI in 2023 found that 40% of those in Gen Z felt nostalgic for the decade, despite the fact that the majority of them were - get ready to feel old - not even born during it. PinkPantheress’s DOB? 18th April, 2001.

If - say - the eighties or the sixties are fascinating, they feel remote, retro. We can both relate to the nineties, and also see it as an idea of ‘what might have been’. This was the last decade before the spread of digital culture changed our lives forever. For those who have grown up with DMs and FYPs as default, the nineties come with a certain wistful feeling - of life if the average weekday evening didn’t involve three group chats, watching the latest water cooler TV series with subtitles on and half-listening to a cult podcast on 1.5 speed.

This was an era before cameraphones, before ‘if you don’t post about it, it didn’t happen’, where photographs were rarer, and photo faces even more so. In the third decade of lives lived through screens, it makes sense that we’re looking back to these before times. Even if - for some, at least - they were before our own existence too.