Lol finally. I was bewildered about seeing "y2k" next to a bunch of hot pink and the blingy Paris Hilton look. Britney didn't even have that look until her Toxic/Fantasy perfume era, she was rocking all kinds of shiny metallic and space-future motifs before then, just like the aesthetic dictates. Y2K refers to the year 2000, the start of the new millennium. Wise words from Spongebob, "everything is chrome in the future!" The whole first half of the decade did not look like Mean Girls (2005) y'all 😭
It may seem odd to some, but Disney played a significant role in romanticizing the hopeful optimism of the Space Age. Walt produced numerous short films about space travel and future living. These were aired on ABC as supplementary content to promote Disneyland. The original concepts behind Tomorrowland at Disneyland and EPCOT Center were largely focused on those ideas, some of which lives on today.
Also Cyber counterparts to counter culture arrived at this time. Cyber-Goth was a new alternative to the previous darker style which the Matrix was heavily stylized after.
My fond memories of Y2K: scented nail polish, those brushes with hair dye that you brushed into your hair, bubble chairs, bubble backpacks, robot pets, platform sneakers and sandals, glitter, butterfly clips, lava lamps and glitter lamps, metallic pleather, chunky highlights, iBook clamshell, iMac with the clouds or the flowers, pre-iPod MP3, bucket hats, those tops that were scrunchie, Dickie’s, Steve Madden, those round rattan chairs from Pier 1, zen gardens…
Watching this while wearing my high-neck tank top from 1999 (I was a teen during that time and there are still some pieces of clothing in my closet, I now use them for loungewear).
the y2k aesthetic came right back as of right now from the make up hair metallics even ppl makin music video now like doja cat ,tori Kelly Ariana grande and you have Beyonce on tour renaissance she definitely inspired im glad to see it back us gen z and millennials love it its all over tictok , instagram and more
I remember being a teenager during this time and I loved it! Some Nu-Metal music used this style in their videos. Orgy definitely comes to mind. But somewhere after 9/11 it faded into a more soft beachy type of vibe, which I also loved! Is there a video for that particular time in fashion? Ball bearing necklaces wrapped in hemp or poocashell necklaces?
it kind of makes me sad how excited everyone was about the future compared to now. I feel like we're more into going back in time these days. As someone who was alive during that time, I could really feel the optimism socially too, even if I was young. I think we all subconsciously know that things are going to shit and are probably going to be worse in the future now. Emo shit aside, good video!
This has always been one of my favorite aesthetics. Maybe it's because I first became self-aware during this era, but to this day whenever I see some of its hallmarks I just go "ooooh shiny I like it." Guess it imprinted on my kid brain and never went away. I feel like gorpcore and whatever the hell quiet outdoors is are late 2010s and current riffs on some of this? As usual, fantastic video and thank you for the nostalgia!
I think the reason why people mix up Y2K and mcbling is cause most people still dressed in mcbling fashion which makes sense you wouldn’t throw old clothes away quickly even if they were not in fashion.
Y2K is my faveorite cause I grew up with it and can totally resonate with it. I've watched two of your videos and appreciate how in depth you go with the aesthetics. I will totally will be watching a lot more of them ^__^
Love that some clips of Ayu and Namie Amuro were put in this Also brought back memories of when I used to wear my silver rave pants with a skirt on top in highschool
It would be interesting if you added real life style to these videos. Like how high school students were actually dressing during the period in question. Most of the examples are very theatrical.
i love this! an expansion on this vid about the smaller scale cultural impact would be awesome, and this is an amazing collection of reference points of the time tho. you collected such an A+ music video roll for this :)
My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE interpretation of Y2K is by the singer: Aaliyah Haughton. She had grown from Detroit (Where techno music was developing and greatly popular w/ its more tech oriented and futuristic sound we'd see popular in the late 90's and 2000's) and had represented that in her music both sonically and aesthetically (fashion, visuals, etc.). Her "More Than A Woman" + "We Need A Resolution" music captures it to the T and if I were to brave I'd also reference "Rock The Boat" as a more sleek Coconut Girl pero yo no se. Sonically, I feel like "John Blaze" and "Man Undercover" are my favorite tracks but her whole discography, especially the red album, have always had the same timeless elegance I feel Y2K has.
this video needs to be plastered everywhere!! im so tired of seeing someone label something as y2k and it's a dress paired with jeans or That ashley tisdale red carpet picture
watching these videos of early 2000s fashion makes me think that people in the industry aren't creative anymore, maybe it's just me but all trends now feel boring it's a copy of a copy of a copy, and yes there were ugly trends back in the day too I've seen horrid outfits but everything looked more unique and creative people pushed boundaries and really made history
I got into a little bit of y2k in middle school, but by 8th grade there were protest of sweatshop unfair labor of popular brands and peers from school and activities were anti-corporate or a lot of that stuff was looked on as trashy or inappropriate for whatever responsible thing I was fooling myself thinking I was doing, it worked and now im screwed up almost 40 years old
Y2K Futurism is one of my favorite aesthetics. It's what I wish we had instead of the bland, minimalist aesthetics all of our technology and UIs have today. However, as hypocritical as it may sound, the "revival" of this aesthetic just doesn't feel right to me. Something about it doesn't feel genuine. It doesn't mean the same thing anymore and it feels more like someone wearing a costume of your dead loved one and trying to pretend that they're that person, come back to life. The Y2K aesthetic should be something beautiful, optimistic, creative, shiny, clean and bright, and unfortunately there's nothing about this day and age that really even deserves to be called that. There's nothing good about the 2020s. _There is zero fucking hope here._ Everyone hates each other. Everything's falling apart. The social contract has been shattered on every possible level from employer/employee relationships to male/female relationships, and it's very difficult to picture anything looking or feeling this nice again in the world we live in now. Even if you look past all the financial struggle everyone's dealing with and the whole 'climate apocalypse' situation, the culture we exist in today could never get the Y2K aesthetic right because of how this generation can't help but fuck up everything they get their hands on. The new 'rebooted' Y2K is all too often mixed with the clashing elements of Emo, Grunge and Trap, which, while perfectly fine in their own environments, cause it to seem less like a genuine revival and more like a cynical parody meant to poke a cruel sort of fun at it. There used to be beautiful music and really catchy pop tunes with a sort of hopeful, optimistic innocence that accompanied this aesthetic back when it first debuted. I wouldn't call myself a prude, but I often find myself feeling like one because of how I realize now how I liked how 'clean' it was back then. Today, the aesthetic is mostly associated with a music genre known as "Hyperpop", which I'll admit, I haven't listened to much, but from what little I have heard most of the songs are basically high-pitched dubstep where sarcastically upbeat tunes clash with grating, overblown synth effects and lyrics that are either depressing, despair-ridden lamentations about how the singer either can't feel anything anymore, or is in so much pain that they don't *_want_* to feel anything anymore, and how no matter how many hard drugs they do they still can't escape their misery, OR cringeworthy, comedically explicit ravings filled with girls singing and yelling in fake Valley Girl voices about sex, prostitution, hard drugs, crime and generally the sort of stuff you'd expect from a Trap song. It feels less like a revival and more like someone emptying a garbage can over my childhood. Because even despite all of this, I still can't customize my phone or desktop UI to something Y2K because the corporations that make tech don't want us customizing our stuff anymore. I still have to put up with the fact that the internet is no longer the free and open virtual wonderland it used to be and is now a mostly corporate-controlled husk of its former self where the only sites that matter are the big social media platforms and restrictions on what we can and can't create get tighter and tighter every month or so. The video games are all the same revolving door of blandly "realistic" graphics, watered-down reboots, microtransactions, battle royales and first-person shooters, and while there have been a couple of bright spots like BG3, the likelihood that we'll get something that actually looks unabashedly stylish, positive and pretty anytime soon seems low. And it's not like people try - but for some reason they always come out looking cheap, missing that special... Something. There's just something wrong with today. New-Y2K isn't the same as Old-Y2K. It's too cynical. Too dirty and tainted, fitting for a dirty and tainted decade.
You have summarized alm my thoughts lately on a very detailed and precise comment on a video of my favorite yet unachieveable aesthetic, thank you so much.
@@kyupiangel90 Thanks. Though since I wrote that comment I've noticed there are a few indie artists that seem to actually be doing it right. Dusqk, oooz and SAGE_Music are some examples that come to mind. So not all hope is lost... We just have to make sure the corporations don't get their nasty hands on it.
@@CoriSparx A whole lot of nonsense. Y2k wasnt all that great or amazing. Also the 2000s had their problems aswell the diffrence is that you were young back then so you didnt notice them
An overlooked aspect of Y2K I feel is the influence of Afrofuturism and the prominence of African-American culture. Tying in with the cultural appropriation of the era (which, unfortunately, seems to be a recurring thing with every aesethic of the past century and before), not enough acknowledgement of Black artists tends to not come up in these discussions; which is just unfair and feeds into the general anti-Blackness of the world (not to mention whom the backs of these eras falls upon; workers in the global south being exploited for the technologies of the global north). Do I still enjoy the optimism and sleekness of Y2K? Yes. But like any era, one has acknowledge its darker sides whilst engaging in it.
As a person who lived through these eras and was a teen, I think I'm afraid I have to disagree with hip hop bringing in the cargo pants trend. Firstly military wear was often used in the 60's punk subculture and actual military pants purchased from military surplus stores were worn in the grunge period. Possibly the branded cargo pants had their start in the hip hop subculture?
Did you not see all the hip hop video clips ?!?! I think some of these things were convergent but there is definitely a line to trace from the baggy sportswear looks in early 90s hip hop to a more sleek tech styling of similar pieces closer to the millennium.
the fact people complain about cultural appropriation now really shows how much we went back in time, their culture wasnt mocked at all in y2k designs, but celebrated
y2k futurism is just "y2k" have you not watch the beginning of the video? many people (including you) mistake y2k as "2000s fashion" and y2k is its own futuristic aesthetic
95’ is definitely Post Grunge. And the styles of the 60’s and 70’ (like flares, daisy print, peace signs) were prominent as well. 98’ was definitely the beginning of another era.
@@amandathemystic1828 Yes but 1995 was still 90's despite the fact that it was post Grunge and 1998 was the actual beginning of the Y2K era. But the 90's were very nostalgic about the 70's.
I’ve been saying this for so long! Finally someone that gets that y2k isn’t Paris Hilton, juicy couture and von dutch
I did not realize the '60s future space aesthetic influenced the Y2K look.
Lol finally. I was bewildered about seeing "y2k" next to a bunch of hot pink and the blingy Paris Hilton look. Britney didn't even have that look until her Toxic/Fantasy perfume era, she was rocking all kinds of shiny metallic and space-future motifs before then, just like the aesthetic dictates.
Y2K refers to the year 2000, the start of the new millennium. Wise words from Spongebob, "everything is chrome in the future!" The whole first half of the decade did not look like Mean Girls (2005) y'all 😭
It may seem odd to some, but Disney played a significant role in romanticizing the hopeful optimism of the Space Age. Walt produced numerous short films about space travel and future living. These were aired on ABC as supplementary content to promote Disneyland. The original concepts behind Tomorrowland at Disneyland and EPCOT Center were largely focused on those ideas, some of which lives on today.
And then the Xenon movies on Disney Channel in the late 90s! I wanted that wardrobe so badly. Still do actually.
Y2k is crystal jelly colors, mcbling is bright velvet colors
Also Cyber counterparts to counter culture arrived at this time. Cyber-Goth was a new alternative to the previous darker style which the Matrix was heavily stylized after.
I just realized how much I miss this fashion era, but back then I was too young to use those clothes 😭😭😭
Yeah you kinda had to “be there” to get it
And by be there I mean not be a literal child
You forgot to mention dusky purples and lilacs being a popular color.
Ahh, fashion history. A refreshing fav topic of mine.
mine too
My fond memories of Y2K: scented nail polish, those brushes with hair dye that you brushed into your hair, bubble chairs, bubble backpacks, robot pets, platform sneakers and sandals, glitter, butterfly clips, lava lamps and glitter lamps, metallic pleather, chunky highlights, iBook clamshell, iMac with the clouds or the flowers, pre-iPod MP3, bucket hats, those tops that were scrunchie, Dickie’s, Steve Madden, those round rattan chairs from Pier 1, zen gardens…
I used to wear goggles on my head as a teenager. Sometimes over a bucket hat.
Watching this while wearing my high-neck tank top from 1999 (I was a teen during that time and there are still some pieces of clothing in my closet, I now use them for loungewear).
the y2k aesthetic came right back as of right now from the make up hair metallics even ppl makin music video now like doja cat ,tori Kelly Ariana grande and you have Beyonce on tour renaissance she definitely inspired im glad to see it back us gen z and millennials love it its all over tictok , instagram and more
Thank you for shining a light on Hip Hop and it’s pull on Fashion.
I remember being a teenager during this time and I loved it! Some Nu-Metal music used this style in their videos. Orgy definitely comes to mind. But somewhere after 9/11 it faded into a more soft beachy type of vibe, which I also loved! Is there a video for that particular time in fashion? Ball bearing necklaces wrapped in hemp or poocashell necklaces?
it kind of makes me sad how excited everyone was about the future compared to now. I feel like we're more into going back in time these days. As someone who was alive during that time, I could really feel the optimism socially too, even if I was young. I think we all subconsciously know that things are going to shit and are probably going to be worse in the future now. Emo shit aside, good video!
This has always been one of my favorite aesthetics. Maybe it's because I first became self-aware during this era, but to this day whenever I see some of its hallmarks I just go "ooooh shiny I like it." Guess it imprinted on my kid brain and never went away.
I feel like gorpcore and whatever the hell quiet outdoors is are late 2010s and current riffs on some of this?
As usual, fantastic video and thank you for the nostalgia!
I think the reason why people mix up Y2K and mcbling is cause most people still dressed in mcbling fashion which makes sense you wouldn’t throw old clothes away quickly even if they were not in fashion.
i just bought this really baggy camo pants i'm so excited to look like the people on the tv when i was growing up lol
Y2K is my faveorite cause I grew up with it and can totally resonate with it. I've watched two of your videos and appreciate how in depth you go with the aesthetics. I will totally will be watching a lot more of them ^__^
This is definitely my favorite aesthetic!! I'm glad I get the watch this video again, your narration is very nice!!
thank you! i'm obsessed with this aesthetic
Love that some clips of Ayu and Namie Amuro were put in this Also brought back memories of when I used to wear my silver rave pants with a skirt on top in highschool
It would be interesting if you added real life style to these videos. Like how high school students were actually dressing during the period in question. Most of the examples are very theatrical.
love that idea
i love this! an expansion on this vid about the smaller scale cultural impact would be awesome, and this is an amazing collection of reference points of the time tho. you collected such an A+ music video roll for this :)
god damn this was an awesome analysis of my favourite aesthetic
My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE interpretation of Y2K is by the singer: Aaliyah Haughton. She had grown from Detroit (Where techno music was developing and greatly popular w/ its more tech oriented and futuristic sound we'd see popular in the late 90's and 2000's) and had represented that in her music both sonically and aesthetically (fashion, visuals, etc.). Her "More Than A Woman" + "We Need A Resolution" music captures it to the T and if I were to brave I'd also reference "Rock The Boat" as a more sleek Coconut Girl pero yo no se. Sonically, I feel like "John Blaze" and "Man Undercover" are my favorite tracks but her whole discography, especially the red album, have always had the same timeless elegance I feel Y2K has.
Cool video. It does feel a bit meta to watch a video deconstructing what for me was part of my lived experience in my teens and twenties.
It’s even weirder because the video is made by someone who didn’t live it for people who didn’t live it. It’s funny and also kinda cringey to me.
my favorite aesthetic of all time along with gen x soft club 🌹
Saaaame
I was born on 91 so this aesthetic is imbedded into my soul. The future sure looked bright back then.
Man we really were excited for the new millennium, and have been GREATLY disappointed.
Cool, I love futuristic fashion and accesories❤💙
🪩💿💡🛸⛓️
this video needs to be plastered everywhere!! im so tired of seeing someone label something as y2k and it's a dress paired with jeans or That ashley tisdale red carpet picture
Excellent narration! Will be binge watching the rest of these.
thank you sm!
a lot of white and silver lol
watching these videos of early 2000s fashion makes me think that people in the industry aren't creative anymore, maybe it's just me but all trends now feel boring it's a copy of a copy of a copy, and yes there were ugly trends back in the day too I've seen horrid outfits but everything looked more unique and creative people pushed boundaries and really made history
Almost all trends mentioned in this video came from 60-s. For our grandparents it also was lazy and “nothing new” 😁
Recycling
fashion recycles every 20-30 years so
Really luv the Y2K aesthetics including Low Rise Jeans 😊
Just discovered your page and I have been enjoying your videos! It’s also been a trip to relive memories from the time periods you are covering 😂
I got into a little bit of y2k in middle school, but by 8th grade there were protest of sweatshop unfair labor of popular brands and peers from school and activities were anti-corporate or a lot of that stuff was looked on as trashy or inappropriate for whatever responsible thing I was fooling myself thinking I was doing, it worked and now im screwed up almost 40 years old
Y2K Futurism is one of my favorite aesthetics. It's what I wish we had instead of the bland, minimalist aesthetics all of our technology and UIs have today. However, as hypocritical as it may sound, the "revival" of this aesthetic just doesn't feel right to me. Something about it doesn't feel genuine. It doesn't mean the same thing anymore and it feels more like someone wearing a costume of your dead loved one and trying to pretend that they're that person, come back to life.
The Y2K aesthetic should be something beautiful, optimistic, creative, shiny, clean and bright, and unfortunately there's nothing about this day and age that really even deserves to be called that. There's nothing good about the 2020s. _There is zero fucking hope here._ Everyone hates each other. Everything's falling apart. The social contract has been shattered on every possible level from employer/employee relationships to male/female relationships, and it's very difficult to picture anything looking or feeling this nice again in the world we live in now.
Even if you look past all the financial struggle everyone's dealing with and the whole 'climate apocalypse' situation, the culture we exist in today could never get the Y2K aesthetic right because of how this generation can't help but fuck up everything they get their hands on. The new 'rebooted' Y2K is all too often mixed with the clashing elements of Emo, Grunge and Trap, which, while perfectly fine in their own environments, cause it to seem less like a genuine revival and more like a cynical parody meant to poke a cruel sort of fun at it. There used to be beautiful music and really catchy pop tunes with a sort of hopeful, optimistic innocence that accompanied this aesthetic back when it first debuted. I wouldn't call myself a prude, but I often find myself feeling like one because of how I realize now how I liked how 'clean' it was back then. Today, the aesthetic is mostly associated with a music genre known as "Hyperpop", which I'll admit, I haven't listened to much, but from what little I have heard most of the songs are basically high-pitched dubstep where sarcastically upbeat tunes clash with grating, overblown synth effects and lyrics that are either depressing, despair-ridden lamentations about how the singer either can't feel anything anymore, or is in so much pain that they don't *_want_* to feel anything anymore, and how no matter how many hard drugs they do they still can't escape their misery, OR cringeworthy, comedically explicit ravings filled with girls singing and yelling in fake Valley Girl voices about sex, prostitution, hard drugs, crime and generally the sort of stuff you'd expect from a Trap song.
It feels less like a revival and more like someone emptying a garbage can over my childhood. Because even despite all of this, I still can't customize my phone or desktop UI to something Y2K because the corporations that make tech don't want us customizing our stuff anymore. I still have to put up with the fact that the internet is no longer the free and open virtual wonderland it used to be and is now a mostly corporate-controlled husk of its former self where the only sites that matter are the big social media platforms and restrictions on what we can and can't create get tighter and tighter every month or so. The video games are all the same revolving door of blandly "realistic" graphics, watered-down reboots, microtransactions, battle royales and first-person shooters, and while there have been a couple of bright spots like BG3, the likelihood that we'll get something that actually looks unabashedly stylish, positive and pretty anytime soon seems low. And it's not like people try - but for some reason they always come out looking cheap, missing that special... Something.
There's just something wrong with today. New-Y2K isn't the same as Old-Y2K. It's too cynical. Too dirty and tainted, fitting for a dirty and tainted decade.
this got me so emotional for some reason. thank you so much for taking the time to write something so thoughtful. loved reading this
You have summarized alm my thoughts lately on a very detailed and precise comment on a video of my favorite yet unachieveable aesthetic, thank you so much.
@@kyupiangel90 Thanks. Though since I wrote that comment I've noticed there are a few indie artists that seem to actually be doing it right. Dusqk, oooz and SAGE_Music are some examples that come to mind. So not all hope is lost... We just have to make sure the corporations don't get their nasty hands on it.
@@CoriSparx A whole lot of nonsense. Y2k wasnt all that great or amazing. Also the 2000s had their problems aswell the diffrence is that you were young back then so you didnt notice them
Check out the band Planet 1999
Yeeees! This is Y2K! I feel soo nostalgic 😍
Great video!!! I love the bubbly tecnology. I remember those ads
the long leather jacket was popular before the matrix
Where's Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century!!
This!!
Love this aesthetic! 🖤
i love the androgyny of the y2k aesthetic
LOVE ALL YOUR VIDEOS. Learning - and reminiscing - so much
I'm binging all your vids now. I love topics on aesthetics. What would you categorize whats been happening in fashion from 2016-now?
21:40 not me being a regular brazilian finding a braziliam commercial in the wild lol
my favorite topic
I love this aesthetic, oakley watches are so cool
4:45 any idea what music video/song this is for? I feel like I've seen it before, being an 90s kid, but I can't remember what it is
Aqua - Cartoon heroes
*trying to cure my bipolar type 2-depression with nostalgia
I loveeee all the visualsss in this video can u plzzz tell me all the refrences of these plzzz and also luvv your video ❤❤❤❤
what about ring watches?! (mini watches for fingers) we also wore Hawaiian shirts like coconut girl style🤣
Actually, Y2K aesthetic didn't start to decline in 2001, it was popular up to like 2005, then Frutiger Aero was created
I think gen x soft club came before, or they were concurrent
An overlooked aspect of Y2K I feel is the influence of Afrofuturism and the prominence of African-American culture. Tying in with the cultural appropriation of the era (which, unfortunately, seems to be a recurring thing with every aesethic of the past century and before), not enough acknowledgement of Black artists tends to not come up in these discussions; which is just unfair and feeds into the general anti-Blackness of the world (not to mention whom the backs of these eras falls upon; workers in the global south being exploited for the technologies of the global north).
Do I still enjoy the optimism and sleekness of Y2K? Yes. But like any era, one has acknowledge its darker sides whilst engaging in it.
You sure like the word utilitarian haha
❤❤❤
As a person who lived through these eras and was a teen, I think I'm afraid I have to disagree with hip hop bringing in the cargo pants trend. Firstly military wear was often used in the 60's punk subculture and actual military pants purchased from military surplus stores were worn in the grunge period. Possibly the branded cargo pants had their start in the hip hop subculture?
While grunge did introduce cargo pants, they were made mainstream thanks to hip-hop.
Did you not see all the hip hop video clips ?!?! I think some of these things were convergent but there is definitely a line to trace from the baggy sportswear looks in early 90s hip hop to a more sleek tech styling of similar pieces closer to the millennium.
😂 did anyone know that in 2020 digital gas pumps also failed.😂
the fact people complain about cultural appropriation now really shows how much we went back in time, their culture wasnt mocked at all in y2k designs, but celebrated
People complain about cultural appropriation because those the items that were appropriated were used as props.
More like a futuristic fruitopia.
this is y2k futurism.....not just y2k
y2k futurism is just "y2k" have you not watch the beginning of the video? many people (including you) mistake y2k as "2000s fashion" and y2k is its own futuristic aesthetic
Yall kids are so weird
is this not y3k?
No??
y3k is literally y2k but for this generation and looking into the technology of today such as how powerful ai is now
That's incorrect because the Y2K era started in 1998 and ended in 2002. 1995 was strictly 1990's so WTH are you talking about?
Delete this comment
@@Physchwo
Why?
95’ is definitely Post Grunge. And the styles of the 60’s and 70’ (like flares, daisy print, peace signs) were prominent as well. 98’ was definitely the beginning of another era.
@@amandathemystic1828 Yes but 1995 was still 90's despite the fact that it was post Grunge and 1998 was the actual beginning of the Y2K era. But the 90's were very nostalgic about the 70's.
Yall call it "Y2K"...those who know, call it "Frutigar Aero"...
those are two different aesthetics
Honestly I know that they are different, but that does NOT stop me from loving BOTH of those aesthetics!!!
Fruitiger aero is a completely different aesthetic