’90s fashion still in style
Having survived ’90s fashion, student J. Anson said he looks back and wonders when the crap hit the fan.
“I think the ’90s were coming back from the depressing era of the ’80s,” Anson, a senior in history and English said. “That’s when fashion just really hit the crap fan or whatever you want to call it. I really think the ’90s was just coming back from the ultimate low. The ’70s was pretty bad and ’80s just hit rock bottom.”
Even though Anson, a 1999 high school graduate, said the Rachel haircut from Friends was hot in its time, ’90s fashion in general needed a makeover.
“The crappier you look, the better – the more attractive you were.” Anson said. “The worst fashion was baggy pants. Kids had trouble walking, literally, because the pants were just so big.
“That shows you how bad it was ’cause I can’t remember any (’90s) fashion that I really liked,” he said.
Jacoba Mendelkow, a graduate student in American studies, also said the worst fashion from the ’90s was baggy, sloppy pants most commonly referred to as JNCO jeans.
“I was just witness,” she said.
Although overalls were often just as sloppy, Mendelkow said she admits to loving overalls during the ’90s. With her own pair of white and blue striped overalls with vertical stripes all the way down them, Mendelkow said she even had an engineer hat made of the same material to help accessorize the outfit.
“Looking back, those were the worst thing,” she said. “They make you look sloppy, like you escaped from a farm.”
Being comfortable during the ’90s, however, is what Mendelkow said was important, although that does not ring true in today’s fashion.
“Everything was comfortable except for the Doc Martens,” Mendelkow, a 1999 high school graduate, said. “They were so heavy I think I still have scars on the top of my feet because you could never break them in.”
Cameron Barratt, a junior in journalism, also said the baggy pants looked “terrible” and “circus-ish.” A common thing Barratt said he remembers is the number of people who would bleach their hair during high school, including himself.
Hairstyles in the ’90s ranged from bleached hair, perms and even the mullet. Sarah Swenson, a freshman in broadcast journalism and theatre, said she suffered the shag cut in the early years of the ’90s. Between the summer of kindergarten and first grade, Swenson said her mom decided to “experiment” by taking her to get her first shag haircut.
“I got it done and I just bawled after,” Swenson said. “I was like, Mom I look like a boy. It took an hour to convince me I didn’t.
“Later that day we went to Albertson’s and we were in the aisle,” Swenson said. “This old lady was coming so I moved my cart out of the way and she turned to me and goes, ‘Thank you, son.’ And the tears just came. ‘Mom, she thinks I’m a boy.’
“This is like Screech’s hairdo that I had,” Swenson said. “It’s sad cause I’m a girl and no one wanted to be a Screech.”
Her shag cut stayed for three years and Swenson said she played more with her hair by giving it perms for five years. Once her hair grew out, however, Swenson said she was introduced to banana clips, which created what she calls “Mohawk ponytails”.
“My neighbor’s sister was on the drill team at the high school,” Swenson, a 2006 high school graduate, said. “I remember she had different drawers of scrunchies and one drawer had banana clips, and I was like, ‘Oooh, what’s that?'”
The T.V. show “Saved by the Bell” is what Swenson said taught her which clothes looked cool.
“I remember Kelly looking cool with off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, sport bra straps sticking out, and leggings with stirrups,” she said. “I really thought that’s what high school was.”
Tonnie Dixon, a junior in journalism, said she remembers getting a pair of roller skates for Christmas in 1990 and admitting that her pants she wore that day may as well have been a backdrop for the skates.
“(My pants) looked like classic skating carpet,” Dixon said. “I remember wearing that outfit. I was obsessed. Once I found an outfit I liked, I would wear it every day. I get attached to outfits.”
To help accessorize her favorite outfits, Dixon said she was also attached to the classic elaborate hair bow from the ’90s.
“I loved the big bows. I’ll still dress my kids in huge bows,” Dixon said. “Stick a bow in and it dresses you up a whole bunch”
One thing Dixon said she will not allow her kids to suffer through, however, are big bangs.
“The bangs, I’m sad that they’re coming back in style ’cause I don’t really love them,” she said. “I used to curl them, well, split them in half and curl some up and some down. They were huge. I think it just takes up your whole face. Not like the bows didn’t, but the bangs were awful.”
Ty Kyriopoulos, a senior in international studies and history, said he misses ’90s bowl haircuts the most, but he thinks the worst fashion, besides crew socks, was braided leather belts.
“They’re hideous, but I sill wore them cause it’s all you could get,” Kyriopoulous, a 2000 high school graduate, said.
Blake Ure, a junior in American studies, said his personal opinion of the worst ’90s fashion was girls wearing a plaid sweater vest complete with big Doc Marten shoes. Ure said he called them “military marching combat mommas.” Going back to the early ’90s, Ure said the worst fashion for guys was neon clothing.
“Neon for guys. Whoever came up with an idea of neon, it was a bad idea,” Ure said.