If one moment sums up early-2000s fashion, it was February 2000: Jennifer Lopez wore a chiffon Versace dress to the 42nd Grammy Awards, and the world was never the same. With a neckline that plunged all the way below her belly button, the world was in a tizzy— but how did it stay on? And what did it look like from the side? Everyone wanted to see the dress ! So much so that it inspired the idea of Google Image Search. And so began a decade of digital fashion consumption.
Dubbed the aughts and the naughts (the former used in the US, the latter in the UK), the decade was ruled by celebrity: a proliferation of reality TV , blogs filled with paparazzi shots, and 2006’s Twitter, which gave fans a front-row seat into the lives and musings of their favorite celebrities—often without a publicist’s intervention. Regarding mainstream fashion, it was a decade of taste so bad it was almost good— almost . Think Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in matching denim getups , Juicy Couture sweatsuits galore, Von Dutch trucker hats, and Ed Hardy tattoo tees.
On the runways, logomania ruled, and designers sexed it up with Tom Ford, Donatella Versace, Roberto Cavalli, and Hervé Léger infusing heady doses of sultry into their collections. A whirlwind look back at the in-your-face trends of early-2000s fashion, below. If eyes are the window to the soul, by the time the 2000s rolled around so too were handbags.
Thanks in part to a certain Ms. Carrie Bradshaw , bags became the focal .
