Board of Shame: How our style has changed since 16 years
We write a lot about the style and spirit of the time, and also we love to look back into the past - so we are well aware that everything that is fashionable after a while can terrify us, and then suddenly come back. So, right now in the world there is a rise in fashion for the style of the late 90s - early 2000s. To make sure of this, it is enough to look at the collections of the next year, Christopher Kane, Ashish, Miu Miu, Moschino or Alexander Wang, and recall our column about the return of fashion to vulgarity. Magazine stylists from Love to November also found a new, ironic source of inspiration - they work with kitsch elements of 2000s style like gold, leopard, fishnet tights and curly hairstyles.
Indulging in memories of that era, you can, of course, pick up archives from the red tracks and start discussing outfits in which Kate Winslet or the Spice Girls went out to the public in the 90s or 2000s. But we believe that one of the most important human qualities is self-irony. Therefore, sweating with cold sweat, we obtained from our own archives photographs of ten or even eighteen years old, which can be used to follow how our taste and mood evolved in the country, and the fashion and assortment in stores changed.
Olesya Iva
Editor section "Style"
How many can remember, I liked to dress up. Being both an extrovert and an introvert, I rushed from one extreme to another. The main thing was the dependence of my style on the music in the player. So, in the late 90s - early 2000s, I liked black T-shirts and Kurt Cobain, as well as sexy dresses from Kylie Minogue and Spice Girls, along with caps, platforms and wide pants in the manner of TLC and Limp Bizkit. Typically, for me 12-14 years were flared trousers, platforms, crop tops, strands, painted with colored mascara (blue or red), thick bangs. I didn’t dye my hair, but I experimented with the gel: sometimes I twisted it into dreadlocks, then I wove pigtails. Since childhood, I liked to create a certain image for myself and work it through to the end. In addition to the MTV clips, inspiration from the Cool magazines, fashion magazines from Yes and ELLE Girl served as sources of inspiration. All things, of course, were bought on the market. At that time, the main thing in Petersburg was the Apraksin Dvor. There you could find absolutely everything. I remember everything seemed terribly expensive. Mom tried to inculcate the fashion of the 80s: I remember that colorful jeans-bananas, shortened oversize jackets from denim aroused wild interest. At the same time, at twelve, I listened endlessly to the Radiohead album "Kid A" and often went sad with a CD player in something purple.
In the gymnasium where I studied, there was a strict form, but the highest manifestation of fashion among high school students at sixteen for some reason was an orange face from a tanning salon or powder, stockings boots (which the head teachers were forced to take off), cutouts and straziki. So dressed the coolest girls in school. I think the concepts of relevance and basic wardrobe then did not exist. I do not even know what saved me from painting my hair in a radical blond. In short, luxury and kitsch were in fashion. However, this is also evident from the covers of the Russian gloss of the mid-2000s, with take-out "How to wear pink: short dresses and yellow shoes." The funny thing is, the guys liked it, but someone still likes it. Now it surprises me why young girls with such a furious desire wanted to look like 35+, but the fact remains. They went to R'n'B-parties and read glossy magazines. In St. Petersburg, fashion for the luxury of the mid-2000s developed along with the popularity of Motivi stores, an assortment of fashion houses in Petrogradka, the growth of boutiques in the city from Versace to Butterfly.
A completely separate topic - the influence of St. Petersburg raves on my style, where you put on more bright neon, feathers and went to hang out until 9 in the morning. Inspired by the clips of Miss Kittin, Green Velvet, Fisherspooner. By the way, in 2004, my dad and I traveled to China and brought a ton of strange clothes just for parties. The choice in Russia was stingy, and the first mass-markets appeared only in 2006. From 2004 to 2007, I wore all this wildly multi-colored clothing from Beijing and Shanghai shopping centers. I remember also favorites were ripped jeans and cropped top in sequins from Bulgaria, and my favorite hairstyle was loose hair and pinned back in the center. Another source of my outfits was my aunt, who sewed for me mostly jackets made of luxurious fabrics like velvet. At the same time, I bought somewhere a cross with stones and wore it constantly with a dramatic (as it seemed to me) velvet top. I think this was the second after the Radiohead album "Kid A" manifestation of occult and melancholy.
In 2006, the first Topshop with the Kate Moss collection opened, eclipsing the assortment of stores such as Jennifer. In 2007, LAM appeared and a bunch of foreign sites and the press - as a conclusion, the desire to quickly forget about the former luxury. I already worked at the university and spent the accumulated salary on things and travels. In 2009, she traveled to London, cut off her car, returned her natural paleness, began saving money for dresses from the St. Petersburg store Zing (a relative of the UK Style UK), where they collected Scandinavian, British and French brands, collect hats, buy vintage dresses and fur coats, go round on European music festivals. While traveling, I tried to absorb everything that I saw on the streets. Thus, a series of photographs appeared: “How Olesya imagines the style of cities in the late 2000s”: London — like a jacket and a checker; Parisian chic — like a coat, robe and a beret.
In 2010, I finally switched to rock like Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson and changed into mostly black clothes, painted my lips in maroon color and bought things like a leopard coat and Cossacks. Parents and brother sincerely clarified: "Are you a goth now?" This period ended with anarchy, when in 2012 I dyed hair ends purple and then yellow and switched to cold wave and groups like Tropic of Cancer and A Place To Bury Strangers, began to whiten my face and not get out of the black body, which more than anything I still love.
Although at the age of 17 a thick “Fashion Encyclopedia” appeared on the table, cinema and subcultural fashion had a strong influence on me. Watching the French new wave, I could not get out of a trench coat for half a year, reviewing “24 Hour Party People” - join the disco pants of American Apparel, and after listening to a couple of Crystal Castles tracks, cut oneself off my own car, put on a latex black skirt and go out. Now in ordinary life, I dress quite simply and effortlessly. Although the event like to dress up. Every six months, I buy something for myself, and then after much deliberation and if I am sure that I will wear the thing. At the same time, I know myself well: of things I prefer comfort, black color, something rough and something sexy. To the gothic sport was added, in the player - an old hip-hop mixed with Kim Gordon. Half of the wardrobe today consists of sneakers, denim and sexy dresses, as well as black clothes and heavy boots. I do not exclude that in another ten years I will look at the photos of 2014-2015 and think "WTF for Alexander Wang and Nazir Mazhar?".
Lyuba Kozorezova
photo editor
I was born and raised in Dubna, a small town near Moscow. My mother worked in Moscow, and I lived with my grandmother, so up to fourteen, or even fifteen years, I did not have to answer for my wardrobe: what I bought was what I wore. From that time, I clearly remember only my passion for old things. I often took sweaters and skirts from my grandmother. True, my classmates did not check this out, but then I was much wiser and didn’t really think about someone else’s opinion. For the rest, she dressed like an ordinary teenager: jeans with scuffs, tops on thin straps plus moccasins are all my sins
In the first years of university, I suddenly fell in love with everything feminine. As soon as I got a job, I bought myself a bag instead of a backpack, a blouse, earrings and for some reason high conversions. They seemed to me the coolest shoes in the world, especially white ones. For several years in a row, I managed to mix old sweaters, lace, flowered things, wide belts, sweatshirts, knee-high boots, ankle boots and sneakers. She calmed down to the last courses and even dressed well for graduation, except for ballet flats with flowers.
For a year of studying in London, I was too far from going to the charity shops. And along with really cool things like a classic midi skirt and a vintage jacket, TopShop bought a Dead Existence group shirt, two nearly identical blue sweaters, a fisherman's jacket, and a t-shirt dress that you can feel comfortable wearing at home, and in that condition when the empty packaging is under the yogurt in the room does not seem to be something scary, but the crumbs on the sheet are a given, and something that my Indian girlfriend called the version of chervani is a jacket like the men in India wear it. In general, nothing good.
Returning home with two suitcases of things instead of one, I think I understood everything about myself and now I try to stay away from the stores. I buy everything gray, black and dark blue. Sometimes, of course, my eyes glaze over, and I bring home a strange-looking polyester jacket, which I then look at in bewilderment in the morning.
Katya Starostina
photo editor
I remember well how, at the age of 11, I proudly stated to my mother that I had matured and now, for my birthday, I want not just another doll, but new jeans. However, a conscious attitude to the choice of clothing came much later. In the sixth class, I first went to China with my grandmother, where for unknown reasons, my choice fell on high conversions, a swamp park and a bag over my shoulder with a pocket in the form of a skeleton. This first conscious bow complemented by massive sunglasses.
Then there was the fascination for vintage: plates, polaroids, abandoned buildings, grandmother’s prints in a small flower. The most interesting thing in this whole girl-style story is brilliant transparent tights. Judging by the photos, I changed them to black only closer to the tenth grade, before that it seemed to me completely unnatural that my legs would differ in color from the rest of the body parts. At the same time, I was not at all embarrassed by the fact that with this toning and shine they look more like dentures. At that time I was actively buying things in Bershka, Zara, Terranova. She painted her lips with foundation and occasionally let her eyes down. Around 2009, I discovered Topshop. The first purchase - shorts with a print of the American flag. All is good, but I only show them, leaning on a rusty lighter without wheels.
In general, at that moment, among my peers, there was a craze for flags of English-speaking countries: earrings, pendants, covers on the phone. The pride in my wardrobe was a T-shirt with a sequin print. In the eleventh grade, it seems, the peak of my "femininity" comes: I sew fur to the collar, wear mini-dresses (good black tights), ankle boots and shoulder bags. In this free time I listen to hip-hop and skate around the area. Honestly, already in the last years of school I really wanted to dress in some kind of Kixbox, but there was no money for all this. Then I first discovered the second. My first purchase was Levi's high-waisted light blue jeans and a men's T-shirt with an abbreviation of some New Zealand school. Since then, second-hand items have been one of the foundations of my wardrobe.
I think my style changed significantly when I cut off my hair in the second year of university. Many things looked better, and I became bolder in choosing. Now I like above all the simplicity and quality. I like to combine different textures and pay great attention to materials. I would like to learn how to sew well and do something like Baserange, LAAIN or Dress Up by Stephanie Downey.
Anya Schemeleva-Konovalenko
designer
My parents thought that they should not tell the child what to wear. When I was five years old, my mother took me to Benetton and offered to choose for myself what I like. The choice fell on a bright-green sweatshirt with a penguin, which, it seems, I wore without removing. When I was thirteen years old, I was dragged by Avril Lavigne, began to make up, read ELLE Girl magazine and asked my mother's friend to sew me a pink tulle skirt, which I wore with high turquoise sneakers and a pink T-shirt. At fifteen, the style icon for me was Casey from "Skins" ("The Milkworms") and Amy Winehouse. So I pierced my upper lip, cut off my bangs and drew massive arrows, putting on some crazy purple skinny and acid pink jacket, black jeans and a shirt, but with leopard ballet shoes. In the eleventh grade, I became feminine, took off the piercing, started wearing heels and sandals on the platform, which my father called artificial limbs. But after entering the institute, a stage in life began, which I ironically call the "London style". Then I heard Babyshambles and The Last Shadow Puppets, wore ultramarine brogues. In the second and third year, the period of vintage coats like "Gangster Petersburg" and dresses in the spirit of "Mad Men" came. Well, in the last courses I was limited to classic coats, T-shirts, turtlenecks, simple jeans and brogues in the spirit of Charlotte Gainsbourg. Now that I’m twenty-two, I put on almost all black, wear a ring in my nose, black patent leather chelsea Dr. Martens, I love fishnet tights, high-waisted leather skirts and skinny, crop tops and mom jeans. So if you open my closet, you can see that 90% are black things, the remaining 10% are white and one is light green neoprene skirt, in which I look like a tulip.
Sasha Savina
news editor
Up to twenty years I was not interested in fashion trends: I simply chose those things that I liked, and very rarely thought about whether they were combined with each other. Since childhood, my style was also influenced by an aunt who lives in England and has a good taste and talent to select in person the things that are perfectly on you. She brought clothes that were not in Moscow - so Topshop, H & M and Gap appeared in my wardrobe quite early. But with an independent choice of clothes and the ability to combine things it was more difficult, alas. I was a typical geek and seemed to sincerely believe that being smart and dressing well was incompatible.
Since school, I had periods when there were many things of the same color — green, brown, or blue — in my wardrobe. Already at the institute (although this is not very noticeable in the photographs), I fell in love with cardigans and gray sweaters for a long time and dressed in such a way that my casual clothes reminded me rather of school uniforms. I loved things in the peas and with prints in the form of small images of animals, to which my mother often said that I dress like a schoolgirl.
I remember well when everything changed: it was in the summer of 2011, I had a rather unfortunate period of life. One morning, I woke up and realized that I wanted to change something in my style - in the end I bought bright orange trousers and a vest, which I would hardly ever have worn together or thought of myself. Then there was a long period of dresses in the style of the 60s and collars. Now I began to dress easier, I stopped loving long earrings and realized that the elegant thing does not necessarily mean sparkles. While buying a dress that resembles a third-grader’s or an old woman’s outfit, I’m still drawn.
Masha Vorslav
beauty section editor
I love it when everything is beautiful, and even as a child, pink T-shirts with butterflies and flowers hurt me - and since most manufacturers thought about zero clothes for girls, my mother and I bought every thing for a long time and hard. And although I seem to have strict selection criteria (no flax, pink, maiden paraphernalia, moccasins), the wardrobe, as I see now, was a complete slag. Surprisingly, the combination of a coat with small polka dots, Grandma's - where without vintage - a red bag and a shoe, personally painted with watermelons, seemed to me supreme.
I have never been fond of subcultures, but for a while I terribly liked skinny emo-boys with eyes over and skaters - although I carefully hid this behind a snob-like facial expression, then adhered for a long time. However, this did not affect my appearance: most of my life I was a very plump and contented child, then I became a thin, gloomy teenager and an overly strict girl.
At the university, we didn’t have a uniform, but in the first courses I guessed that I was going on jackets and other official clothes, so I dressed like an average office worker: a lot of dark blue, simple jeans and pants, blouses, voluminous scarf, dresses. However, after she received a shake on the 12-centimeter heels, she did not climb onto the studs for a long time.
At about the third year, in 2011, I strongly fell in love with red lipstick and went with it every day. It seems to me that at that time I looked most alive: I wore colored svishoty, checkered, their mother, shirts, leather jacket, “vayfarery” - in a word, it turned out not to differ from people from photo reports of the “Poster” picnic. Actually, I thought then that clothing is very important; all good-looking people seemed to me beautiful in their entirety, and I confess that I had dismissed it not so long ago. It’s not that I don’t pay attention to the appearance now - I’ll also pay attention, but I learned to perceive the oddities and peculiarities of others as attractive and interesting features. I am ashamed to admit that before any roughness irritated and fueled snobbery, so I am very glad that I let it go.
In the last courses I began to wear laconic and comfortable things more often, and a year and a half ago I finally settled in "unfeminine" sweatshirts, sweatshirts and "nikes." В общем-то, за это время самая большая альтерация внешности касалась величины жопы и всего к ней прилагающегося (если не считать ироничных вкраплений вроде огромной розовой толстовки-зефирины и футболки с десятками котов). Зато мне стало интересно придумывать макияж, так что этим летом я ходила с фиолетовыми бровями, желтыми губами, серебряными руками, розовыми линзами и всем таким. Черный - до сих пор самый комфортный для меня цвет, хотя почти все думают, что он мрачный и стремятся приписать его каким-то внутренним проблемам или субкультуре ("ты что, гот?"). Раньше я довольно часто слышала от семьи и друзей пожелания "одеться уже по-нормальному и сделать лицо попроще"; такие замечания мне видятся по меньшей мере невежливыми.It’s a banal idea, but everyone has his own visual and not very reason to wear what he wears, and trying to implant concepts to a person that have been formed outside of him is at least ineffective and sometimes harmful. It seems to me terribly interesting to watch how others around you themselves change, because we are all our largest projects.
Dasha Tatarkova
Editor section "Entertainment"
I still could not find the most monstrous photos of the institute - they were all buried in a closed group in VK, where I can not get. Looking at those photos that I found, everything was bad, but not too much - there were large earrings from Accessorize and Claire's, there was a strange desire to put on as many flowers as possible. I remember any influences only after I entered the institute, and I want to forget my school years like a nightmare. At my fifteen, it was very fashionable to order from the OTTO catalog, from where I had a moronic pink cropped sweater, from which I was delighted. Heels, what they looked like at that time, I hated, and my go-to-thing was jeans — that never changed.
I love clothes, but my wardrobe is formed from two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, I could live on the rations of blue Livays and white T-shirts, on the other - I really like sweaters, preferably with a huge cat and the words “MEOW WOW”. In part, I buy things, impressed with the wardrobe of my favorite character (Detective Robin Griffin made me love ultra lightweight down jackets), or as part of some kind of hobby (mostly Japan, of course), so there were three options for how I looked -bomzh, Japanese homeless and stylish homeless. I don’t really like the way I look at all: I don’t have enough money or courage. Here also contributed to the period of manic obsession with seconds, after which there are still huge bags of clothes, which even it is not clear where you can give.
The mass market influenced by itself: when I seemed to be sixteen, Topshop appeared, so all the clothes were more or less from there; On trips to England, I lived in Primark, and, it is terrible to say, the endless multi-colored long sleeps from there would never end, although I had long since written them off to a dacha or distributed them. With Japan, various oversay-clothes came into the wardrobe, with indie music - criminally narrow skinny and a risky hairstyle, my hair in general changed much more often than styles. A couple of years ago, at the festival, I pulled off to the fullest, trying on all the clichés of the festival fashion, but now I'm tired of everything. Now I just want minimalism: Uniqlo for every day, Monki for holidays, slightly more expensive steeples for centuries.
Katya Birger
chief editor
While we were doing this material, we understood two things as a whole. First, absolutely all the years from seventeen to twenty-one were striving and — worst of all — looked ten years older. Gorgeous styles, bold experiments with hair color (hello to blondes and, as one familiar hairdresser put it, fans of shade "red cockroach"), multi-layered makeup and outfits that even our mothers would envy. Secondly, until the mid-2000s, there was no place to dress, except in the markets. I grew up in a gated town in Siberia, so I had no trendy reference points except for the MTV Russia channel that just appeared and girls' magazines like Cool Girl. They wriggled out with girlfriends as best they could: velvet pants were bought in men's stores, short wooden necklaces were collected by the neck themselves, and I bought a T-shirt with a logo from a photograph for 2000 in the main children's store in the town of Malysh. In parallel, we went with our parents to Novosibirsk to the main Chinese market of Siberia: there one could get dressed from head to toe, and at the same time buy a Swedish wall, a double boiler, a carpet and fancy garlic dressing. Less than 4-5 hours to spend on the market was meaningless, even during this time it could not be investigated in half.
In high school and first-year uni, I adored second-hand. The things bought there were often customized: for example, echoing Denis Simachev, she sewed a red sequin on a “USSR” t-shirt. At the same time, it was fashionable in my company to sew things to order, the phones of local seamstresses passed from hand to hand. I was inspired not only by television, but also, for example, by Om magazine, which Pochta Rossii delivered to my outback approximately two months late. I remember reading there something about vintage and for a long time I tried to understand what it was all about. A few years later, I had a similar question: what is indie? Then jeans + a t-shirt became my most popular outfit, and on top they would have to. Looking at these photos today, I very much regret that at that time no one explained to me normally that you shouldn’t buy T-shirts and blouses that are smaller than the required size.
With the move to Moscow at the end of the 2000s, I began to wear more dresses, I again fell in love with shirts and shirt dresses too! I still sincerely rejoice when it turns out to buy a bunch of clothes for reasonable money in some Zara. Jeans remained for me the most proven option for pants, although I sincerely want to find a replacement for them. I almost never experiment with style (and I’m not sure that I have one at all), because I just can’t muster my strength and pick up new, meaningful outfits. Well, to be honest, at fifteen, I could get on anything I wanted, because I thought that was so cool. By twenty-eight courage in me diminished, so make up your lips with bright lipstick - this is perhaps the most daring feat for which I am ready.
Olya Strakhovskaya
Chief Editor
In the mid-90s, there was especially no place to dress - the residual spirit of the Luzhniki clothing market and the first second-hand were still in the air; fashion asked NafNaf and Kookaï, just appeared Benetton and Sasch. At my school I was already in a terrible honor of grunge, so I wore an overcoat of the American army, donated by a friend, sweeping skirts to the floor and my mother's jackets, and also dreamed of Dr. shoes. Martens who have been to more fancy classmates. We learned about fashion exclusively from the magazines "Ptyuch" and "Om". In '96, I first traveled abroad, to Vienna - a model, God forgive me, the hairdresser Sergey Zverev, and I spent some of my first earned $ 300, as I thought, with the mind: bringing out five Pulp CDs, synthetic flares Stretch vyrviglaz-orange, fuchsia-colored lycra undershirt with a painted yellow light bulb and the words "Light Generation" and a beautiful linen dress for mom. Looking at the photo from there is now touching, fun and a little scary. In the photo from 1996, I was already in Italy, where I first bought Valentino blue mom-jeans: a set with a men's shirt, ankom on a leather strap and suede sabots on a wild platform gave the most amazing combination of masculinity and femininity typical of the era. Amazingly, by the end of the 90s, things not for millions could be found not only on trips. For example, I did not have martinses, but there was their white lacquer imitation of Lagerfeld with silver laces and the same stitches on the sole, bought at the Crocus shop at the Stoleshnikov corner - I, of course, suffered that it was a little wrong. But in combination with bright yellow Mustang jeans and a fluffy lilac sweater above the navel (crop-top? Not heard), it worked. In addition, not far from the cinema "Udarnik" there was some luxurious discount, where you could put a total Fendi bow with logos from head to toe for reasonable money - which I, not knowing the sense of proportion, did. I am also proud to be ahead of the fashion to wear feminine outfits with sneakers, to the horror of those around me, boldly combining the translucent black and purple lace combination of Emanuel Ungaro with the crosshairs in the same range. In the early 2000s, no one dreamed of a ubiquitous mass-market in Russia, but it was already accepted to dress up: Diesel, Dsquared, Replay and Miss Sixty were considered to be the level. But basically the ball rules hell no name. I had a boyfriend who lived in Australia for a long time and regularly went there, so along with him came suitcases of rags to me - for the most part highly doubtful (I remember a deuce from a mini-skirt and black leather jackets "under the python" of bright pink color, which Jeremy Scott would hang himself on envy). But miracles also happened - for example, a truly cool set of an unknown Australian designer made from an asymmetrical gray skirt, a white starched top with a medieval collar, an architectural bolero and a strange black scarf, which now would pass under the category of high-tech futuristic things. In this outfit, I even caught a compliment of Gavin Rossdale on the sidelines of MTV VMA. The man who raised this scarf on the floor of the Strelka and pocketed it last year is not a good one. I also remember my obsession with the Dutch neo-hippy brand People of the Labyrinths with handmade prints, which I still wear at home until nobody sees. The night of 2004 to 2005 was a symbolic end of the era: I celebrated her in a pseudo-laced Karen Millen lace dress (thanks, it was something to wear on Halloween this year), wearing a shawl and panda make-up on it. It’s amazing that I loved The Libertines and The Strokes, but it didn’t reflect on my appearance. Then a completely different life began, and by 2007 I was definitely determined that I loved postpunk, neo-gothic, architectural cuts and minimalism. By the end of the decade, fifty shades of gray, black and beige dominated my wardrobe. Probably, I would have spent my whole life in Ann Demeulemeester and JNBY, if fashion had not taken a sharp course on lightheadedness and infantilism, and in my life there would have been Wonderzine and the editor of the Style section Olesya Willow. With her hands in my closet there were slipons, birkenshtoks, cropped tops, dresses from torn jeans, neoprene skirts, sneakers (!) And, finally, eight-hole martins. Who knows what we will say about all this in ten years? I hope that by this moment COS will finally open in Russia.