This Is What the Cool Girls Were Wearing Circa Y2K

We know what the celebs were wearing at the time—what about the cool girls? Here’s what I remember: the Marc by Marc Jacobs collections; acid-striped jeans, graffiti-print sweatshirts, band-style denim jackets, and a steady stream of perfect ballet flats—pointy toe, almond toe, or round toe—that were absolute must-haves. They were clothes for misfits, and the proof was in the ad campaigns that featured the likes of Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, and hazy portraits of cooler-than-cool models of the era like Delfine Bafort, Tasha Tilberg, and Anouck Lepère. (Some of them have also recently returned to the runway—Bafort was recently spotted at Sacai’s fall ’23 show and The Row’s resort ’23 collection, and Tilberg was a constant presence last season, showing up in New York at Peter Do and in Milan at Trussardi, among others.)

I remember Suzanne Clements and Inacio Ribeiro, who were the masters of a feminine aesthetic that carried a punk edge at their namesake label Clements Ribeiro and who brought that same vibe to Cacharel when they were named creative directors there, presenting a collection that made toile de Jouy and mismatched floral prints an essential way of dressing. I remember Veronique Branquinho, the Belgian designer whose clothes were pragmatic and imbued with a certain dark romanticism; Nicolas Ghesquière, when he was making low-slung cargo pants as well as shaggy vests and sweaters from oversized yarn—clothes that were wearable but never boring; and Phoebe Philo’s sweet-but-not-saccharine dresses at Chloé, paired with wood-platform patent-leather Mary Janes. It was the decade of Luella Bartley, who founded her namesake label in 1999 when she was 25 years old and instantly became the patron saint of interesting girls. (Her spring 2008 collection, inspired by Ghost World, remains one of her best, and still to this day, wherever she goes, I follow.)