Stop trying to bring Noughties fashion back – it was bad enough the first time round

Should you wish to raid your old makeup box and pull out the blue eyeshadow, go ahead – but I won’t be joining you

Not everyone can pull off the low-rise look like Keira Knightley or Nicole Kidman did (Getty)

Towards the end of lockdown, I tweeted about people writing pandemic-themed material. “If you’re working on a book/film/TV show about Covid”, I wrote, “it best be released at least 100 years from now. Nobody wants to relive this fecking period!”

And in a similar vein, I find the desire to bring back old fashion fads a bore. The latest decade to get the “revival” treatment? The Noughties.

According to Glamour, the dreaded hair pouf, à la Lauren Conrad, may be about to make a bold comeback. Meanwhile, designers such as Miu Miu have reinstated the low-rise micro skirt which, unless you have washboard abs like Nicole Kidman, you ain’t gonna pull off!

Now, it’s not that I don’t have fond memories, but having lived through that era during my formative years, anything trying to replicate it will just feel like a cheap knockoff to me – and that’s saying a lot from someone who used to carry her school sports kit in a paper shopping bag.

Throughout secondary school, I transformed many times over. I was a social chameleon, you could say. For the first two years, I did everything I could to blend in. I nagged my mum to get me a minuscule Roxy backpack that didn’t fit any of my textbooks in; I straightened my hair within an inch of its life; I wore more Impulse bodyspray than any girl should.

Then, as I became more comfortable in my own skin, I started experimenting with my style. While my classmates were decked in Helly Hansen jackets, tottering around with Jane Norman bags and donning too-tight hipster trousers, I veered down the emo route – heavy fringe, sweatbands and all. A day not spent wearing a studded belt was a day wasted, I thought.

It was during this time that I – a painfully shy, dorky teenager considered to be a mute – really came into my own. The music I listened to (My Chemical Romance, Green Day, and the like) dictated what makeup and clothes I wore. This emboldened me. I slowly learned how to use my voice and realised that, while fashion may seem superficial, it is also an outward expression of who you are; it’s a tool to communicate how you want to be perceived.

You might be wondering why I am so against revisiting this period. But for me, it would be like making out with a high-school crush in my hometown Wetherspoons: nostalgic, sure, but better left in the past.

And that’s the crux of it. We cling onto what should be fleeting moments too often. Instead of appreciating them for what they are, we play them to death and fail to understand that some things are transitory, meant only to serve a purpose.

So, should you wish to raid your old makeup box and pull out the blue eyeshadow, go ahead. But I won’t be joining you.