Nineties Girl Spring

Zara blazer (similar)
Leyn sweater (c/o) (similar)
Mango jeans
Rouje boots (similar)
Mango belt
Sezane handbag
Mango sunglasses (similar)
Goody hairclip
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: The Manitoba Legislature – Winnipeg, Manitoba

I’m not a true nineties baby – my birth year falls smack in the middle of the eighties. But as a result, most of my earliest memories are of the nineties, and that nineties was the era when I developed my first ideas about fashion. My love of blazers with sharp shoulders should come, then, as no real surprise to anyone. What surprises me most is how long it took me to get here.

I’m sure I’ve talked about my rebellion against blazers in my early career. I can still understand why I didn’t want to embrace blazers back then, although part of me also realises that I missed an opportunity to look far more fabulous in the early years of my professional life. Hindsight is always crystal clear in a way that foresight simply can’t be. It was the mid-2000s and at the time, life was constantly changing. Embracing the future, rather than feeling nostalgia for the past, only seemed logical.

But after a decade of living with social media and more than a year of pandemic-induced restrictions, looking back on the past with fondness makes a lot more sense. I love the idea of restaurants decorated in dark green with brass accents in a way I never would have a year ago, because they remind me of a time when life was slower, but also safer and less uncertain. The nineties were a comfortable, often idealistic time for middle class North Americans. Our illusions remained intact, our diets bland and our closets, of course, filled with blazers and vests.

…it’s not that I want to recapture that time, exactly. The simplicity was just a veneer of unchecked privilege that served very few people. But I lived through it as a small child, which is a bit like watching something happen on television. The nineties went on in front of me, but I wasn’t really part of them. All of what looked, to me, like their glamour and excitement, was reserved for my parents on their occasional evenings out, while I was left with my brother and a babysitter. I hoped I would someday get to wear outfits like the ones my mom put on for those evenings, but when my turn came, those trends had long since come and gone. What replaced them, I think we can all now agree, was a disappointment by comparison. I still cringe thinking about my experiments in layering polo shirts.

But I did experiment with layering polo shirts. And with scrunching my hair with glitter gel to make it curl, among other truly lamentable 2000s trends. That was my time, my youth, and it only makes sense that I wanted to live it just like everyone else did, which meant rejecting blazers and tailoring and so many other elements of nineties style that made it infinitely more sophisticated – if decidedly less modern – than the styles that followed it.

At this point, time feels more or less like it’s standing still. The end of the pandemic, and a return to experiencing life in linear time, remains far away for many of us. Right now, it could be any year, anywhere, which gives us all a unique opportunity to dress exactly how we want – or to not get dressed at all – without consequences. For me, that means this is going to be a nineties girl spring… and probably summer, too.

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