Preppy Emo: Then and Now
There are certain occasions in life when one is made acutely aware of the passage of time, like weddings, births, deaths, and high school or college reunions. A more subtle moment for that list is when the stuff one used to wear that went out of style comes back in vogue.
Those who were teenagers in the early 2000s may share the mixed feelings I experienced when I noticed Y2K fashion making a recent comeback. Coach purses are trending. I saw a real person wearing a Juicy Couture velour sweatsuit at brunch the other day. Clusters of purse charms hooked onto understated leather bags have reemerged as a playful form of self-expression. This trend has been attributed to Jane Birkin’s use of big clips and keychains to create a lived-in, personalized feel to her iconic Hermes Birkin bag. I find it reminiscent of a more relatable experience for 90s/2000s kids: proudly clipping a lucky rabbit’s foot or Tomagachi keychain to a Jansport. The resurgence of these symbols—a Coach sling bag, a Juicy tracksuit, a purse charm—of early 2000s culture initially sent me spiraling. (For starters, I cringed to think about designer handbags that I purged because I thought they were gauche but are popular again. I was warned about things coming back in style but didn’t listen). But I’m coming back to earth. My reflections:
For me, growing up in the early 2000s was largely defined by the brands I coveted. Lacoste. Polo Ralph Lauren. Lucky Jeans. Juicy Couture. J. Crew. Flipping through Teen Vogue in the summer by the pool was heaven to me. With each outfit I saw, fragrance I tested (Ralph Cool by Ralph Lauren was liquid gold), and interview I devoured, I honed my personal brand. Sunscreen and condensation from water bottles turned the pages soft and bled into the ink, creating abstract tattoos on my hands, wrists, and forearms.
This ritual is the same for me today now that I am in my 30s, but I have graduated to Vogue and I have less time to lay by a pool.
Everything then had a punch-you-in-the-face fragrance. Perhaps I am largely recalling Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister (and am more sensitive to nostalgic scents as time passes), but it feels true. The way a hotel lobby does, it seems everywhere I went and every person I encountered had a signature scent.
School was rubber, metal, and Axe body spray, Dove deodorant, and dishwater from the cafeteria kitchen.
Home was laundry and clean. Williams Sonoma lemon hand soap. And mom’s cooking.
My best friend was Marc Jacobs Daisy perfume and heat radiating off of a flat iron while we got ready in her bathroom.
Cheerleading practice was the smell of hot turf that I was always concerned was melting beneath my sneakers, mixed with sweaty socks and excessive amounts of deodorant and hair and body spray. We drowned in Victorias’ Secret Love Spell.
These layers of fragrance are a fitting analogy for those years, which smothered our teen angst with mindless pop music, airhead reality TV stars, and advertisements for jeans with waistbands that just kept getting lower and lower. Girls were burdened with impossible standards set by brands like Victorias’ Secret and Abercrombie: Be sexy. Be cool. Be flirty. Smell good. Most important: Be thin.
I felt everything so deeply in those years (still do), and I took the perceived societal standards of the time personally (working on not doing this). It’s not novel to acknowledge the universal experience for teenagers to have heightened emotions, struggle with their self-esteem, and figure out their place in the world while navigating the space between childhood and adulthood. But there is a distinct subset of sheltered and sensitive “preppy emo” millennials that found comfort somewhere at the unintuitive intersection of racks of J.Crew button downs and nasally pop punk anthems by Fall Out Boy, Death Cab for Cutie, Jack’s Mannequin, Motion City Soundtrack, The Spill Canvas, Brand New, Dashboard Confessional, and the like.
These bands poured an endless source of drama through my wired headphones and powder blue Sony boombox. See: The Spill Canvas: “And I’ll let you get the best of me / Because there’s nothing else that I do well / I’ll be the giver and you’ll be the taker / I guess that’s how this one’s gotta go … / You’ve got me down on my knees and I proclaim / All hail the heartbreaker.” See also: Motion City Soundtrack: “From the falsest smile / To the fear of death is why / The pain reminds us that we’re still alive.” And Fall Out Boy: “My heart is on my sleeve / Wear it like a bruise or black eye / My badge, my witness.”
These shameless emotional outbursts, which can read like a teenager’s diary in print, were validating because they communicated something like: you are not the only one who thinks this life is hard (even though, objectively, your life is not hard). This genre validated that even in the absence of what the general population would view as a traumatic experience, no matter how “good” your life is, it is an emotional experience to be a human being on this earth; to grow and change and trust and be disappointed and feel less than and lose control and have your heart broken and think things are going to be one way but they turn out to be different. To shed who you used to be. To constantly feel like you must move on from one thing or another.
I was taught that one should never “peak” in life. And if one is going to peak, it shouldn’t be in middle or high school. But I do like the idea of taking curated pieces (whether emotional or tangible) from past life phases into the current phase. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion advised us to “keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.” Certain parts of my past selves won’t make the cut for me: along with the donated handbags, I’ve ditched my participation in an endless, miserable, and impossible game of trying to be pretty enough, skinny enough. But I think I’ll keep my pop punk playlists for an energy boost akin to drinking a double shot of espresso to push through an afternoon slump and a reminder that it’s alright to “feel big” while moving through this life. Because that’s just timeless.
My Preppy Emo playlist:
