The Trends Everyone Swore They'd Never Wear
Fashion has a way of making people change their minds. A new style gets dismissed as ugly or impractical, only to become something people happily spend money on a year or two later. Sometimes comfort wins them over, especially when an awkward-looking shoe turns out to be the best thing they've worn all day. Other times, seeing a look often enough is all it takes to make it appealing. Here are 20 fashion trends people mocked before eventually embracing them.
1. Crocs
A perforated foam clog does not look like clothing, so the objection was close to universal. Christopher Kane put them on a London runway for spring 2017 and Balenciaga showed a platform version in Paris later that year. Most women were converted somewhere else entirely, during a long shift spent standing in a borrowed pair. The lined and platform versions that followed were aimed at people who had already given in.
2. Birkenstocks
Two decades of health food shop jokes hung off the Arizona sandal. Céline showed a fur-lined version for spring 2013. Every other label copied it inside a season and the waiting lists started. Anyone who tried the cork footbed discovered the arch support was the whole point, and that part survived the trend cycle that revived it.
3. Chunky Dad Sneakers
Balenciaga's Triple S arrived in 2017 looking like orthopedic footwear stacked on itself, and the first read was that it insulted the buyer. Then people walked around a city in them and their feet did not hurt. A thick sole also changes how cropped trousers and midi dresses hang, so the styling case made itself. Most major brands sell a version now, usually with the same stacked rubber underneath.
4. Uggs
Sheepskin boots spent years written off as the uniform of airport lounges and 2004, until the Ultra Mini put them back in front of everyone. Resistance tends to last about one cold week, because nothing else in a wardrobe delivers that much warmth for that little effort.
5. Wide-Leg Jeans
Fifteen years of skinny jeans left women certain that a baggy cut would make them look shorter and wider. One pair worn with a boot usually ends that worry, since the leg falls in a single line from hip to floor. The late converts are often the most committed, having found out they can sit down after lunch. Denim labels answered by raising the rise to balance all the fabric below it.
6. High-Waisted Mom Jeans
A rise that sits at the navel looked like something from a photo album nobody wanted reprinted. The appeal is structural, because a high waistband stays where you put it instead of sliding down over the course of a day. Low-rise has come back without displacing it, and the women who switched are not going back to hitching at a waistband.
7. Bike Shorts
Lycra outside a gym was a hard no through most of the 1990s, Princess Diana and her paparazzi photographs notwithstanding. Their 2019 return paired them with blazers and loafers, repositioning them as trousers. Women who have worn a dress through a July heatwave had already worked out the other reason. Many of the converted wear them under dresses and never as the outfit itself.
8. Leggings As Pants
Whether leggings counted as trousers got debated for years and got heated. It ended privately for most women the first time they pulled on a thick pair under a long sweater. What survives of the fight is a rule about opacity and coverage, and a fair share of the original objectors now own several pairs.
9. Sneakers With Dresses
Flats under a formal dress read as a surrender, and heels were assumed for anything dressy. The switch tends to happen at a wedding, somewhere around the taxi ride home with both shoes in one hand. White leather sneakers under a midi dress stopped being a compromise and became the intended look.
10. Belt Bags
Thirty years of bad associations came with the fanny pack into its own revival. Lululemon's version sold out repeatedly and got worn across the chest instead of around the waist, and one afternoon of errands with both hands free finished the job.
Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
11. Crew Socks
For a decade the no-show sock was the only acceptable option, and anything higher belonged to gym class. Younger women brought the crew sock back and plenty of older ones hated it on sight. Then the practical point landed, since the low ones slide off inside the shoe and the high ones stay up. They also sit properly inside a boot, which the thin version never managed.
12. Scrunchies
Through the 2000s the scrunchie was shorthand for bad taste, and a Sex and the City plot was built on exactly that joke. Stylists kept repeating that thin elastics snap hair while fabric-covered ones do not. Its return came through women protecting their hair, and that is why it outlasted most of what came back beside it.
John Carlo Tubelleza on Unsplash
13. Claw Clips
Plastic claws came straight out of 1998, left in a drawer with the butterfly clips. Women with long or thick hair found they hold more weight than any elastic, with no dent and no headache by four in the afternoon. The design barely moved in twenty years because it was already finished.
Svitlanka Dlinnaya on Unsplash
14. Oversized Blazers
Swallowing the shoulders in a jacket seems like a guaranteed way to look smaller than you are. Over something fitted it does the reverse and gives a line no tailored blazer can manage. It also goes over a sweater in November. Vintage men's jackets get bought for exactly this reason, usually two sizes up from anything a shop would sell you.
15. Puffer Coats
Every long puffer got compared to a duvet, usually by someone shivering in a wool coat. One properly cold winter settles that. The shapes have since moved a long way from the sleeping bag silhouette of the first wave, though plenty of women went back for that shape anyway.
16. Jumpsuits
The bathroom problem is real and it is the first thing anybody mentions. On the other side, a jumpsuit is one decision instead of two and it photographs as more deliberate than most dresses. Women who buy one tend to end up with several. The wide-leg versions have mostly replaced the fitted cut that started the trend.
17. Clogs
A wooden sole sounds like a costume and walks like one for the first hour. Swedish clogs and the Birkenstock Boston came through the same door, since women wanted a closed shoe they could stand in all day. The noise on a hard floor is the one complaint nobody has solved.
18. Cargo Pants
Thigh pockets carried a whiff of 1999 that kept women away for two decades. The current cut is wider and rides at the natural waist, so the proportions read completely differently. The pockets then do what pockets do, a job women's clothing has been failing at for about a century
mohamed abdelghaffar on Pexels
19. Sports Bras As Tops
Wearing a sports bra as outerwear looked like forgetting a step on the way out the door. Brands fixed that by building them with real structure and finished seams. Under an open shirt in August it works as a crop top with support, and the objection ran out of force. Prices moved accordingly, since a top costs more than a bra.
20. Going Gray
Growing out color was treated as giving up. The grow-out phase is every bit as unpleasant as advertised, and no one disputes that part. Lockdown ran the experiment on a lot of women who would never have volunteered for it. A good number never went back to the chair, having done the arithmetic on hours and money.
