Keira Knightley in Love, Actually. What Actually Happened to Clothes at the Turn of the Millennium?

This time every year, me and a whole load of other Christmas embracing losers across the world sit down to watch Love, Actually. Every year I laugh at Bill Nighy, cry at Emma Thompson and hold on to a (perhaps outdated) notion of Britishness.

This year though, something not terribly important occurred to me. Keira Knightley, lovely as she may be, sports (amongst a variety of crop tops and flared jeans) a baker boy hat. For those who aren't familiar with this type of hideous headwear: think Victorian chimney sweep boy.

Don't look so happy Keira, you have something very peculiar on your head

This year I didn't feel content and cosy, I felt distinctly unsettled. Visions of myself aged 11 came flooding back to me in a whirlwind of horror. I look almost identical (bar the whole puberty thing, and braces THANK GIDDY GOODNESS), except I'm wearing a baker boy hat. Not any baker boy hat, it was constructed out of small squares of varying vile shades of denim bought from etam or Tammy Girl or whatever that shop was - I'm sure most girls of my age remember. It was the one with  faux purple leather jackets, silver gilets and slogan t shirts that said things like "I <3 ME!" (all of which I owned).

If anything, I should've been relieved that even Ms. Knightley herself couldn't pull off the look, this was after all a widespread pandemic of fashion faux pas. But when I was at work today, this magazine from 2001 reminded me of the whole sorry saga. Nestled in between an Amstrad advert for a home phone that could send e-mails and an article about how to choose the right hi-fi system was a fashion spread replete with tiny little handbags and bellybutton rings.

"edgily sexy" and "stylishly funky" 

So what exactly went wrong between the late 90's and early noughties? Something odd happened that's what. I wouldn't consider myself particularly into fashion and yet there's something about this era which makes me feel a little bit pukey. As a young-un in that awkward in between stage (the stage before the awkward teenage stage - poor kids) I feel I should be allowed to absent myself as I was, after all, merely a child. And yet... I can remember begging my mum for a top like this:

I'm from a pretty liberal family, but this was not going to happen. You can't tell from the picture, but behind the darling butterfly on the front, a series of strings pass along the back, I can only be thankful that it never had the opportunity to criss-cross against my pre-pubescent flab, there would be more than a few things wrong with that...

... also I know I would've teamed it with hot pink baggy combat trousers, the horrific ones fitted with useless dangly tassels - why was that ever a thing?

Alas, apparently fashion will always come around eventually.

I can see myself now, middle aged, bleached bootcuts and a sparkly crop top. Please, no.