If you’re walking down the streets of London this month and you spy a pair of patterned tights, skinny jeans or a rogue bandage dress, don’t worry, you’re not having an aneurysm – nor have you entered some sort of strange timewarp that takes you back to 2010. We are really, genuinely, doing it all again.
Less than 15 years have passed since the sleazy, tight-fitting tenure of the 2010s, and yet styles and silhouettes from the period have already started to creep back onto the runways, into the shops, and back onto our streets.
Much has been made of the return of “indie sleaze” ever since the writer Sean Monahan predicted its return in his viral Substack post, “vibe shift”, in 2021.
“The vibe shift is a return to fragmentation,” Monahan has posited. “Culturally, the 2010s were an era of centralisation. Subcultures died. Instagram reigned supreme.” Effectively, it seems that in a desperate grab for the return of subcultures, we’re now emulating the period when they last existed.
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The ballet flat should have been the first ship spotted on the 2010s revival horizon. With its distinct lack of arch support, alarming proximity to the pavement and minimal, slim-fitting structure, it is an unavoidable reminder of days gone by. Back in that decade, the flats were worn by everyone from Rihanna to Taylor Swift. Perhaps the most prolific ballet flat wearer of them all, though, was actress Zooey Deschanel, who has become a stand-in for all things hipster and “normcore”-related from the 2010s.
We have Alaïa and Miu Miu to thank for their return, with both brands ushering in the shoe’s return to runways in 2022. Since then, ballet flats have been worn by the likes of Dua Lipa, Gigi Hadid and Zendaya.
The return of the ballet flat goes hand in hand with the return of skinny jeans. The relaunch of Topshop as a standalone brand has led to a renewed interest in our old friends Jamie and Joni, two of the brand’s most popular skinny styles from the 2010s.
While Kate Moss was the ultimate black skinny jeans icon of the last decade, the baton has been passed to current It Girl, Charli xcx, who has been one of the first celebrities to jump back on the spray-on bandwagon. They also appeared in a slew of autumn/winter 2025 runway shows, including those of Acne Studios, Burberry, and Isabel Marant.
On the “out out” fashion front, murmurs are suggesting a bandage dress revival. The cult dress may have been created by Hervé Léger in 1989 and popularised in 2007, but its red carpet chokehold lasted well into the 2010s, with stars like Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Mary J Blige, Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian all donning the dress past the turn of the decade. Such was Kardashian’s obsession with the style that her first wax figure, unveiled in July 2010, showed her wearing a pink Hervé Léger creation.
Numerous bandage dress sightings have been made in recent years, with Hailey Bieber wearing a dusky plum version to the Fashion Trust U.S Awards this April and Kaia Gerber donning a white maxi option for the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024. Meanwhile, London-based fashion brand House of CB had its own rendition of the bandage dress in 2010 and has recently relaunched it for its 15-year anniversary.
Patterned tights, one of the most divisive trends of the 2010s, have also made a comeback. After being revived in 2008 by Roberto Cavalli, colourful hosiery swept the globe, reaching ubiquity around 2010. Much to the distaste of journalist Luke Leitch, who declared in The Times in March 2010: “Graphic hosiery makes all but the lankiest pins look like galumphing elephant’s legs.”
Leitch referred to patterned tights as “wreak[ing] eye-watering havoc” on society and begged: “Please, patterned tights, please, please, please, please . . . why won’t you go away?”
Leitch will be thrilled to learn, then, that patterned tights are back! The resurgence is being led by loyal hosiery enthusiast PinkPantheress, who has donned lace and tartan versions for much of the promotional period for her new mixtape, Fancy That. Her recent performance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon was particularly 2010s secondary schoolgirl-esque, with the Gen Z singer appearing in a tartan mini skirt, square-neck red strappy vest and black ballet flats.
If this is all awfully alarming to you, I have bad news: it’s not done yet, especially not if 2010s enthusiasts like PinkPantheress have anything to do with that. In one recent interview, when asked what “controversial” fashion trend she would bring back, she threatened the world with the return of jeggings. Brace, brace, everybody.
