My Mom and Me: Comparing Collegiate Sorority Fashion From the 90s and Now
Written by TFN Writer: Elizabeth Frew
One thing you can depend on fashion trends for is coming back into the trend cycle at one time or another. Nothing is coming back into the trend cycle now more than 90s and early 2000s fashion. With vintage graphic tees, baggy sweaters and pants, pleated skirts, and shoes like Birkenstocks and ultra-white sneakers, 90s fashion trends have been having their renaissance in the past five years.
In the 90s, specifically 1989-1993, my mother was a college student and a sorority girl here at the University of Illinois. Many times I’ve shown my mom my outfit and she has been surprised by the uncanny resemblance it has to what she wore in her college years, seeing my thrifted Ann Taylor sweater and remarking that she swears she had the same exact one. Trend cycles, and the way that shopping cycles influence them have created a comeback for nineties style, only heightened by the trend-ification of thrifting and buying “vintage.” Now as I am following in my mother’s footsteps attending the University of Illinois, and joining her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, as a legacy, I can’t help but see our style resemblance.
Through looking at photos from my first semester so far and her four years, the amount of repeated trends feels like déjà vu. Of course some things have yet to make a comeback—shoutout to the outrageous shoulder pads in some of these pictures—but many of the trends came back in different variations with slightly different styles or cuts.
In the early nineties, it was still popular to be “preppy” with argyle sweaters, white socks and shoes, and business-type clothes such as blazers, but by the later nineties, there was the trends with influence from skater culture and grunge fashion, such as baggy clothes, Birkenstocks, and long skirts. There was also a style of minimalism within the nineties, with the cuts and colors of the clothes being quite muted.
My mother (third to the left) wears a simple purple dress with a sophisticated cut to her senior year fall semi-formal. In many of the pictures from their formal dances people are wearing a mixture of more chic minimalistic dress, and some which are still holding onto the maximalism of the 1980s. But for everyday wear, my mom was frequently rocking the mom-cut jean shorts and baggy sweatshirts with her sisters in many of these photos from the early nineties.
Nowadays, it is common to see similar outfits, including long skirts, baggy sweatshirts, Mary Janes and oxfords, and a classic white shoe with white socks. A classic summer outfit for me was long crew-cut socks with my white Converse, a baggy sweatshirt, and loose fitting jean shorts. Even from my Big-Little day, one of my bigs was wearing cargo pants, a classic of 90s grunge culture, while I was wearing a pair of Tommy Hilfiger Flare jeans from the 90s that I thrifted. To my mother, I’m another version of her. Today sorority girls are still wearing much of the styles my mom and her sorority sisters wore then. For my bid day, I wore a white pleated shirt with white socks and shoes, very reminiscent of the preppy style my mom wore then—sans the cropped baby tee. Being a sophomore year transfer, who rushed sororities as a sophomore, I never could have expected to follow directly in my mother’s footsteps as an Illini Kappa, or as a trendy collegiate woman, and it feels so special to be doing so.
Soo fun to see these throwback photos!!!! Thank you for sharing your mom with us all
So good!!! Love this omg