TRASHY IS BACK
Y2K, raves and the recession
By Zuzana Remes
The Friday before Easter, college kids and other club-goers piled themselves into a sold-out venue dressed in baby tees and short-shorts. By Easter Monday, the Pope will be dead and a bottle of bottom-shelf vodka will still be cheaper than a grade-A carton of eggs.
The theme of the rave is Y2K. The air smells like sweat and cheap perfume, and the music blaring belongs to a time most of the crowd is too young to feel nostalgic for. 2000s trash is back. And not just in fashion, but in ethos. It’s apparent from the mesh tops, visible thongs and rhinestones all adorning a generation raised on resold memories. Kids who buy old clothes off the internet after binge-watching the shows that made them matter. Cable is dead, so streaming will have to suffice. They pin outfits on Pinterest like they’re discovering them for the first time. They’re dressed like they know what’s coming—a collapsing job market and the threat of entering the workforce amid another recession. So for a night, they’ll make the most of it.
Girls gather by the bathroom line, drunkenly shouting the almost too-obvious mantra into the noise: “We’re only young just once!”
The rave was at the Blue Room, an all-ages entertainment venue on E. Holly Street that can be found on flyers frequently posted around the Western Washington Campus. Within walking distance of other Bellingham nightlife hotspots, the line for the Blue Room mingled with the line for the Royal Night Club next door.
Ravers dance to 2000s pop remixes at the Blue Room in Bellingham, Wash., on April 18, 2025. Some climb up for a better view of the DJ. // Photo by Zuzana Remes
Outside in the cool air, where you can actually hear a person speak, raver Kristen Harrod told me, “I’ve never really hung out in Seattle, so for me, this is a good introduction to rave culture. It’s smaller, with people I’ve met.”
She’s sporting all black and fishnet. Her outfit (which she finally decided on after roughly five attempts) is mostly self-made and second-hand.
“I took an old pair of fishnet leggings that I had—don’t know where I got ‘em—and stretched them as much as possible over my head and my body to make a shirt and arm warmers,” she said.
Harrod tells me that she comes here after particularly demanding weeks to find a release—a sentiment widely shared amongst the crowd.
A couple shares a street-side cigarette outside the Blue Room in Bellingham, Wash., on April 18, 2025. The outside air offers a breather (nicotine included) from the busy dance floor inside. // Photo by Zuzana Remes
Standing near the curb, taking a drag of her cigarette, Lex Gittleman related, “I am just here to wear a cute outfit and have fun.”
It seems the weight of modernity is all too much for our twentysomethings, who have turned to dopamine and dressing up as their means of liberation.
Gittleman wears denim shorts and a necklace that reads “Angel.” Her partner hangs on her hip, mostly quiet and lethargic, wearing a wife-beater tank and jeans.
“I have been dressing this way for so long,” said Gittleman, describing the accumulation of her clothes as a long, slow process of self-expression. “I have cultivated my closet to look this way.”
Back inside, it’s so loud I can’t catch what the bartender asks me. A kind girl I just met orders us both something, her voice swallowed by the noise and completely indistinguishable. The bartender brings out two dark drinks, which he hands to us unpaid for, then rushes away without explanation. When he returns, he enunciates each word until it’s clear he had kicked someone out for getting too rough. I end up paying for both drinks to spare him the trouble of re-articulating the digitized card system.
Strobe lights illuminate the crowd as they dance. Light catches on glitter hair tinsel—a trend that seems to have reemerged largely thanks to the recent Oscar-winning Best Picture, “Anora,” in which the main character, Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, wears the same. The film swept the 2025 Oscars, not without scandal. The winnings were met with partial uproar—criticisms ranging from inaccurate portrayal of sex work to fears of leading the youth astray. Despite controversy and the accompanying debates of cultural conservatism, the ravers take unmistakable fashion inspiration from the film and play into the current trend towards Y2K.
Ravers dance together at the Blue Room in Bellingham, Wash., on April 18, 2025. They wear glitter hair tinsel, a trend popularized in the 2000s and revived by the recent film, “Anora.” // Photo by Zuzana Remes
Return to trashy. It’s a recession pop revival offering temporary relief from economic and existential dread.
Rave-goer Jessica Schoup offered, “I love Y2K. The 2000s are my favorite era of music. It is the shit you can dance to.”
She dances with friends, one of whom is Annie Davis, a self-proclaimed member of the “Y2K scene” and “grunge” subcultures. Davis explains how the two friends share many of their clothing items, especially when going out.
“Half of the things I own I just acquired at some point, and I don’t really remember when or where,” they said.
“I love sharing clothes. I think it is the best way to acquire things,” agreed Schoup.
In an era of unaffordability, sharing and repurposing clothing becomes not just practical but communal. Again and again, the people I speak with emphasize resourcefulness: their clothes are thrifted, borrowed, handmade. I look at my outfit, and it’s much the same, without the glitter and glitz. Maybe next time, if it’s something you can wear, that is.
From the bar at the back of the Blue Room in Bellingham, Wash., ravers dance under neon strobe lights on April 18, 2025. Energy stays high into the late night. // Photo by Zuzana Remes
Leaving, my ears ring, and my stomach aches from dancing all night and forgetting dinner. It’s nearing 1 a.m., and I share a crepe from the place down the street with my two roommates and the kind girl I met earlier. I pick up a bearded man’s credit card from the floor beneath his seat, and he calls me a saint. I wonder why he’s buying crepes on credit. The Uber ride home plays music in Arabic—a language I studied in school for three years, passed every class—and I don’t make out a single word.