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Millennials get a bad rap. They’re maligned by the generations above and below, with Gen Xers and boomers generally finding them to be entitled, whiny and self-centred, and Gen Z suggesting they’re embarrassing and cheugy. They’re like the middle child of all living generations.
However, due to the increasingly fast nature of trend cycles and the power of distance and hindsight, the winds have finally started to change for millennials. One of their siblings seems to have called for peace talks.
Gen Zs are beginning to desperately covet the lifestyles of a generation who came of age mere years before them. Forget the swinging Sixties, Gen Zs attention span is too short for that kind of ancient history: recency is everything, and so millennials have become their new kings and queens of cool.
Exhibit A is the return of some tell-tale trousers. Skinny jeans are reportedly back, marking a long-awaited return for some and a horror movie-style resurrection for others.
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They were all over the autumn/winter 2024 women’s runways, while menswear appeared to catch up at last month’s fashion weeks, with trousers at Prada, Raf Simons, Tod’s and Paul Smith all displaying a smaller circumference than in previous seasons.
And then there’s the dusting off of ancient texts. Gen Z are suddenly falling head over heels for Hannah Horvath and her gang of unlikeable women on HBO’s hit series Girls, which was first broadcast in 2012, and became well-known as a window into the millennial experience. The renewed love for the show has lead to a boom in streaming figures and prompted weekly podcasts (The Girls Rewatch Podcast, The Girls Girls) dedicated to the over-10-year-old drama.
The indie sleaze music renaissance is still going strong, too, with poster boy The Dare going from relative unknown to snogging Los Angeles ‘It’ Girl Sophia Ziskin on the Grammys stage (and securing a Brit award) in 2025 for his collaboration with Charli xcx and Billie Eilish on the hit track Guess.
New York DJ trio Fcuckers are also proving to be another harbinger of the 2020s indie sleaze revival, cropping up across the international festival circuit this summer.
A viral post on X has alerted millennials to their sudden cult status, with one Gen Z user musing: “I would have been a great millennial. I would work at i-D and my friends would work at Vice and Buzzfeed News and we’d write listicles and Twitter was at its prime. Unfortunately, I was too busy being in sixth grade to participate.”
Discussing this newfound appreciation on The Polyester Podcast, host Ione Gamble observed: “The millennial era of the internet was an era where it felt like you could just get famous and successful for nothing.”
She highlights Tavi Gevinson, who first became famous for her tween fashion blog Rookie and went on to become a respected writer, actor and magazine editor, as examples of internet personalities going from online famous to “actual famous”.
“I think it probably looks to Gen Zs like there was more opportunity,” Gamble says.
Has it really got so bad that Gen Zs are idolising people who had it 10 per cent better than them? Or do all ages have a secret yearning for their neighbouring generation? One thing’s for sure: millennials are thrilled to be getting all this good press. They’ve never had it quite this good this before.
