Gen Z Style Can Be Boiled Down to These 8 Fashion Looks

Like each generation that came before them, Gen Z is writing their own style rules. Born in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Gen Z is rejecting many silhouettes favored by their predecessors, while embracing and reinventing long-buried styles. Their fashion DNA has been the subject of outrage and imitation in equal measure, both online and in real life. But behind these trends are evolutions in the way this new generation shops, finds inspiration—and expresses themselves. 

First and foremost, Gen Z style prioritizes individuality. “[Millennials] grew up texting our friends, ‘What are you wearing?’ and when we show up and our friend has a similar outfit, it gives us more comfort. If [someone Gen Z] walks into a room and someone’s wearing the same outfit as them, that would probably upset them,” says style expert Kim Brannigan, a content creator known for her tutorials on how to elevate tried-and-true outfit formulas for post-grad life. 

Members of Gen Z want to wear pieces that nobody else has. That ethos, combined with a mind for sustainability, makes vintage and thrift shopping a natural fit. ThredUp, a secondhand clothing retailer, released a report in 2023 showing that Gen Z is driving an explosion in the secondhand clothing market, Vogue Business reports. According to Danielle O’Connell and Alix Gropper, the stylist duo who go by Danielle & Alix and whose clients have included Alix Earle and Lindsay Lohan, Gen Z clients’ “biggest ask” is to add vintage pieces into their looks.

A perpetually online generation, Gen Z looks to the internet for both inspiration and admiration. Kara Wagner, a stylist for Stitch Fix, a personal styling service, says younger clients are increasingly referencing internet trends to describe what they’re looking for. “TikTok references in our Fix Request Notes from Gen Z and millennial clients increased 14% from last summer,” Wagner says. Given how much of Gen Z’s lives are lived online, it’s also important to them that their clothes are fit to be photographed and paraded on the internet. “You see a lot of clothes that play with perception. You also see garments that reference other moments in pop culture,” says stylist and content creator Timothy Chernyaev.

With all its controversial trends and internet-inspired dressing, Gen Z is now heavily influencing how we think about fashion. Ahead, take a look at eight trends that define Gen Z style.

Oversized Silhouettes 

Gen Z made skinny jeans uncool again. While millennials grew up in denim that got progressively more fitted and cropped, as Gen Z came of age, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, favoring longer, looser shapes, from baggy jeans to cargo pants. “Loose-fitting and oversized are the most regular requests [from Gen Z clients] for street style and day-to-day wear,” says stylist and creative director Danyul Brown, whose clients include model Amelia Gray.

“Gen Z likes to play around with their proportions a bit more with oversized clothing,” Brannigan adds. When styling more oversized items, Brannigan suggests balancing them out with more fitted pieces. “‘Little shirt, big pants, or little pants, bigger shirt,’ is an easy rule to follow. If you want to play around a bit more…with oversized pants if you’re doing a more oversized shirt, instead of doing a T-shirt that comes super high neck, have it scoop and show your collarbone or push up your sleeves to show wrist,” Brannigan recommends. 

Y2K Revival

First came the return of the ’90s, with slip dresses, baby tees, and bucket hats back in the spotlight. The Y2K renaissance followed: waistlines dropped, pastel-tinted sunglasses reemerged, and women everywhere pulled Juicy Couture sweatsuits out of storage. Julia Fox made headlines for pubic bone-bearing pants; Addison Rae and Bella Hadid were spotted in Ed Hardy; and Ice Spice walked the Grammys red carpet in a custom Baby Phat ensemble that looked straight from the early 2000s.

Gropper and O’Connell point out that brands like Coach and Tommy Hilfiger, which peaked in the early aughts, have seen a recent resurgence. In February 2025, Gen Z consumers increased their spending on Coach enough to drive up the parent company’s sales by 5 percent, reports Vogue Business. And Coach is returning the favor. “The talent they have chosen to now represent the brand, like Ariana Greenblatt, Dove Cameron, and Lil Nas [X], exemplify their shift toward catering to a Gen Z audience,” Gropper and O’Connell say. 

Reimagining the 2010s

Now, Gen Z is turning to the 2010s for inspiration. The generation who came of age just as remote work exploded is taking workwear outside the office, rebranding pinstripes and pantsuits as corpcore and the office siren aesthetic. “They’re mixing oversized blazers (which have grown 25% year over year in sales) and incorporating menswear-inspired pieces,” Wagner says. (More than one millennial has cautioned against it on TikTok, though, recalling the days of pencil skirts and statement necklaces with a shudder.) Even peplums are coming back, having dominated 2023 runways and 2024 red carpets. 

Athletic Inspiration 

Gen Z isn’t afraid to mix and match aesthetics within the same outfit. And having grown up amidst the explosion of athleisure, they’re unafraid to add sporty details in unexpected places. Adidas Sambas are paired with dresses, track pants and athletic shorts accompany more formal, feminine tops, and tennis skirts go with just about anything. Additionally, internet-born trends like the soccer-inspired “blokecore” aesthetic is ushering in a new era of athletic merch, specifically jerseys, inside fashion.

Trompe L’oeil

Gen Z also tends to favor designs that deceive. “You see a lot of styles that look almost like illustrations. Clothes that play with perception using trompe l’oeil,” Chernyaev says, referencing an art principle (French for ‘deceives the eye’) in which two-dimensional objects are made to look three-dimensional.

There’s a long history of the technique in fashion. Elsa Schiaparelli created an early example with her 1927 bow sweater, knit to appear as though there was a neck scarf attached. Loewe’s fall/winter 2023 collection features several satin shift dresses printed with blurred images of garments from the ’40s and ’50s. In person, it appears out of focus, or still loading, to dizzying effect.

The use of trompe l’oeil is a natural fit for a digital generation, borrowing from the aesthetics of early video games and the 2020s NFTs boom. It asks the viewer to discern between reality and illusion, a skill that Gen Z has had to cultivate amid a world of increasing deepfakes.

Faux Whale Tales

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term “whale tale,” it refers to wearing your thong or G-string outside of your low-rise bottoms (yes, whether those are pants or a skirt). Your favorite early aughts celebs—like Christina Aguilera and Halle Berry—all donned this look in their heyday. And the Gen Z stars of today, including Bella Hadid and Dua Lipa, have also added a whale tail to lend some edge to already iconic looks.

But what differentiates the whale tails of the 2020s from those that were around 20 years prior? That the whale tails of today aren’t actually undergarments. Gen Z style dictates that the whale tail should be directly sewn onto the garment. This helps give that “I’m-showing-you-my-underwear” effect without having to sacrifice comfort for fashion points.

Crew Socks

Skinny jeans are to wide-leg pants what no-shows are to crew socks. For instance: If you were to stop a random millennial on the street and ask them which socks they’ll always stand behind, they’ll tell you it’s no-shows. But that couldn’t be further from the truth for Gen Z fashion aficionados. Again leaning into coziness, the younger generation prefers crew socks. And they wear them with everything—seriously. They even wear them with sandals and high heels.

But before you go buy a pair of crew socks thinking you’ll be able to blend in with Gen Z, know that there’s a very specific styling for these longer stockings. You are never, under any circumstances, supposed to pull the socks all the way up. Instead, Gen Z bunches up their socks just a little to create more dimension and texture in the bottom half of their ‘fits.

Cargo Pants

Yes, it’s true that cargo pants technically go under the “oversized silhouettes” category. However, it’s worth noting that Gen Z steadily relies on this staple garment—being able to wear it for practicality and comfort just as easily as they can elevate it. Since this is usually a casual choice for bottoms, most Gen Zers sport cargo pants with sweaters, T-shirts, and other street wear options. But you can also add texture and interest to it by wearing it with a leather jacket and strappy heels.