Bring back baggy

Kids in the nineties were relaxed, we just wanted to chill out, and this was reflected in the clothes we wore. There was a comfortable, laid-back attitude that pervaded life and this was encapsulated perfectly by bands like the Happy Mondays, particularly in their song ‘Loose Fit’. “Don't need no skin tights in my wardrobe today”, Sean Rider sang and he was right.

Early nineties baggy was a minimalist fashion and came as a reaction to the excesses of the eighties. It was a way to shun the gaudy over the top self-indulgences which had come before with a simple, albeit oversized, colourful tee-shirt and an incredibly baggy pair of trousers. Its aim was to be understated, it was a fashion that could be followed easily, one where a lack of effort was seen as trendsetting.

I transitioned into the baggy trend from the tight jeans and short-sleeved tee-shirts of heavy metal (I’m sorry Axl). Together with indie music, baggy was something homegrown in Britain, not imported from the US. We were still a few years before the arrival of the louder and more aggressive grunge trend which would grab hold of baggy and drag it to new extremes with a good mix of scruffy thrown in and wrapped in flannel shirts.

Yet while baggy was all about soft edges and remaining relatively inconspicuous, it wasn’t shy when it came to colours. A staple wardrobe accessory for any self-respecting nineties indie kid was a bright red tee-shirt with the huge Primal Scream yellow sun print on the front. When it came to colours, baggy was probably closer to the garish over the top hues of the eighties it was so eager to eschew, than the dower shades of grunge which were to arrive just a few years later. For a fashion that didn’t go out of its way to be noticed, baggy was happy to be conspicuous when it came to being loud.

Like the dedicated followers of any fashion, we had our idols in the nineties and would emulate them if at all possible. But in those easy-going days before Amazon and Etsy, getting hold of a replica of Ian Brown’s iconic pound notes around the neck tee-shirt was next to impossible. And this was a good thing. Baggy was a genuine fashion, the clothes we bought weren’t reproductions of iconic items, they were the fashion of the moment.

You're twistin' my melon man

Baggy in the nineties was more than just oversized clothes, like every fashion, it was a reflection of the zeitgeist: a carefree world where our only real goal was the pursuit of relaxation. Our clothes were oversized, our hair was long and our attitude was chilled, there was a predominately soft and fluffy vibe about everything and the same could be said for the music we listened to. Nineties indie kids shunned the cacophonous screech heavy metal guitars as much as we detested the cheesy keyboard intros of the eighties. We were ruled by the sounds of Madchester and when we danced, we danced by waving our arms around slowly like stoned windmills dressed in ill-fitting tents that gently blew in the wind.

It was a fashion of the careless, one which was above all else comfortable, but it was also sincere. There was no recreation, like we have today, where people pay through the nose for their perfectly ripped jeans or spend hours in front of the mirror trying to achieve that “just don’t care” look. Those things came naturally to us.

From bell bottoms to Belle & Sebastian

Like our hippy forbears who let their hair grown long decades before, our trousers were unashamedly flared as well, albeit in a different style. Unlike the children of the flower-power generation, baggy didn’t go for flares that were tight at the top opening out into bellbottoms around the ankle. No, our jeans were big. Too big, they probably contained enough denim to realistically make two pairs for my adult self. Our jeans were snug around our waist and then billowed out down our legs like two stitched together windsocks. And the hems of these flares saw very little love as we gladly let them drag along the floor until they were as frayed as our parents’ nerves at the way we treated our clothes bought with their hard-earned cash.

But the real cost to any nineties kids’ fashion ensemble was what we wore on our feet. Not soft and fuzzy in any way were the obligatory Dr Marten Airwair boots, affectionately know as DMs. Always greeted with the line from the classic Velvet Underground song when you first went out in a new pair, “Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather”, a new pair of DMs were only really acceptable once they had become reasonably scuffed up and worn in (I’m sorry, mum).

Baggy in the winter

In the colder months, on top of giant tee-shirts, nineties kids donned gigantic woollen hoodies. These often came fitted with an enormous marsupial pocket on the front letting us wall around with our hands concealed like some sort of long-haired capuchin monk in deep contemplation, when in fact we were more than likely rolling up some sort of illicit cigarettes in there.

But if hoodies weren’t enough, there was always the extra layer of wool that could be thrown over the top. Carpet coats as they came to be known were thick woolly coats that looked just like they sound, as though someone had taken offcuts of carpet stitched them together and then cut them vaguely into the shape of a human torso. But that wasn’t a problem, they kept us warm and continued the soft and woolly vibe which we were looking for.

Bring back baggy?

Baggy was a simple fashion. A fashion for people who didn’t want to follow a fashion. A big comfy tee-shirt was enough to gain you admittance to the herd if you wanted. It was a fashion as much concerned with the way you felt as the way you looked. For that reason, it deserves to make a comeback and the music was pretty awesome too.

A bum note

Baggy as our jeans may have been, we always wore them firmly around our waist. The craze of letting them fall halfway down our butts and showing off our underpants to the world was one that came years later and I’m glad I missed out on that.