Toxic Nostalgia and Low-Rise Denim: Why Tell Me Lies Is Reviving the Messy Magic of 2000s Style

Photo by NEOSiAM 2024+

Low-rise denim hugs the hips under dim party lighting, bodies moving through thick, heavy air. Perfectly drawn eyeliner softens into smeared shadows, sequins catching flashes of purple as faux-fur coats slip from bare shoulders on cold campus nights. In Tell Me Lies, the late 2000s return not as a glossy Y2K fantasy, but as something raw, emotional and quietly messy, and Gen Z’s longing for an era they were too young to live has never been felt so intimately. 

 Diving straight into the wardrobe language of 2007, denim forms the foundation on which its legacy is built. From low-rise bootcut to skinny jeans paired with belts and boots, it functions as both a casual uniform for coffee runs and a kind of emotional armour, offering protection from the baggy-jeaned, messy-haired 2000s heartthrob or in Lucy’s unfortunate case, the narcissistic Stephen DeMarco himself.  Another defining feature of the era is the art of layering, creating an enticing contrast between soft, thoughtful fabrics and the harsh relationship drama that quietly unravels the characters. While Lucy, in season one, embodies a lace-trimmed, creamy palette of fragile 2000s femininity through her cami-centred softness costume designer Charlotte Svenson describes as a ‘cool girl’ image, Bree’s style is positioned as gentler and more layered, shaped by soft knits, modest silhouettes and thrifted touches that give her a Dawson’s Creek-style softness. These choices reflect personality as much as era. 

 Yet on nights out, all the college girls’ styles shift into sequins, shimmer and sparkling eyeshadow, highlighting their duality and creative construction of themed looks. The transition from daytime study to nighttime partying is marked most iconically by Lucy’s disco-like silver camisole and baby brown cropped fur jacket in Season 1, Episode 5 of Tell Me Lies, paired with half-up pigtails and gemmed eyes. Her brief departure from soft-girl campus styling demonstrates how visually significant fashion becomes in signalling emotion, character insight and plot. As Lucy’s relationship with Stephen intensifies, she steps into a more confident, performative femininity, one that mirrors her growing emotional entanglement and the theatrical pull of their dynamic. 

 Not only does fashion in Tell Me Lies reveal the instability between innocence and experience during the liminal space of college, but it also charts character transformation. Returning to Lucy – arguably the show’s most sartorially experimental yet emotionally turbulent figure – her style shifts noticeably before and after meeting Stephen, reflecting how experience and trauma reshape identity. Soft makeup and gentle pastel palettes gradually darken into heavier eyeliner and more overtly sexual silhouettes as Stephen’s grip becomes tighter and more inescapable. In season 3, when Lucy studies the photograph Bree took on the second week of freshman year and sees herself as young, bright, and free, the distance between who she was and who she has become is visible not just emotionally, but sartorially. Before everything fractures, there is always an outfit that remembers who you used to be. Costume design traces Lucy’s psychology as clearly as the script itself, becoming a visual map of her descent.

 Unlike the hyper-stylised aesthetics of many teen dramas, the clothes in Tell Me Lies feel worn, affordable and self-selected. As a series rooted in the American college experience, its fashion must speak to emotionally messy relationships and the fragile confidence of early adulthood. Compared with Euphoria – a young-adult drama saturated in glittering excess and aestheticised trauma, Tell Me Lies returns to something sweatier, subtler and painfully real. Here, damage is not seductive but disorientating, emphasising Lucy’s poor decisions and gradual loss of self. The costumes therefore feel more grounded in real student wardrobes rather than spectacle. It is precisely this realism that makes the nostalgia believable, and, crucially, wearable again.  The gravitational pull that Tell Me Lies exerts on Gen Z lies in a longing for a time before hyper-visibility and constant self-branding, before social media transformed identity into performance. Television has always shaped off-screen wardrobes, but here nostalgic screengrabs become outfit recreations, circulating as mood boards devoted to the show’s captivating fashion. Even flip phones function as retro accessories, signalling presence and simplicity in stark contrast to today’s culture of curated visibility. Early 2000s fashion felt more intimate, with outfits designed to be seen by people you knew, not optimised for likes, views or digital approval. Gen Z, then, is not reviving the era for trends alone, but for the feeling of authenticity it seemed to hold: a time when dressing reflected emotional intensity rather than online performance.

Tell Me Lies captures the early 2000s not only through aesthetics, but through the emotional trajectory woven into its costumes. Here, clothing narrates its own story, speaking even louder in Season 3, and forming part of what has the internet so transfixed. Perhaps, then, it isn’t the 2000s themselves that draw us back, but the possibility of dressing as though our feelings mattered more than our image and using clothes to express who we are rather than letting appearance define how we feel. 

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Edited by Arielle Sam-Alao, Co-Fashion Editor