Welcome to 2019, where everything we used to make fun of is cool again—including looks from the early aughts. This has truly become a year of repurposing previously vetoed looks (especially, as I said, from the early 2000s) and turning them into sartorially acceptable ensembles. At the launch of Florence, Millie Bobby Brown’s new makeup line, the actress did just that by giving us a little throwback to a simpler time: 2001. Dressed in a bedazzled Canadian tuxedo, Millie Bobby Brown gave the world a taste of both her new makeup and skincare collection as well as her budding fashion icon status.
Not many people can pull off a bedazzled all-denim outfit—complete with bedazzled white heels!—but Millie Bobby Brown is, I guess, one of them. The Balmain ensemble somehow looked quite chic on the Stranger Things actress, and I’m really not mad about it. Brown wore the bedazzled denim top tucked into a bedazzled denim skirt, which gave me such flashbacks to 2001, I’m not sure I wasn’t actually put in a time machine and sent back to the early aughts. Seriously, think Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears at the 2001 American Music Awards, but updated for 2019.
As much as I respect the sartorially-acceptable version of JT and Britney’s iconic all-denim look, I can’t help but wonder how we got here. It really seems that everything in 2019 has either a vintage flare or an ugly-but-on-purpose vibe. Even Millie Bobby Brown—who’s still only 15, might I add—is taking cues from celebrity red carpet looks that are famous for being, well, ugly. I’m not saying I think it’s a bad thing, but the evolution from universally hating the Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears Canadian tuxedo outfits to actually recreating them (to an extent) in 2019 is truly baffling to me. Fashion is weird, man.
Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.
Though Millie Bobby Brown’s wildly 2000s look caught my eye, the actual star of the day was her new skincare and makeup line. Florence by Mills has officially launched, and it’s basically makeup made for Gen-Z by a Gen-Z celebrity. Millie Bobby Brown is already becoming a mogul—and she can’t even get a driver’s license yet. She might be respecting the OGs with her early aughts ensembles, but the OGs better be respecting her hustle as well.