“I feel like the 2000s was about just having fun,” Cothran, a 23-year-old creator living in Nashville, said. “There weren’t any rules. You could wear pointless scarves in the summertime and put a dress over your jeans, and it was considered cool.”

These influencers' adoration for the time period is a combination of nostalgia for their youth and acceptance of the carefree attitude it portrays.

“I was born in 2001, so the time I was growing up was the peak of 2000s style, with iconic celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie taking the center stage of fashion,” said Porter, who has more than 60,000 TikTok followers. “Now as an adult, re-creating these outfits creates a really nostalgic feeling for me personally, which I think a lot of people in my age group can relate to.”

Via Tiktok

“I think quarantine had a play into the styles coming back due to [the] class of 2020 romanticizing their childhood because of how fast it was lost. I know I wasn’t the only one binge-watching Mean Girls,” Maisel-Chmaj, a college student from Southern California, told me. “I think when we were stuck in time inside our houses during the pandemic, all we could do was look back.”

The affection Maisel-Chmaj has for the 2000s has helped her become a success on TikTok, where she has labelled herself as a "It girl from the 2000s." She started making films on her love of Y2K fashion, and since then, about 600,000 people have subscribed to her channel. The 19-year-old began by recording videos on TikTok about thrifting. Maisel-Chmaj claimed that she was drawn to the adorable, high-quality apparel from the 1990s and 2000s in thrift shops; she particularly favoured the glitter decals. She now works in a thrift shop and operates a personal online secondhand clothing store for clothing from the 1990s and 2000s.

Via Google

Her 2000s-themed “get ready with me” videos get the most views. In a recent video, she picks out a lime green low-rise skirt, a matching baby doll tank top, and a flower choker (she basically looks like Mandy Moore in the music video for “Candy”). In her comments, followers beg her for advice on how to find the perfect pair of lace-up Mudd jeans.

Via Tiktok

For Cothran, her pandemic hobby of experimenting with fashion turned into a career once she began embracing Y2K style. She used to watch her mom, whom she called a “2000s queen,” get dressed when she was a child, and when she started posting about fashion on TikTok about a year and a half ago, she began to play around with some of her mom’s old clothing. Dressing in the style made her feel “more confident than I ever had,” and she wasn’t the only one who loved it. The more she posted about Y2K fashion, the more her views and following skyrocketed.

“I felt like I was finding myself and, at the same time, inspiring others to do the same,” she said.

Via YouTube

Y2K fashion is now not only Cothran’s main personal style but also the theme of her page, which has more than 500,000 followers.

“I think without TikTok and being inspired to play with different fashion eras and aesthetics, I would have never discovered my love for 2000s fashion,” she said.

It’s not just Y2K-focused creators who are finding success on the platform. Even more generalist fashion TikTokers say they have noticed their 2000s-themed videos are wildly popular. Mikayla Stephenson, a 23-year-old student from Houston, said that even though she hasn’t posted that many Y2K-inspired fashion videos, the response they get blows the others out of the water.