I religiously watched the programme and remember feeling equally awed and horrified at Trinny and Susannah poking at bits of women's bodies, then giving us the set of rules we should follow for our body shapes. Then the TRANSFORMATION at the end! Classic 'wow moment' programming and it totally captured me.
But 24 years on... how much has it dated?
Well.. not that much really. Obviously the pictures are hilariously noughties (the chokers oh yes 😂) and style has moved on, but we appear to be in a world where fashion rules - whether enforced by the workplace or from personal enforcement - are still firmly holding.
In a 2025 Guardian article Alaina Demopoulos writes about the GenZ habit of turning to a Steve Jobsesque 'uniform' to reduce decision fatigue. In the article Fashion write Freya Drohan commented (Read the article here: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/apr/02/gen-z-work-outfits-uniforms
“There’s a move away from outfits that are rooted in self-expression,” she said. “People are instead leaning toward safeness... I can’t remember the last time I saw someone commuting or in an office in a bright patterned blouse. Maybe they’re simply too tired to think of putting together unique looks when the news cycle and pace of things is so exhausting.”
Companies have vastly relaxed their workplace dress codes in order to persuade people back into the office, but yet 1 in 4 workers report feeling judged by what they wear - predominantly worrying about being taken seriously.
It looks to me that workplace dress rules have disappeared, and we've become responsible for working them out for ourselves - whilst also fearing being judged - which means a shift towards conservatism in fashion.
Alongside that, my algorithm is now full of ads for styling services telling me that I 'shouldn't' wear tight fitting clothes or that I 'shouldn't' still be dressing the same way I was 10 years ago.
I definitely still have things in my wardrobe that I wore 10 years ago which may well be too tight now, but I definitely won't be putting them in the charity bag just because an algorithm tells me I should. I would love to see a shift from ads telling me 'what not to wear' to 'what feels like me' which seems like a much better rule to live by.
