8 fashion, beauty & bonkers trends we can't believe we subscribed to in the 90s… how many unlock childhood memories?

The Irish Sun

12-07-2025

DO YOU clearly remember Oasis and Blur battling for supremacy in the music charts?
Were you wracked with sobs when
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Sun In, the spray-in product designed to lighten hair
If so, you probably
There is certain to be a long list of nostalgic items that take you straight back to those days - pining for your misspent youth.
Here, Nikki Watkins lists eight things you'll almost certainly remember if you were at school during the 1990s, that will bring a lump to your choker-clad throat.
1. Butterfly clips, Sun In and hair mascara
Hairstyles in comprehensives up and down the UK, in the 90s, was certainly a 'vibe.'
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The ideal look for barnets was not subtle - the gaudier the better.
Multi-coloured plastic butterfly clips scattered through your locks? Check.
Hair mascara in a plethora of garish colours streaked liberally? Check.
Sun In, the spray-in product designed to lighten hair, but dyeing it a specific tiger-hued orange? Check. What a time to be alive.
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2. Jelly Bands and tattoo chokers
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90s kids stacked their arms with plastic bracelets, conspicuously named 'shag bands.'
Credit: Geoff Moore/REX/Shutterstock
These were heady days when the most sought-after jewellery was cheap, garish and plastic.
Want to look like you have a tattoo the circumference of your neck? No worries, the most popular choker around looked exactly like that.
And alongside this tacky neck adornment, 90s kids were stacking their arms with plastic bracelets.
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The colour of these thin bangles were imbued with, mainly sexual, meanings that were different from school to school, but the basics were if the opposite gender snapped one of yours: they fancied you.
3. Alcopops, the sweeter the better
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Hooch was a very popular alcopop in the 1990s.
Credit: Alamy
So drinking is illegal until the age of 18, sure.
But there was always a naughty lad who had a house party- and this get-together was always, inexplicably, filled with the sugariest alcopops known to man.
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If us 90s kiddos ever catch sight of the alcopop big hitters: Reef, Hooch, Breezers or their more sophisticated cousin Archer's peach schnapps with lemonade, we are sent spinning back to a nostalgic world filled with the ghosts of terrible decisions.
4. Just 17, Bliss, Smash Hits and More magazines
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Bliss, Mizz, Girl Talk and Just 17 were popular magazines in the nineties
Credit: Not known, clear with picture desk
A glimpse of the nostalgic cover of
And there is not one millennial worth their bucket hat who can deny having their mind blown by racy teen magazine More's sex position of the fortnight. The illustrated sex advice made schoolgirls fall about laughing. Sex, gross!
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With the benefit of hindsight, the images are about as saucy as a cave-painting.
5. Puffer jackets with basic wording
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Mr. Spliffy jackets were popular in the 1990s with rebellious kids
Credit: Paddywear
If your parents had enough money to buy you a cool jacket for school - you were flying in the popularity stakes.
And nothing had more street cred than a plain, shiny black polyester bomber jacket with the name of, inexplicably, a construction brand like Caterpillar. But for extra street cred you had the OG of jackets - Mr. Spliffy.
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The coat was adorned with an embroidered small man smoking a suspicious looking cigarette.
Sadly it would inevitably be confiscated by the first teacher to catch sight of it - but the street cred would remain throughout your tenure at school.
If you've got an old jacket from school lying in a box somewhere, a savvy Vinted seller has revealed
6. MSN Messenger
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MSN Messenger was a precursor to texting
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The sight of the
This was a basic instant messaging platform by Microsoft that you could use on the dial-up internet of your family computer to contact people you knew from school - in a time when there were no mobiles or 'texting.'
It was a great way to waste hours after school- until you were kicked off because your parents needed to make a phone call. Back in these dark ages you couldn't use the blower and the internet together.
There really was nothing quite like dashing home from lessons to hop on MSN to talk to the mates you just spent the entire day with.
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7. Jane Norman placcy bags to hold your PE kit
Aside from being able to recite the words to Wonderwall - there was nothing that would set you up as the epitome of cool quite like carrying your PE kit in a Jane Norman carrier bag.
The clothes shop may have disappeared from high streets in 2018 - but 90s girls that carried one in a garishly bright colour in the 90s were the bearers of social clout.
8. Record Of Achievement
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The National Record of Achievement was given to school leavers in the 90s
Credit: Alamy
It was implied heavily by our teachers that if we did not fill this hefty folder with a range of achievements from academic successes like GCSE certificates to lesser scholastic merits (hello, white swimming badge)- that we would never be welcomed into the workforce.
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And hasn't it served us Millennials well?
Want a job in a pub, aged 18? The pleather-clad folder came with.
Trying for your first office job in your 20s? of course they want to see that you got your Duke of Edinburgh bronze award in 1997.