Milan Style

Kate Moss designs clothes for Topshop – 2007

High street collaborations – a way to get some catwalk stardust on the cheap – come as standard for Generation Y. They were pioneered by H&M (the first one was with Karl Lagerfeld in 2004), but Topshop eclipsed its rival by getting Moss – a Y style icon if ever there was one – on board in 2007. Reportedly Moss was paid £3m to work with the brand – a fee that paid off. She is credited with increasing sales at Topshop’s parent company by 2.1%, and her promotion of the collection (she appeared in the windows of the Oxford Circus store) nearly caused a riot.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Kate Moss launches her Topshop clothes range at Oxford Street flagship store. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features

Tavi sits in the front row – 2009

Fashion bloggers revolutionised style writing – showing images of “real” people wearing clothes in what was a marked contrast to super-styled models posing for glossy magazine pages. One of these bloggers was Tavi Gevinson, who started Style Rookie as a pre-teen girl in 2008. She dressed in high fashion and wrote her thoughts on her blog – and soon 30,000 people were looking at it each day. In 2009, Gevinson was given a front row seat at a Dior show, where she wore an oversized bow on her head, prompting the disgruntled fashion editor behind her to complain on Twitter. While Gevinson has gone on to pursue an acting career, blogging contemporaries such as Style Bubble’s Susie Lau are now established members of the fashion pack.

Lady Gaga wears the meat dress – 2010

There are some fashion moments that are burned on your retina, and Lady Gaga’s appearance in a dress made of meat is one of them. She wore it at the MTV Awards in 2010, and it was a talking point for weeks. Since then, the dress has prompted a Simpsons’ parody and been exhibited in the rock’n’roll hall of fame. Gaga was, of course, by this point an icon of extreme style, following in the tradition of Isabella Blow and predating street style star Anna Dello Russo. She appeals to the Ys on the extrovert side of the style spectrum, and judging by the size of her Little Monsters fanbase, there are quite a lot of them.

Kanye West wears a woman’s blouse from Céline at Coachella – 2011

image:tea length wedding dresses

FacebookTwitterPinterest Kanye West at Coachella in 2011. Photograph: Chelsea Lauren/WireImage

When it comes to gender, labels are increasingly irrelevant in a millennial world and clothes are a crucial part of that. Before terms such as “gender fluid” became part of common parlance, Kanye West – a man not averse to the outer reaches of fashion – was already quietly experimenting. He wore a blouse from Céline, a womenswear house, for his performance at Coachella in 2011. A$AP Rocky andYoung Thug followed, with Young Thug saying 90% of his wardrobe was womenswear.

#TBT starts to trend – 2012

Generation Y are digitally minded of course, but with the majority of them able to remember a pre-digital time, they come with nostalgia built in. Hence the popularity of Throw Back Thursday, or #TBT – the Instagram hashtag that plugs into nostalgia, be it your own (you at school throwing a Posh Spice move, in the case of Kim Kardashian), or a retro image of a gold-plated style icon such as Kate Moss or Mick Jagger. Then there’s nostalgia-themed Instagram feeds such asjanebirkindaily and 70sdaily. The 70s, before Ys were born, is their decade of choice.

image:informal wedding dresses

Generation Instagram: how nail painting and yoghurt eating became big earners

Read more

The Stan Smith is rereleased – 2014

Any survey of the feet of passersby on public transport in 2016 will show at least a few pairs of Stan Smiths. If all sorts of shoes have been embraced by millennials (from chunky Underground sandals to ballet pumps), the Stan Smith now has a ubiquity that sees them worn whatever style the rest of your outfit might pledge allegiance to. Generation Y like a certain democracy when it comes to style (how do you think the skinny jean has stuck around so long?) and with an added bit of a pedigree from an actual sportsperson, the Stan Smiths ticked all the right boxes.