The Luxury of Looking a Mess

Ms. Goodman, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011.”

I’ve been obsessing over this year’s return to relevance of a fashion brand that I wore 20 years ago: 7 for All Mankind. It’s once again selling the low-rise jeans that made it famous, now alongside the rest of the 2006 uniform: hip-hugger belts, tiny jackets with princess shoulders and giant, comically impractical platform heels. In a runway show during New York Fashion Week last month, it doubled down on hyping a self-consciously 2006 tousled party girl.

These deliberately messy clothes feel deeply familiar to me. I wore them all the first time around. My........

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