A few months ago, a video crossed my FYP of Juicy Couture tracksuits at Sam’s Club. In less than 24 hours, I was there, digging through a table of discount black and pink velour. Then I discovered a treasure trove of “Juicy by Juicy Couture”—the brand’s diffusion line for JCPenney—some even on the clearance rack.

My nearly 30-year-old heart is full. And very comfortable.

I can’t be sure exactly the first time I spotted a Juicy Couture tracksuit, but I do remember the moment I realized I needed one. I was an awkward middle schooler, sneaking cigarettes behind the bathroom at the yearly carnival. The cool girl from the grade above me was there, flocked by friends and boys who wanted to be in her presence. In my head, it plays like this scene in Thirteen, except she never asks me to go shopping. The camera of my brain panning down us both, her in her tiny navy velour outfit, with her belly ring and heart sticker tan line on display. Me in whatever stupid thing I put on that morning. It was like I was seeing myself for the first time, painfully aware that I was not in the same league as she was. That feeling and an obsession with Juicy never left.

Velour Dreams

In the 90s, two friends in LA had a dream of upscale loungewear. Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor invested just $200 to start Juicy Couture, eventually turning it into a multimillion-dollar brand synonymous with the 2000s. Long before you could market to millions via influencers, the duo used their proximity to Hollywood and paparazzi to their advantage. They sent out jumpsuits to celebrities and soon, velour was everywhere.

In the early aughts, nearly every celebrity wore Juicy, whether they were running errands or walking the red carpet. JLo donned an adorable pink short set in the I’m Real music video. For Britney Spears’ 2004 wedding to Kevin Federline, the bridal party wore matching Juicy. You’ll spot it on Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls, multiple characters in Hustlers, and just recently, Juicy sweats are seen in Saltburn, set in 2006. “Once I was at the Beverly Hills crosswalk and looked around and every single person was wearing a Juicy tracksuit,” co-founder Nash-Taylor told WWD in 2020.

Arguably the most iconic name to rock the brand was Paris Hilton. She had a jumpsuit for every day of the month—no really, she still has an entire closet dedicated to Juicy. When Paris and Nicole Richie starred in The Simple Life in 2003, the brand made up the majority of their wardrobes. Hilton told Vogue that after that show, both her and Juicy’s fame rose to another level. As Tatler Magazine put it, “Juicy Couture became a status symbol and the uniform of 'new money'.”

That uniform made its way from LA to my small town in Pennsylvania. The appeal was obvious. Not only were the velour matching sets comfortable, they were cute too. You felt like you were in sweatpants but you looked hot. They looked good on everyone’s body type, hugging and accentuating curves.

The tracksuits could be demure, just a soft blue with a simple J zipper pull as the only indication of what brand they were. But where they shined was when they sported a sparkly “Juicy” across the butt—I have a vivid memory of seeing Carmen Electra wearing Juicy pants on her reality show with Dave Navarro. At the time, I couldn’t Google what Juicy meant, but I made a mental note to figure it out, having no idea that a few years later I would be coveting it.

I wanted a tracksuit, but I really wanted a purse. Or better yet, both to match. The purses were particularly popular since my school’s dress code left little chance at personality. (Imagine my surprise when I got to college and learned it’s not the norm for public schools to have dress codes that strict.) The purses matched the outfits, being made from velour and usually printed with a giant Juicy logo. There was no mistaking it, you were wearing Juicy.

Trend Hopper

My style has always been confusing. As far back as I can remember, I swung between wearing boys' clothes to the girliest, skimpiest fit I could put together. (That’s still how my closet looks today, FWIW.) I owned as much Hollister as I did Hot Topic, following trends while also rebelling against them. I wanted to be like my cool older siblings, whose style I mimicked exactly for years, likely to their disdain. I went through a phase of wearing deep red eyeshadow under my eyes a la Zacky Vengeance from Avenged Sevenfold (to SCHOOL, I might add). But I also wanted to be Kristin Cavallari from Laguna Beach. I wanted to be that girl from the carnival.

And that’s exactly how Juicy Couture got me. It was the perfect embodiment of the effortlessly cool girl that I felt miles away from being. I needed to get my grubby little paws on that soft velour.

Juicy may have been cheaper than a lot of the brands celebrities were wearing, but it was far from affordable. It cost way more than my parents were willing to spend on their daughter’s loungewear (fair). When I finally got a job at Wendy’s, I took my first check to TJ Maxx where I acquired a dark burgundy purse with faux leather letters and gold chains hanging from the front. It was $100, nearly the entire check. I loved it. The chains broke almost instantly.

Around the same time, I spent months scrolling eBay looking for tracksuits. Finally, I found one. It was white, and emblazoned across the butt was the word Juicy in gold, glittery letters. It was beautiful. Christmas morning, I tore into the package and put it on immediately. I wore that one white suit—that quickly ended up with a cigarette-burned knee—into the ground. Though I did find an embarrassing photo of me holding up my purse, I sadly couldn’t find a single photo in my jumpsuit. I’m afraid it died with all the other gems that lived on Myspace.

Eventually, the white tracksuit stopped fitting. The gold letters flaked, the hems were torn and permanently stained from dragging on the ground. Juicy Couture’s reign started to end.

When I got to college, though, one of my roommates had a purple tracksuit that she let me wear to class. It was one last grasp at the brand I coveted and I felt incredible in it, maybe even better than I did in my white suit in high school. Then, an anonymous mean girl Twitter account tweeted that I looked tacky. By that time, I owned two other purses too, including a nearly identical knockoff that my sister got me while traveling. But after that tweet, I stopped wearing Juicy out in public. 

At least, until recently.

As all things do, Juicy went out of fashion and came back in again. Around 2017, collaborations with Urban Outfitters started to pop up. I was working my first job post-college and Juicy still wasn’t in my budget. Slowly since then, it’s been coming back, with cheaper options more widely available now, like the Sams and JCPenney versions I have.

The brand’s actual site is still full, too, with relics of the classic 00s uniform—remember Britney’s Dump Him tee?—and some modern upgrades. Notably, the pants are not quite as low-rise anymore. There you’ll find much cuter styles over the plain ones I have, but they’re still much more expensive. The purses are sadly missing, though. Maybe there’s one still stashed under my bed in my parents’ house.

🏠 The Sims turns 24! Life can be monotonous, so the idea of controlling a character as they wash the dishes, take a shower, and go to work sounds bizarre in theory, but it’s been a success since it was released on February 4, 2000. There are now four Sims base games and seemingly hundreds of expansion packs. There’s just something satisfying about using unlimited cheat codes to make millions of dollars before designing an unrealistic home and doing crazy shit until your neighbor won’t leave or the Grim Reaper comes. Who else put their Sims in the pool and deleted the ladder?

🏫 February 15, 1985: Teenage classic The Breakfast Club is released.
🎀 February 28, 1986: And a year later comes Pretty in Pink, one of two movies John Hughes wrote for Molly Ringwald. She looked back at some of her films in a 2018 New Yorker article.
🤘 February 14, 1992: An SNL skit turns into a movie with Wayne’s World, cementing years of couples Halloween costumes (including my own once). Schwing!
🍭 February 19, 1999: What’s better than Rose McGowan playing a popular, evil high schooler in Jawbreaker? This movie doesn’t get enough credit but it’s on par with Heathers in terms of movies about evil teen girls. I’ve never looked at that candy without hearing Courtney’s words: “I killed the teen dream. Deal with it.”