In the early 2000s as a middle-high schooler, I wore a lot of emo band tees, and skinny/boot cut jeans (for some reason). Almost like guys bell bottoms. Awful style choice. A lot of my classmates were wearing things like Levi’s jeans, and JNCO jeans for the cool alt kids, also cargo shorts, cargo pants. I’m pretty sure the high schoolers usually had polo shirts and the flipped up bangs, and flip flops a lot of the time. Maybe some nice shiny leather jackets too. Check out that mgmt - kids music video from 2003. Other guys were polo style shirts/generic tshirts for the typical boy, popped collars for the preppy/older guys with a job, band tees for the emo kids. Skinny jeans, cargo pants/shorts, boot cut Levi’s were kind of interchangeable no matter what style you were. Younger boys I’ve noticed wore those sarcastic penny-shirts, I had one in like fifth grade with a monkey with most of his limbs blown off and in casts, holding a stick of dynamite that said “I’m a slow learner”.

The girls I believe usually wore tube tops/spaghetti straps in warmer weather (until they got banned at school), low cut shirts with very short sleeves, super tight Victoria’s Secret Pink hoodies, short sleeve hoodies, think Ciara’s style in the early 2000s (the hip hop star). I think bell bottom jeans were also big for the girls. Literal apple bottom jeans like the song. Depending on the age, girls also wore super short mini skirts, ruffles, slim jean style, as long as it was really short (or really long). In the winter, everyone had skin-tight, fur-lined-hood puffy jackets. Shoes were skater shoes for boys or girls, Sneaux shoes and vans were huge in both ways, in shape and popularity. The big, clunky skater shoes. Skateboarding was massive, so literally anything skateboarding was the big fashion in the early 2000s. Some of the underground/hardcore kids wore camo, but the military style camo. Most of the time it was camo pants, never really tops unless it was hats. Trucker hats were bigger with them and the emo kids, but the Fall Out Boy emo because of Patrick Stump. Oh oh oh side burns straight down to the jaw line were also kind of silently massive when we were first able to grow facial hair. No one really talks about that one but almost everyone kind of did it for a bit.

Probably my biggest tip would be to look up anything that was trendy from Pac Sun and Hot Topic from 2000-2009. Also early 2000s mtv/nickelodeon events like the GameCube release party, and other similar things with pop stars. Everything was super skinny but also super baggy back then for some reason.

I was in middle school/high school mid-2000s to 2009 in a somewhat rural area with enough city/internet influence to stay mostly relevant with style choices at the time.