The best summer fits of the ​’90s and ​’00s according to Brit Cult

Mark Knox is a British pop-culture buff. Raised and living in Lurgan – a provincial town 21 miles from Belfast – the Northern Irish youth worker has an encyclopaedic knowledge of what he deems ​“useless information”. Just as you can age a tree by counting its rings, Mark can date a photo based on the length of Robbie Williams​’s roots.

With a growing fanbase of some 97,000 people, his Instagram account, Brit Cult, has become a perennial mood board for British (and global) cultural connoisseurs, racking up admirers from Corbin Shaw to Addison Rae. Each day, he drops at least one archival photograph from the UK’s 90s and 00s canon of iconography: it’s one of few (active) places you can scour the ​’net and find a photo of So Solid Crew on a shopping spree, the first-gen Skins cast out and about, Amy Winehouse backstage or a wide-eyed and angelic Alexa Chung staring down the lens of a camera without falling victim to some dodgy Y2K website.

Brit Cult was conceived in 2018, with just a handful of Mark’s friends following the account, but he told them to keep it quiet. He began posting more during lockdown, experimenting with a hashtag generator, and before he knew it, the account had become an online phenomenon. The best part? It all comes from a place of pure fandom. His sources? Old mag shoots, BBC stills, press shots and, well, whatever his finely tuned Tumblr and Google algorithms throw up.

Of course, anyone can dredge together a few nostalgic gems, but to churn out the quantity and quality of visual lore he does is no mean feat. Never planned in advance, his choices have a natural consistency – falling under the Cool Britannia (and its offshoots) bracket – although he does admit to having a soft spot for the Noughties era. ​“That’s probably because I’m listening to Charli [xcx] at the moment,” he says.

As a kid, Mark would buy The Mirror every morning, scanning it on the bus to school for images of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty to cut out. It helped him keep his visual world expansive. He watched MTV2 and VH1 Classic, reading NME for his indie-er than thou proclivities, then rinsing Smash Hits, THE FACE, Heat and FHM. ​“When I was about eight, I was talking and talking about pop music, and my mum said to me, ​‘Mark, there’s more to life than pop music,’” he remembers. ​“I was completely perplexed, looking at her, going, ​‘What else is there?’”

In many ways, Brit Cult is his safe space. While he did, himself, dabble in stardom – Mark’s boyband, No Picture Policy, once had their record Bubbles played on BBC Radio Ulster – the 34-year-old dad maintains his fan positionality. Perhaps that’s why Brit Cult feels so real.

So far, we’ve only really known Mark through the captions he writes or an occasional face-to-cam post. Now, it’s time for the big admin reveal. So, to see in the summer – a time when Glasto ​’fits and celebrities in the Med become core inspo – we quizzed Mark on his favourite summertime photos.

There’s a lot to unpack in this, both in terms of fashion and pop culture.

Yeah, I’m wearing that green Lacoste shirt right now. I really like fashion, but I like wearable fashion. I’m more interested in what people are wearing on the front row than the runway.

I love those Burberry shorts – that nova check was a very English thing, which wasn’t going on here [in Lurgan]. When I thought of Burberry, I’d think of Pete Doherty and his scarf, but I didn’t know it was British.

In this picture, you can tell that Noel hasn’t come from money. You know, he’s got a bit of money by this point, so he’s decided he’s going to buy the Burberry shorts. He’s gonna wear a green Lacoste polo with it. He looks like a rock star, yet he looks like a Brit abroad, like anyone else. And Meg, she looks so much like their daughter. Those crazy trousers are giving. This is definitely Noel’s worst haircut.

Wow. This almost looks like it could be in a Chloé collection today.

Yeah, you can see that’s where they’re taking influence from. This was the year Layer Cake and Alfie came out. It’s so current: the massive belt is back in. It’s boho, but again totally wearable. She’s ground for Glastonbury. She can get muddy and she’s glamorous. She’s wearing Uggs in the mud. How does she make a lanyard look cool? Lanyards are normally reserved for teachers.

That’s the year Oasis, Amy Winehouse, Muse and Paul McCartney played. I remember watching it on TV, thinking Oasis were incredible. Looking back, it’s one of the worst performances of all time. Liam has no voice at all. I was 14, going ​“Wow, this is amazing.”

Yikes. This must have been the first wave of blokey buzzcuts, before the late-2010s revival. What do you make of Jamie’s look?

It’s so wearable! I’m wearing something very similar. Obviously, he’s modelling at this point. I became aware of him around this time as Keira’s boyfriend. Then he was in Marie Antoinette [his screen debut]. Him being from Northern Ireland, as well – I just love the whole thing. The Converse, the T‑shirt, the haircut. There’s something about it that’s quite hard.

Keira as well. Those slouchy boots were such a thing. The two of them always look thrown together yet really cool. I genuinely believe they just grabbed the first things they had and put them on. I don’t reckon they had any shitty clothes in their house.

The sausage hats and boho Beckham era!

Yeah, I don’t think it should come back in, but I’ve seen quite a few people in jeans and flip-flops on TikTok. I think it’s why this image really stood out to me. I love his T‑shirt. I’ve been searching on Vinted, ​‘T‑shirt number’. There’s something about T‑shirts with numbers that feels very 2000s. I love the roll he has on it and that brown belt.

She looks incredible: it’s very, very Sienna Miller-esque. It was a complete reinvention, so far away from the Posh look. This is post hanging up the microphone in her solo career, just embracing fashion. You see people who try to reinvent themselves, and the Beckhams don’t do it. For someone who was a British pop star whose solo career never took off around the world, she really took off in fashion.

And now, Kate Moss, shot on the rooftop of CK’s New York HQ.

I love Kate Moss. Like, I love Kate Moss. She’s a supermodel, she’s otherworldly in some sense, but she also looks like someone from your town. Anyone can wear this, but not everybody can look like Kate Moss. I think the photo almost gives you the illusion that you can. It seems attainable.

Also, I loved that whenever she did her collections for Topshop, it felt like anyone could buy the stuff. She always mixed high-street fashion with what she was doing. I also love how little she’s done in terms of media. She recently did a podcast I listened to, but she doesn’t do a lot of interviews. I know so much yet so little about her at the same time.

This look is so strong. What did this movie mean to you?

I absolutely love this film. I probably like the fashion more than the story. I’m a big fan of Danny Dyer in general. I probably first watched The Business because – a strange style reference – I saw Joey Essex in TOWIE wearing them. I was just Googling for shorts and I saw this picture.

Although some ​’80s football casuals dress like this, it doesn’t just look like you’re going to watch the football. It’s sporty without being too casual, a nod to the past but kind of current. There isn’t an era where people weren’t wearing those Fila jackets.

Iconic. What drew you to this story?

So, I made a playlist at the start of the year called ​‘2001, the best year ever’. I know this was in 2000, but that sort of era is the peak of everything I love. Britpop was carrying on, Oasis were still around and Stereophonics were making big tunes. Then there was the sort of post-Britpop, like Coldplay and Starsailor.

Even the way THE FACE has done the font. I think Julian and Noel look like they could be in The Thrills and all those early-2000s bands. They also look like The Strokes before The Strokes had arrived [the band’s first EP was in 2001]. A lot of British people dressed like this after, but they were already doing it.

They look rock and roll in a way that’s not just throwback mod like Noel Gallagher was in the mid-2000s. I used to wear a leather cuff on my wrist the way Noel is. I got mine from Topman; it takes me back. I even love the colouring of the photos. The Pacman T‑shirt. I wish I could grow my hair and look as cool as those boys do.