20 years later ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ lives on — but her outfits do not

Here’s what’s happening for Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s 20th anniversary.

USA TODAY

Buffy may have been a Slayer, but she didn’t always slay her outfits.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and fans are celebrating the impactful show and everything it has given us since it debuted in 1997. But one fan would like to remind us of an important fact: The fashion of 1997 was not that great.

Entertainment writer Rebecca Pahle has been shedding light on the unfortunate Puka shell necklaces and peasant blouses that appearance on screen through the “Bad Buffy Outfits” Twitter account, which the Film Journal International and Pajiba editor says she created on “a whim.”

“I (wrote about) Willow’s (Alyson Hannigan) terrible hats, which reminded me of the bad other outfits, and I thought ‘eh, I’ll start this Twitter account,'” she says. The resulting account, which tweets screenshots of the regrettable fashions from the show with jokes and commentary, has amassed more than 7,000 followers in a little over a month.

We talked to Pahle, 32, about Xander’s (Nicholas Brendon) terrible mushroom shirts, the enduring power of Buffy and seeing the show differently in 2017.

When did you first watch Buffy?

I got into Buffy pretty late. It was well past the time everyone else had started freaking out about it — during the break between Seasons 5 and 6, when I was in high school. I caught a rerun and was instantly obsessed — I watched two a night so I could catch up before the Season 6 premiere. (Oh, the days before binge watching!) … I was a pretty intense fan for a…