Key Takeaways
- Carmen Electra returns to her Y2K roots as the face of “Von Dubs,” a limited-edition Von Dutch and Buffalo Wild Wings capsule.
- The five-piece drop includes two trucker hats, a hoodie, a classic T-shirt, and a fitted baby tee, styled with the mismatched colors and paparazzi-era energy Electra championed in the 2000s.
- Von Dutch has increasingly mined its celebrity-fueled early-aughts legacy, when its mesh-backed hats became staples for Electra, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Ashton Kutcher.
Carmen Electra is wearing Von Dutch again—and this time, the Y2K fixture isn’t just digging through her closet. More than two decades after she helped make the brand’s trucker hats part of the early-2000s celebrity uniform, Electra is modeling a new limited-edition capsule built around the very era she helped define.
Dubbed “Von Dubs,” the five-piece collection includes two trucker hats, a hoodie, a classic T-shirt, and a fitted baby tee. The collaboration between Von Dutch and Buffalo Wild Wings dropped Sept. 21, with Electra modeling the pieces in a Los Angeles campaign steeped in mismatched colors and paparazzi-era styling.
People snapped a pic of the former Playboy model in the collection, which arrives alongside the restaurant chain’s temporary Throwback Menu.
Electra is a particularly fitting face for the release. She wore Von Dutch during its original celebrity-fueled run, when the label’s mesh-backed hats showed up on everyone from Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher.
Long before Y2K became a carefully packaged aesthetic, Electra paired the brand’s trucker hats with the sweats, baby tees, and deliberately uncoordinated looks that dominated tabloid photos.
“It makes absolute and complete sense, due to the fact that I wore Von Dutch snapbacks and trucker hats in the 2000s and I’ve been on over 150 covers of Playboy worldwide,” Electra told WWD in 2025 while promoting a separate Playboy x Von Dutch collection for Lids.
She also made clear the look wasn’t reserved for campaign shoots. “I’m in my baggy sweats and snapback going to the gym,” she said. “It’s a look I used to rock in the 2000s, then I stopped wearing it for a while, and then it came back again.”
Von Dutch has spent recent years leaning back into that history. Named after mechanic, pinstriper, and custom-culture artist Kenneth “Von Dutch” Howard, the clothing label exploded into the mainstream in the early aughts before oversaturation, knockoffs, and behind-the-scenes turmoil sent its popularity crashing.
That chaotic ascent and decline later became the subject of Hulu’s 2021 documentary series The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For.
Electra previously credited the period’s less-polished approach for its renewed appeal. “The ’90s were about matching everything, but the 2000s were about mismatching everything,” she said. “The colors, the clothing—and that’s what made it really fun.”
