Fashion
people never believe that our reasons for liking things come down to something
as simple and predictable as math. It’s all in our instincts, right? But
there’s one simple algorithm that neatly explains why a rampant nostalgia for
the nineties is running through the zeitgeist now. All you do is take today’s
date, 2015, and subtract 25 (the age of today’s rising designers). Result:
1990, of course!
There’s
a coming of age in which every generation finds itself reminiscing about its
childhood, pondering what fashion was like in the days they can barely
remember. Christian Dior, born in 1905, romanticized the Edwardiana of his
mother’s day. Yves Saint Laurent, who was born in 1936, looked back on the
forties. Tom Ford, born in 1961, has been working through his obsession with
the sixties and early seventies for his whole career.
And
so it goes, for today’s nineties kids. What are those vague memories of Mommy
making sandwiches in a slip dress while you played in front of Power Rangers,
Full House, and Pokémon? What was that black pantsuit she was always wearing
when she rushed home from work to tuck you into bed? Do you remember sticking
your feet into her New Balance trainers and staggering around her bedroom as a
toddler? Verifying these semi-remembered images is tantalizingly difficult.
Nineties fashion reporting lies mostly beyond the reach of Google, which was
only created in 1998.
But
lo! There are plenty of people who do remember the nineties out there—the
designers who are now in their mid-40s and at the top of the tree. Apply the
math again (subtract 25 from 2015) and we discover that Phoebe Philo, Nicolas
Ghesquière, Raf Simons, Stella McCartney, Riccardo Tisci, and Gucci’s new
creative director, Alessandro Michele, among others, were all in their 20s—out
there, living it up at raves and underground clubs—in the nineties.
It’s
perfectly logical, then, that so many references to the decade have started to
resonate through fashion now. On the one hand, there’s a generation of
designers growing up with a rediscovered reverence for nineties Galliano, who
are researching David Sims, Craig McDean, and Corinne Day’s photographs of
fresh-faced Kate Moss, Kristen McMenamy, Emma Balfour, and the “waifs.” And on
the other, there are the eyewitnesses who are looking back on a time in their
lives that represented spontaneity, freedom, individuality, and the thrill of
ransacking the cheapest racks at the flea market for something cool to throw
together.
Nothing
ever looks the same the second time around, obviously. Once you’re keyed into
it, though, what else but nineties teen spirit can explain the near absence of
makeup and the flowing, undone hair at the Fall 2015 shows? Why is Alessandro
Michele making such a hit with young customers, straight off the bat, by
filtering Gucci through a geeky, beanie-hatted, downplayed, almost market-stall
vintage-y sensibility? Aren’t Phoebe Philo’s satin lingerie-dresses with their
ribbon-tie belts telling us something? Or the slip dresses Rag & Bone
crammed on top of pants (so nineties style) in its show?
When
it comes to young designers, the homages are even more frank. Vetements’s Demna
Gvasalia and his collective of friends are enjoying runaway success
rechanneling the deconstructed attitude of nineties-era Martin Margiela. Marta
Marques and Paulo Almeida, showing greasy grunge hair, flashes of metallic gold
Helmut Lang-ish tops, and rough-cut Christian Lacroix floral brocades, admit to
serving a salad of nineties references, chopped up from copies of The Face and
i-D they never saw the first time around. So popular is it with girls, they can
hardly keep up.
But
let’s cut this situation another way. Is this nineties feeling a fad, a mere
mechanical function of the date on the clock? That would be to discount the emotion
running beneath it, the instinct factor that distinguishes a seasonal blip from
something with the makings of a movement. Combine the impulses of two
generations—the one that has interest in obeying existing fashion rules, and
the other that may be kicking against working within them—and what do we have?
Something about what’s happening—the plea for casualness, youth, and a bit of
raw-edged reality—reads as a deeply felt backlash against the
Photoshop-perfect, relentlessly paced fashion system.
In the
nineties there was more space to be human; ideas and personalities had time to
develop. It was cool to be anonymous and just get on with your own thing with
your friends. Sometimes we need to look back to go forward. Maybe it’s as basic
as that.
Helmut Lang Spring 1997 / Marques ‘ Almeida Fall 2015
Photo: (from left) Courtesy of firstVIEW.com; Courtesy of Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com
Maison Margiela Spring 2001 / Vetements Fall 2015
Photo: (from left) Courtesy of firstVIEW.com; Courtesy of Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com
Perry Ellis Spring 1993 / 3.1 Phillip Lim Fall 2015
Photo: (from left) Courtesy of Condé Nast Archive; Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com
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