Reinvention and Restlessness. Fashion in the 90s

Colleen Hill

Nineties fashion — from grunge, to Clueless’s Alaia, to Margiela’s new couture — is an essential reference point for contemporary style. This book, created in tandem with an exhibition at The Museum at FIT, documents the changing culture, attitudes, and creatives that ushered in our visual age.

Minimalism. Deconstruction. The rejuvenation of established houses. These are just a few of the concepts that have come to define 1990s fashion. Others include an increased concern with environmentalism, developing technologies and the beginning of the fashion internet, freewheeling historical references, and a predilection for lifting significant styles from other cultures (the issues raised by this ’borrowing’ are reviewed through a contemporary lens). In the twenty years since the decade ended, the fashion world has experienced several nineties revivals.