1990s Vintage Fashion – Models, Designers, 90s Grunge fashion

1990s Vintage Fashion, as a contrast to the eighties, was supposed to be about quiet, neutral clothes, and cerebral catwalk creations.

Calvin Klein presented models in simple pulled back plaits, as opposed to the bouffant hairdos that came before, and they wore uncomplicated clothes in beige, stone, dust, sand, pebble, and whatever other words you can think of for “small particles of rock”.

Yohji Yamamoto wool suit c 1990. ellenm1, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Even make up was “No Makeup” – a time consuming ritual that involved piling on many shades of rock and blending them to look naturally flawless, and as if you hadn’t a speck of cosmetics sitting on your face.

Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Margiela and Hussein Chalayan buried, shredded, deconstructed and puzzled us with their garments.

And the waif was in. Dubbed “Heroin Chic” models drifted down the catwalk looking pale, skinny and snappable, with rings of khol around sorrowful eyes.

1990s Vintage Fashion-Supermodels

Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Nadja Auermann, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christie Turlington formed the nucleus of the highly paid and highly worshipped supermodels who supposedly wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000.

1990s Vintage Fashion-Riot Girl

The alternative to this oasis of calm was the Riot Grrrl – a rock guitar feminist heroine who dashed around in her bra or bare breasts with slogans scrawled all over (well before Femen came along). Sometimes they also wore clothes but they were always angry.

The Spice Girls

Or the alternative to the alternative was the pop group the Spice Girls.

They mooted a confused kind of feminism called Girl Power and were carefully styled, wearing either sportswear, baby girl outfits, cocktail dresses, leopard print or something small and tasteless, according to each singer’s character: their nicknames were “Sporty Spice”, “Baby Spice”, “Posh Spice”, “Scary Spice”, and “Ginger Spice”.

These outfits mirrored fashion, as crop tops and sportswear were big, as was leopard print, childish dresses, and tastelessness abounded.

Grunge

Another influence on clothes was the Grunge scene which came out of Seattle and featured bands like Hole, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam.

Grunge’s music was dirty and angsty, with distorted guitar and howling lyrics. The clothes to go with it in 1990s Vintage Fashion matched – your makeup should look applied with an unsteady hand at three in the morning, then slept in for few days – your pretty vintage party dress should be worn over leggings and with big stompy boots, then also slept in for a few days.

Actually, the sleeping part was totally optionally, but you certainly shouldn’t take it off. A simple, low-key way of achieving the 1990s Vintage Fashion grunge look was to tie a checked shirt around your waist, over your black leggings, black boots and a band t-shirt though.

Read more on 1990s Fashion

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• 1990s
• A CENTURY OF FASHION
• DESIGNER
• models
• WOMEN