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Fashion icons including Stella McCartney, Alexa Chung and Amelia Dimoldenberg gathered on London’s South Bank to celebrate the launch of In Vogue: The 90s – a new documentary series that tells the story of Nineties fashion through the eyes of Vogue editors Anna Wintour, Edward Enninful, Hamish Bowles and Tonne Goodman.
“It was such a great time, such an authentic time for fashion,” said Edward Enninful OBE, who spent six years as editor-in-chief of British Vogue. “I liked the rock and roll attitude we had back then – anything was possible, let’s go for it, it’s an attitude I think we need more and more.”
The stars agreed that the Nineties was a hedonistic time, where high-octane creativity was off the scale, cultures were merging and life became high contrast.
“Everything was changing, whether it was John Galliano, McQueen or Madonna,” said Anna Wintour DBE, Vogue’s long standing editor-in-chief. “It was a moment where all kinds of cultures were coming together. It was a very creative time, and that’s why designers and journalists keep going back to that period.”
Wintour and Enninful agreed it was this creativity that today’s designers need to hang on to – it’s what’s at the core of the arts, and what draws us together.
When asked what her wildest and most memorable moment of the Nineties was, British fashion designer Stella McCartney CBE declared: “You know I don’t remember it – because it was that wild and that good.”
It seems some fashion icons are worried this world of inhibition and unapologetic hedonism is lost in the digital age.
“There wasn’t social media [in the Nineties], so you didn’t have people calling you out all the time,” noted British-American designer Harris Reed.
“I think people now are too scared to wear something too risqué because of the comments or what people will share online, but when I talk to iconic models or people who were going to parties back then, they say it was great because you didn’t give a flying F – you just has the best time.”
When asked what she believes to be the single most significant trend from the Nineties that still influences fashion today, Wintour simply proclaimed: “Creativity.”
There are countless anecdotes and moments from the archives that sum up the era for Vogue insiders.
When Linda Evangelista famously said in an interview with Vogue in 1990 that she wouldn’t “get out of bed for less than $10,000”, the former supermodel, now 59, was exhibiting the free-spirited and unapologetic hedonism of the decade – an attitude that wouldn’t probably be indulged today.
It wasn’t all about looking back with rose-tinted glasses, however. When asked which trend should be left in the Nineties, Wintour laughed and concluded: “Probably too many to mention.”
In Vogue: The 90s is streaming on Disney+
