The Global Wardrobe section, in its plywood framing.
Details
January 19 – April 17, 2022
The Museum at FIT
Special Exhibitions Gallery
New York, NY
Links & Downloads
Organizing an exhibition on 1990s fashion could be considered an arbitrary pursuit. Styles do not begin and end in a neat, ten-year cycle. Nevertheless, those working in fashion — designers, historians, journalists, and others — tend to define each decade by a handful of prevailing silhouettes or a few important designers, attempting to convey the feeling of an era in a concise way. Fashion curators also partake in this “decade-ism.” Part of a curator’s role is to identify and confirm what many people already know about fashion, but it is also to challenge such notions, highlighting the nuances and contradictions that characterize dress as a complex form of expression. There is perhaps no better decade than the 1990s to explore the fast-paced and sometimes incongruous nature of fashion trends.
Reinvention and Restlessness: Fashion in the Nineties considered this compelling period in fashion — a time that was filled with hope for the future and yet fraught with anxiety. It documented a decade that not only heralded the end of a century but also the end of a millennium. The exhibition engaged with eight important trends that helped to define the decade, focusing on themes that stimulated excitement and change.
The concept of reinvention encompassed the themes of minimalism, grunge, deconstruction and the avant-garde, and the revival of luxury. Restlessness was characterized by the themes of retro revivals, technology, environmentalism and reuse, and the global wardrobe.
On making it
There are a few texts by Caroline Evans, Rebecca Arnold, and Teri Agins that look at ’90s fashion around the end of the decade or in the early aughts. I wanted to build on those and look at [the decade] — as well as topics like cultural appropriation, which wasn’t called that at the time — through a contemporary lens and examine the key moments in the many trends that were occurring.
Colleen Hill
From an interview with Odessa Paloma Parker, “Author and Museum Curator Colleen Hill Talks about Her Love of ’90s Fashion,” Fashion, September 14, 2021.
More views
The Minimalism section.
The Magazines section, with a pattern drawing.
Embroidered dress, framed ensemble, and a linen suit.
Tartan and lace jacket, with a black side-slit dress.
Printed dress and embroidered satin minidress.
Three printed and beaded dresses.
Vivienne Westwood corset, printed with a Boucher pastoral.
Anna Sui ensemble — butterflies on army surplus.
Press
“These days, our love affair with technology has waned. But in the ’90s, the internet was still in its infancy and there was an energy and curiosity about the future. . . . Meanwhile, thrifting has come back with a vengeance, in part thanks to companies like ThredUp and Depop that digitized secondhand shopping.”
Elizabeth Segran, “From Plaid to Prada Backpacks, See the ’90s Fashion That’s Making Its Museum Debut” · January 24, 2022
“The 1990s have the unique distinction of closing out a century and a millennium, and its fashion is a window into the psyche of a pivotal time in history. . . . Denim is part of the story, but not the ‘teenage’ brands and trends that Gen Z is tirelessly working to cop now.”
Angela Velasquez, “How Globalization Shaped ’90s Denim — for Good and Bad” · January 18, 2022
The exhibition “highlights iconic brands and designers who established the sartorial codes of a decade that marked both the end of a century and a millennium. With concepts ranging from minimalism to the revitalization of luxury design houses, Reinvention and Restlessness: Fashion in the Nineties showcases the ’90s as a time that was also filled with hope for the future and yet fraught with anxiety.”
India Roby, “’90s Fashion Is Getting Its Own Museum Exhibit in New York” · December 13, 2021