Retro fashion: The Colorful and divers 1990s

via kissthemgoodbye

It’s almost the end of the year and everyone is going back in time. I mean, Dutchies: who is not listening to the top 2000 songs of all time on radio 2? We went to the future yesterday, but today I am taking you back again to the past. However, this time I am not going back that far, because this is the last post of the retro fashion serie! Back to the 90s, which brings back some extra nostalgic moments for me, because this is the time that I grew up. The time of ghettoblasters, The Spice Girls, Hakuna Matata, Discmans that didn’t fit into your trousers and the internet was just coming up! Imagine that…

This era also left its lasting mark on fashion. A very colorful mark also as you will discover. The early 90s were an extension of the late 1980s. But this was about to change very fast. Remember when MTV was all about the music? Music videos were being produced everywhere. The fashion in those popular music videos had a tremendous impact on the fashion sense because of all those teenagers, who adopted the fashion style of their idols into the real world. Hip-hop artists were seen as topfashion influencers: the urban culture rised and rised, not only in the big cities. The urban fashion motto was: Big t-shirts and baseball caps for everyone! Also, there were a lot of remixed versions of fashion trends from previous decades. In the mid-1990s there were for example The Spice Girls, who brought back a huge revival of the 70s platform shoe. Another item that made its revival under young woman, was the loose, short skirt. Once again fashion comebacks were very colorful. Denim and leather jackets were extremely popular and survived the whole nineties decade. As a matter of fact, denim and leather are true fashion survivors. Who doesn’t own a nice pair of jeans or a leather jacket these days?

Casual fashion became more unisex than ever. T-shirts, hoodies, exercise wear and trainers became hot items in everyday fashion, for both men and women. And guess what: we still own all these items, don’t we? Around 1993/1994, Grunge arised under the great influence of rock idols like Kurt Cobain. Top designers quickly responded to this trend by making grunge items part of their collection. If you were part of the grunge group, you knew that you had to get rid of all those colorful clothes, because in the “Grunge zone” less color was definitely more. This applied, once again, to men and women. From the mid-1990s until the end of the decade (Euro)dance became a big thing. Colorful was still the magic word and crop tops and short skirts were the way to go. One item that never became unisex (and hopefully it never will!) was the Little Black Dress. It was really little this time and worn with black stockings and ofcourse high heels. Actually it never really left the fashion scene, because women everywhere fell and stayed in love with that lovely Little Black Dress. The 90s were also The Supermodels (or Big Five) era, which had started in the late 80s. With the Big Five we refer to Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. These Big Five were not just plain models who were running the fashion show, they were seen as true celebrities and fashion icons until the mid-1990s.

Also read: Art exhibition: for the love of (vintage) cats and cabin crew fashion

When it comes to accessoiries and jewelry, there were some interesting developments. Besides some obvious jewelry trends (Diamond’s remained a Girls Best Friend and pearls were still timeless), earrings were not just for the ladies anymore. Then something happened that didn’t happen in any other decade. Slowly, body modification started to conquer the world. Tattoos, piercings and other body modifcation became accepted in the (Western) world and it’s still a part of everyday lifestyle in the present.

Moving on to some 90s hair trends! Actually, there were a lot of them. In this era, women of popular tv shows influenced everyday hair trends. And not just a little bit. There is one hairstyle that can’t be thrown of the toplist: The Rachel! For those who did not watch television in the 1990s: The Rachel was a hairstyle of Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel in the tv serie Friends. It was so popular that even darkhaired women started to dye their hair in blonde colors with highlights and hairdressers probably had this hairstyle as a separate tag on their price list. Other popular hairstyles were the modernised bob, the curly Felicity hairstyle, a revival of the wavy 1970s and the red hair color also peaked in the 90s era. Then there was something new…Black became the new black with the Gothic culture that arised at the end of this decade. And what did the man do with their hair? During the grunge time,(young) men chose loose and longer hairstyles. Besides this, they really adopted that half-open-curtains style into their hair. Men who didn’t have this hairstyle in the 90s, raise your hand! Men could also opt for the Caesar, popularized by some wellknown actors (hello George Clooney).

When it comes to beauty, women chose matte, red lips in the early 90s. Especially when the grunge look had its peak, dark red colors were extremely popular. This changed in the late 90s. There was room again for glitter and shiny makeup also referred to as Y2K makeup, which included items like facial glitter and lipgloss. Lipgloss became very popular under young women, who rather chose shiny lips instead of the good old lipstick. Lastly, we had the typical Goth makeup which obviously was not very colorful but included pale foundation, dark eyes and dark lips. Both of these beauty trends were still alive and kicking in the early 00s.

Also read: Fashion style through the last centuries

Conclusion: A lot of nowadays fashion is related or a variation of trends from those Colorful 90s. Well, that was it for the retro fashion series! Enjoy your very last retro-fashion-scrolling-time! Did you miss the other parts of my retro fashion serie? How on earth did that happen? Well, thankfully we still have the (not broken) links. Check them at the end of this post!

Early 90s women fashion

Shawn Bradford via photopin cc