by It was, as male model Tyson Beckford says in the opening episode of In Vogue: The 90s, “a great time to be alive”. Especially if you happened to be young, famous and beautiful. Beckford spent that decade staring down anxiously at people who are only dead, from the iconic Ralph Lauren billboards he starred in glossy advertising campaigns. Like Christ the Redeemer over Rio, but in a tight white Polo vest with one arm around Naomi Campbell.
In the 1990s, fashion had the power to anoint our gods and goddesses. The cover of Vogue was a coronation ceremony. Supermodels were the darlings of popular culture, glossy magazine editors held the power behind the throne. This imperial era of fashion was set in motion, with precise timing, by the January 1990 cover of British Vogue. Peter Lindbergh’s black-and-white portrait of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Tatjana Patitz heralded the dawn of the supermodel age, and was the starting pistol for a decade when fashion was the engine of culture. common. For the next 10 years, the party went straight from the front row to the Groucho and on to the next morning’s front pages.
In Vogue: The 90s is a six-part Disney+ retrospective on a decade that had it all. The magic of the 1990s is that it was brutal and deeply unhappy, and one of the delights of this show is its honest footage of the era’s nights out. We see Liam Gallagher, energizing free from bars as he swings through party after party, Liz Hurley attending bombshells in her Versace safety pin dress, her smile growing as the lightbulbs light up. Everyone smokes Marlboro Lights and tumbles out of black cabs wearing Louboutin heels.
The alchemy is in the precarious dance between glamor and grunge, between the fat and the raffle. This was the decade Kurt Cobain wore a moth-eaten cardigan and Puff Daddy – as he was then – in a white fur coat. On the scene, he went from the apple pie goodness of the early fashion era to Marc Jacobs’ iconic grunge collection and Tom Ford’s raunchy reign at Gucci. It was the time when the Hollywood red carpet introduced sex appeal into the sleepy world of award ceremonies, but when actors still dressed in whatever they felt like, rather than what they were contracted to wear.
The 1990s were brilliant. I should know – I’m old enough to have a ringside seat. I hung out with Take That in Miami, was a guest at one of Jennifer Lopez’s weddings, and accompanied Tracey Emin to Paris fashion week. But the nostalgia of the 90s is strong among those who were not even born at the time. The hottest gigs of 2025 are Oasis back, 29 years after their iconic Knebworth dates. In their baggy jeans, cropped tops, cycling shorts, baseball caps and scrunchies, most of generation Z have taken their wardrobe straight from the 1990s.
London became the fashion center of the world with Lee McQueen as ringmaster and Kate Moss as her muse
In Vogue: The 90s tells the story of how glossy magazines – not just Vogue itself, but the Face and iD – became the papers of record for popular culture. Edward Enninful, who was iD’s fashion director when he was still a teenager, tells the story of how London, with its fashion colleges and raucous club scene, became the center of the fashion world, with Lee McQueen as ringmaster and Kate Moss as muse. There are interviews with two titans of American Vogue, styling legends Grace Coddington and Tonne Goodman; with the charming Hamish Bowles, British fashion national treasure and podcast host who gave rise to the idea for this series, who returned to the industry after suffering a serious stroke two years ago; and some great and entertaining cameos by the legendary fashion editor Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, Cruella de Vil Gallic in leopard print, which fondly recalls the stripes and tiaras of the leading era in fashion.
But even in a star-studded cast that includes Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell, Tom Ford, Gwyneth Paltrow and Baz Luhrmann, there’s no doubting who the star of In Vogue: the 90s is. As Goodman says with signature crispness: “Vogue is Anna and Anna is Vogue.” Wintour is the Logan Roy of this world. The supporting team of stylists and proteges are cast in the roles of Connor, Kendall, Roman and Shiv. The tone is soon set, when an off-camera voice politely asks Wintour to remove her sunglasses for an interview. The crisp flatness with which she cuts, convinced that her word is gospel, shows the absolute power that Wintour wields throughout the Vogue empire.
Wintour’s influence on popular culture has gone far beyond fashion. She invented an archetype – “chic, strong boss woman,” as Kim Kardashian puts it – that has become the blueprint for women in the moment. From Kardashian herself, to Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham, many of the most successful women in subsequent generations have borrowed from her playbook where a feminine wardrobe is offset by a cool emotional tone that feels more patrician than maternal. Hiding behind those dark glasses is an enigma as to how Wintour’s personal power has soared – even as the power of the all-important world magazines has crumbled around her.
The show is an X-ray of the power dynamics of fashion and a cardiograph of the swinging pendulum of popular culture. It traces the usual winds of the decade as they change direction from the fever of ideal perfection at the beginning of the decade, to Perry Ellis’s “grunge” collection that scandalized the New York fashion week in 1992. that she unknowingly made grunge, but as Marc Jacobs says, “no force on earth” – read, not even Anna – “can stop an idea whose time has come.” But two years later we see Amber Valletta opening the Gucci Tom Ford show in a silk blouse and mostly unbuttoned velvet hipsters, a moment she recalls as a “sonic wave” of sexual energy. The ever-present Ford notes that on the whip change from grunge to glamour, “you can only be depressed for so long”.
“So much happened in the ’90s that determines where we are in fashion right now,” says Goodman. “As Anna says, the 90s really changed our lives. The face of hip-hop and grunge opened our eyes to the vital relevance of fashion in culture – and we welcomed every eye-opener.” The 1990s were, indeed, a great time to be alive. Nostalgia never looked so good.
