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First came 1989’s Black Friday stock market crash, then came the recession of 1990. The economic downturn? In fashion, it resulted in an abrupt halt of that more-is-more, greed-is-good . Fashion felt like sobering up, and designers delivered a new minimalist look that was received like a breath of fresh air that swept people off their feet—enter , , and .

(In 1990, Ribat Ozbek showed an all-white collection that marked the turning point and a reset of the times.) The decade started off with leggy, Versace-clad (Linda! Cindy! Naomi! Christy!) ruling the scene with their heady allure. The look was sexy, 24/7.



A few years in, though, the tides turned and called out a return of the gamine—but these weren’t your wide-eyed ingenues of the 1960s. What followed was a crop of waifish models with a pallor, who gave the appearance of possessing bird-like hollow bones, and unlike their formidable predecessors, looked as though (in the words of Karl Lagerfeld) “they need protection.” The epitome of this new muse? .

The decade raced ahead with angst surrounding the coming of Y2K with trepidation in newfangled tech (flip phones and the internet), manifesting two new fashion aesthetics. One was fiercely fantastical—fashion that escaped the present and mish-mashed elements from far-flung cultures and previous eras together. The other was a theatrical pastiched potpourri of fashion references that looked back, yes, but also left, right, and front and center (see .

) The other styl.

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