If I close my eyes and think about it, I can just about remember the ’90s, the decade in which I was born. There’s my mum on the house phone. The smell of cigarette smoke. Weird, colourful dungarees. Thumping the TV so the aerial picked up Eastenders. People used to drop by unannounced and leave notes through the letterbox if we weren’t in. Though I don’t recall much, I do recall the idea of being “perceived” being confined to the mirror, and those immediately around you. It wasn’t until later, say, 2014 or so, that life started resembling what it would eventually become.
In recent months, there’s been a renewed obsession with the ’90s, bolstered in part by the runaway success of Ryan Murphy’s Love Story. Women everywhere—myself included—are hankering after Levi’s 517s and oval shades. There’s been an uptick in Cartier Tank sales and celebs are wearing slip dresses and strappy heels. But while this fervor has zeroed in on the style, I do think there’s more to it than that. We’re craving a different time; a more relaxed world in which people went to parties and didn’t have a phone. Back when people met lovers in bars and no one said words like “looksmaxxing” or got facelifts at 27.
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It’s easy to see why we’re escaping into this very specific snapshot in time. This was the Sex and the City era, back when people made loads of money as columnists or working in fashion PR. Apartments were affordable, even in London and New York City. People went to buzzy magazine launches and each other’s homes to hang out for no reason. The ’90s saw the advent of third-wave feminism and riot grrrl; to be a trad wife was the least cool thing in the world. In many ways, the culture of that decade was diametrically opposite to the culture of today. And while it’s become a cliché to romanticize the past, and to then interrogate why we are doing so—and of course the ’90s were no utopia—it’s impossible to divorce our current fascination with the ’90s from something far deeper than a love for wedges.
I do wonder, though, whether we are hankering after an essence that is too far removed from how we move throughout the world today. While hoards of TikTokers offer masterclasses on how to dress like CBK, they forget that she didn’t want to be perceived. She wasn’t thinking about whether her every move was “chic.” Former Real Housewife and one of CBK’s good friends, Carole Radziwill, recently spoke on Live With Deuxmoi about how much of the fervour around Carolyn misses the point. “She pulled her hair back in a head band because she didn’t want to wash it everyday,” she said. “She did what felt natural to her and she dressed in things that made her feel comfortable and most like herself. Mostly jeans and button-downs and T-shirts. The takeaway is not to mimic her style; the takeaway is to do and wear what feels most authentic to you. Be yourself. She was very much herself.”
Indeed, I think so much of what we consider ’90s minimalism probably came as a result of people relaxing and enjoying their lives and not thinking so intensely about what they were wearing, or how they were being seen by others. People in the club were wearing baggy T-shirts and Converse because they wanted to dance. Celebs were showing up to the red carpet in jeans and smoking cigarettes because it was about the films. Minimalism without freedom is just austerity; there’s no use having the former without the latter. It feels strange and a bit depressing to have social media influencers funneling the same ’90s-minimalist images through the algorithm when the essence of the thing was a certain nonchalance, or looseness—not just aesthetically, but spiritually too.