Late twentieth century

During the late 20th century, fashions began to criss-cross international boundaries with rapidity. Popular Western styles were adopted all over the world, and many designers from outside of the West had a profound impact on fashion. Synthetic materials such as Lycra/spandex, and viscose became widely used, and fashion, after two decades of looking to the future, once again turned to the past for inspiration.

1980sedit

The society of the 1980s no longer criticized itself as consumerist, but was, instead, interested in 'the spectacle'. The self-conscious image of the decade was very good for the fashion industry, which had never been quite so à la mode. Fashion shows were transfigured into media-saturated spectaculars and frequently televised, taking high priority in the social calendar. Appearance was related to performance, which was of supreme importance to a whole generation of young urban professionals, whose desire to look the part related to a craving for power. The way in which men and women associated with the latest styles was no more a matter of passive submission but disco music rapidly fell out of favor as the decade began, along with its associated clothing styles. By 1982, the last traces of 1970s fashion were gone.

During the 1980s, the mullet became the standard men's haircut and women sported large, square-cut perms although there were many variations of both. Jumpsuits became a popular element of female clothing and on men, skinny neckties and wraparound sunglasses. Also during the '80s, aerobics were in vogue and so brought into style Spandex leggings and headbands.

The two French fashion designers who best defined the look of the period were a man and Azzedine Alaia. Strongly influenced by his early career in the theater, Thierry Mugler produced fashion designs that combined Hollywood retro and futurism, with rounded hips, sharply accentuated shoulders, and a slight hint of the galactic heroine. Mugler's glamorous dresses were a remarkable success, and signified the complete end of the hippy era and its unstructured silhouette. Known for his awe-inspiring combinations, Azzedine Alaia greatly influenced the silhouette of the woman of the 1980s. The master of all kinds of techniques that had previously been known only to haute couture, he experimented with many new and underused materials, such as spandex and viscose. The finish, simplicity, and sheer sexiness of Alaia's look made women of every generation identify with his seductive style, and during the 1980s he achieved a certain glory and was held in high regard by members of his own profession.

Also creating designs very typical of the era were Claude Montana, whose imposing, broad-shouldered designs, often made of leather, would not have looked out of place in the futuristic universe of Thierry Mugler, and Christian Lacroix, who sent shock waves through the world of haute couture, with his flounced skirts, embroidered corselets, bustles, and polka-dotted crinolines which evoked the rhythms of flamenco.

A number of promising newcomers entered the fashion scene in the 1980s. Angelo Tarlazzi, an extraordinary technician who once worked for Patou, bewitched both the press and his customers with his 'handkerchief' dresses. Made of squares of fabric, they transpired, when you came to put them on, to be far more complicated than at first appeared. Many a Parisian soirée of the 1980s was enlivened by his dresses, all in a fluid and original style, in which cutting and sewing were kept to a minimum. Chantal Thomas, the queen of sexy stockings and lace, won a devoted following for her seductive underwear and for evening gowns that looked like nightdresses and vice versa. Guy Paulin was one of the first designers to promote a severe, plain, and uncluttered look. His garments were classical in their proportions and made for comfort and simplicity, with their harmonious lines reinforced by a subtle palette of colors and fine materials. Under his own name, Joseph designed luxurious knitwear along classic lines, creating loose, sexy garments in neutral colors. Carolina Herrera, long regarded as one of the most elegant members of the jet set, in 1981 launched a series of collections aimed at women like herself, featuring impeccably cut clothes of high quality and attractive evening dresses.

Japanese designers such as Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto offered a look which marked a total break with the prevailing fashion image of the time. Flat shoes, no make-up, reserve, modesty, and secrecy were the hallmarks of this modern look. Eventually, it began to include details from the fashions of the past, as Europe's ancient sites were revisited by these anarchists of fashion, whose influence on shape of clothes, at the end of the 20th-century, became legendary.

In American fashion the seductive, clinging style of Donna Karan and the casual sophistication of Ralph Lauren were very influential. A star of the New York social scene, Donna Karan brought a very personal and feminine approach to the severe, sober-colored, casual look that dominated American ready-to-wear. Setting up her own label in 1984, her designs won instant popularity among active urban women who greatly appreciated the understated luxury of her clothes. In 1971 Ralph Lauren opened a boutique for both men and women in Beverly Hills. His aristocratic style at prices the average American could afford created a sensation. For an elite faced with all kinds of avant-garde fashions, it represented a rallying point, endorsing a classic look that had been adopted for an active life. The number one of American ready-to-wear, Lauren was equally successful with his sportswear and jeans, which allowed him to reach the widest possible range of social classes and age groups.

Central to the success of a new wave of American sportswear was the Perry Ellis label, established in 1978, which used color and natural fibers to great advantage in its elegant variations on the basics. Norma Kamali, with her short skirts made of sweatshirting, leotards, headbands, and leg warmers, made jogging look fashionable. Kamali also created the popular 'rah-rah skirt'. Also notable is the extreme popularity of the Adidas sports label, which achieved an incredible level of street cred in the 1980s, inciting the hip hop group Run DMC to release the single 'My Adidas' in 1986. The legendary shoe designer Manolo Blahnik also rose to fame during the 1980s.

The multiplicity of trends that bloomed during the 80s were curtailed by the economic recession that set in at the beginning of the 1990s, largely destroying the optimistic mood that is so advantageous to the fashion industry.

1990sedit

In the 1990s it was no longer the done thing to follow fashion slavishly, a sharp contrast to the highly a la mode 1970s and 1980s. The phobia of being underdressed was finally completely displaced by the fear of overdressing. Fashion in the 1990s united around a new standard, minimalism, and styles of stark simplicity became the vogue. Despite the best efforts of a few designers to keep the flag for pretty dresses flying, by the end of the decade the notion of ostentatious finery had virtually disappeared. As well as the styling of the product, its promotion in the media became crucial to its success and image. The financial pressures of the decade had a devastating effect on the development of new talent and lessened the autonomy enjoyed by more established designers.

Fashion at the end of the 20th century tackled themes that fashion had not previously embraced. These themes included rape, disability, religious violence, death, and body modification. There was a dramatic move away from the sexy styles aimed at the glamorous femme fatale of the 1980s, and many designers, taken with a vision of romantic poverty, adopted the style of the poverty-stricken waif, dressed in a stark, perversely sober palette, with a face devoid of make-up. Clothes by ready-to-wear retailers such as The Gap, Banana Republic, and Eddie Bauer came to the forefront of fashion, managing to tap into the needs of women who simply wanted comfortable, wearable clothes. Retro clothing inspired by the 1960s and 1970s was popular for much of the 1990s.

The famous Italian fashion house, Gucci was created in 1921, by Guccio Gucci and was originally a firm that sold luxury leather goods. Under Guccio Gucci's children, by the end of the 1960s the label had expanded to include a plethora of products with a distinctly Latin glamor. However, only in the 1990s, when the Gucci heirs gave up control of the company to Invest Corp., who planned to turn the business around, did it truly begin to enjoy the kind of success it enjoys in the present day. Employing an unknown designer, Tom Ford, as design director in 1994, the fashion house was endowed with a great prestige, as Ford triggered a tidal wave with his chic and shocking collections, perfumes for men and women, revamped boutiques, and advertising campaigns. In 1998 Gucci is named "European Company of the year" by European Business Press Federation. Today it is the second biggest-selling fashion brand (after LVMH) worldwide with US$7 billion worldwide of revenue in 2006 according to BusinessWeek magazine.

In the 1990s the designer label Prada became a true creative force in the fashion industry. The Milanese company was first established in 1923, two years after Gucci, and like Gucci, it was a firm that sold high-quality shoes and leather. It was until the 1980s that Miuccia Prada, the niece of the company's founder, began to produce ready-to-wear fashion, gaining fame for her subtle, streamlined, yet unquestionably luxurious style, that catered for the privileged young woman who prefers understatement to flamboyant extravagance.

In America three of the most influential fashion designers of the time were Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, and Calvin Klein. Michael Kors set up his own business in 1980. However, it was not until the 1990s that the designer reached the peak of his popularity. His knowledge and consciousness of trends enabled him to produce simple well-cut garments, whose sophistication and elegance appealed to a whole new breed of wealthy American customers drawn to the new vogue for minimalist chic. Marc Jacobs is one of the most notable American designers of the period in that, unlike many American fashion designers in the past, he was not so much the co-ordinator of a mass-produced garment as a designer in the European sense of the word. One of the most promising talents in the fashion industry at the time, the LVMH (Louis Vuitton-Moet Henessy) group offered him the job of designing a line of ready-to-wear to complement the de-luxe products of luggage specialist Louis Vuitton in the late 1990s. One of the first fashion designers to anticipate the globalization of world markets, the already well-known designer Calvin Klein started to market his fashions, perfumes, and accessories not only right across the US, but also in Europe and Asia, achieving an unequaled success. A brilliant artistic director, Klein used carefully constructed advertisements containing images tinted with eroticism to promote his sophisticatedly functional mass-produced designs, which won massive popularity among the urban youth of the 1990s.

The group of designers known as the 'Antwerp Six' (so named because all of them were graduates of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp), who first emerged in the 1980s, came to prominence in the 1990s. Three of the most influential of the group were Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, and Walter Van Beirendonck. Ann Demeulemeester, from her first collection in 1991, demonstrated a great deal of confidence and inventiveness. Naturally inclined to understatement, she built her designs on contradictions, introducing contrasting elements into her fluid and streamlined fashions, which appealed to women who dressed, above all, to please themselves. The work of Dries van Noten was founded on a solid mastery of the art of tailoring, to which the young designer added discreet touches of fantasy in a highly personal style. Managing to be both classical and original, his fashions appealed to those who preferred to express their individuality rather than slavishly follow trends. Walter Van Beirendonck, who erupted onto the fashion scene in 1995, produced decidedly futuristic designs under his label W & LT (Wild and Lethal Trash). Deliberately using fabrics developed by the very latest technologies, in violently contrasting colors, he produced clothes that were full of erotic and sadomasochistic references, touched with a caustic adolescent humor. His highly distinctive approach related to a resurgence of anti-fashion, but this time an anti-fashion with nothing in the least ethnic about its origins, instead based on science fiction that provided the inspiration for displays of such high-spirited provocation.

In Italy, Gianni Versace, with his brilliant, sexy, and colorful designs, and Dolce & Gabbana, with their superfeminine and fantastical style, broke away from the serious and sober-minded fashions that dominated during much of the 1990s. The British designer Vivienne Westwood produced many influential and popular collections in the early 1990s, which included outfits inspired by 18th-century courtesans and the Marquis de Sade, with rounded hips, corsets, and platform heels. The London-based designer Rifat Ozbek was also popular, particularly in New York and Milan. His youthful style, which mixed references to India, Africa, and his native Turkey with clever takes on historical clothing, was reminiscent of hippest nightclubs and the more outrageous street fashions of the time. Rap music was a prominent influence on popular and street fashion during the early and mid-1990s. Followers of hip hop adopted huge baggy jeans, similar to those worn in American prisons, with big patterned shirts and heavy black shoes. The sports label Nike had great popularity and materials such as Lycra/spandex were increasingly used for sportswear. Increasing eco-awareness and animal rights made even top couture houses such as Chanel introduce fake fur and natural fibers into their collections.