As 1990 arrived all space-agey and new I remember my GCSE English teacher telling us that we had entered a new decade of fashion and from now on we were all going to be wearing white.
It didn't quite pan out like that for me or my spotty fifth-year compatriots. I have a vague memory of buying a silky white hooded top (we were all ravers then) but that was about as far as it went.
Mrs Riley was right, though. The official designer image of the 1990s was indeed clean and unfussy - sheer make-up, undone hair, pale flesh under a flimsy Calvin Klein spaghetti-strap dress, perhaps more black than white, but monochrome, minimal, none the less. We were meant, I think, to appear as a host of New Age angels. I'm afraid that the decade as I came to know it was a lot more grubby than that.
In America they had grunge, here we had 'indie'. The look was all shuffly work boots and flowery dresses, or lumberjack shirts and denim. Kate Moss photographed in a black barely-there Prada dress filtered down to the street as armies of girls in second-hand nylon nighties, charging around nightclubs in clumpy boots.
So I feel a bit of a cheat when I look at the spring collections paying homage to that decade and say, 'Oh yes, very 1990s.' Because I lived through those years and didn't look like that. Thank goodness, then, that when designers pay homage to an era they cherry-pick the best of it -because no one would want to buy what I was actually wearing then.
But maybe this is my second chance; a vast improvement, in fact, on a second chance because 2013's version of the 1990s is more appealing to (and suitable for) the woman I am today. Dries Van Noten's plaid lumberjack shirts come in chiffon, and his oversized bobbly knits are only pretending to be bobbly. Today's designer version of grunge is prettier and more commercial than the genuine look ever wanted to be, but, hey, it's not like Courtney Love can call me a sell-out.
Three best 1990s essentials
L-R: Viscose dress, £25, by River Island ( riverisland.com ), leather shoes, £85, by JW Anderson for Topshop ( topshop.com ), polyester shirt, £340, by 10 Crosby Derek Lam, from my-wardrobe.com
Via: The Style Maven: 90s grunge
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