Why are we so obsessed with the ’90s?

By Sheena McKenzie, CNN

London (CNN) — At some point, we’ve bumped our heads and woken in a ’90s fantasia. In this new-old world there are cargo pants, slip dresses and swooning for Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s minimalism. Kate Moss is on the runway. Oasis keeps going on tour. Nevermind (in the words of Nirvana) that it’s 2026. The cultural moment appears fixated on the last decade before smartphones, social media and algorithmic feeds took over. A time when IRL was the only life.

If the ’80s was bombastic excess, the ’90s United Kingdom was the epicenter of stripped-back rebellion. In 1996, “Trainspotting” spat out “Choose Life” in rejection of middle-class consumerism, and creatives embraced a new, raw aesthetic. You saw it in the decade’s indie mags, hip hop and messy beds of Young British Artists.

Now the UK’s gritty DIY creative spirit is the focus of an exhibition opening Thursday at London’s Tate Britain: “The 90s: Art and Fashion.” Curated by former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, the show features over 100 era-defining images, sculptures and outfits.

Among them, artist Vinca Petersen’s sprawling collage of photos, flyers and diary entries capturing underground rave scenes across the UK and Europe. In hazy images, friends gather around homemade sound systems or crash out in the aftermath of warehouse parties. One entry reads: “July 10th. Party in a bomb crater. Sunday spent as usual dancing like a loon with other loons until the sun gradually started to force everyone to laze around in the hot sunshine.”

“The reason why a lot of young people relate to it so much, is they think of it as the last pure time when you could just go out and do whatever you wanted and not be captured,” said Enninful of the pre-smartphone era, at the show’s opening. “We would literally go from clubs to work,” remembered Enninful, who in 1991 became the youngest fashion director of UK style magazine i-D, aged 18. “Little spritz,” he added with a laugh, mimicking deodorant under the arms, “and then go to work, or go sleep on the sofa. That was our life.”

One young fashion photographer who made a name for himself at indie mags like i-D with his unpolished images of a teenage Kate Moss, was Juergen Teller. Very soon, modeling agencies were sending girls to Teller’s London studio for “go-sees” in the hopes of being hired, and he documented hundreds of these doorstep interactions –– dozens now on show at the Tate. There’s something quietly captivating and a little uncomfortable about the pavement snaps of girlhood; some teens accompanied by mothers, others affecting nonchalance, or standing on their hands to get attention.

“For me, what was interesting, was to see very different, diverse people,” Teller said via email. “I wanted to democratize the process of finding new faces. Also, it helped me to photograph everyone, not only someone I liked or was inspired by. I gave everyone the same amount of concentration and time.”

Elsewhere, the exhibition’s pictures of sweaty London dancefloors by photographer, DJ and broadcaster Normski, give the vivid sense of moving amongst the heaving crowd. Even now, Normski talks with infectious enthusiasm about the dawn of UK hip-hop, its deconstructed street style, and the galvanizing moment American acts like Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan came over. “It’s very important to be part of the scene, not an observer looking in,” he said in a phone interview of today’s so-called content creators.

Back then, subcultures had time to grow deep community roots away from an instantaneous online audience. “Sadly, there is no underground now, because everything is ‘transparent’ –– a word I completely hate. Be solid, be opaque, be full!” said Normski. “We did have longevity because we weren’t selling ourselves out, we were just creating. Some of the new underground scenes, they’re not underground –– because I can see them in my face.”

A digital-analog sweet spot

Every generation goes through cycles of nostalgia, but Gen Z’s longing for a time that predates their memory feels like a cerebral exit ramp for the mess we’re in. Amid warnings of AI apocalypse, consumerist churn and chronic loneliness, the ’90s offers a digital-analog sweet spot. A middle-class household might have had one computer with internet; accessible but not following you around all day. “When we ask young people to describe what really interests them about this time period, they talk about wanting more intentional relationships with tech,” said Clay Routledge, a psychologist specializing in nostalgia. “It’s not a rejection of technology. It’s more a sense of how do we get the balance right.”

This goldilocks amount of new technology in the ’90s also fostered a uniquely creative period. With home computers and early laptops, came the bedroom producer: “You could make your own music, in your own house,” Normski recalled. “You didn’t need a lot of stuff to make a lot of noise.”

The dawn of the internet and email meant the UK in particular was no longer “this cold, rainy island, disconnected from everywhere else,” said Paris-based American fashion and culture journalist, Dana Thomas. In 1994 the Eurostar highspeed train between London and Europe opened, accelerating the cross-pollination of cultures and ideas. Two years later, Thomas declared London “the coolest city on the planet” in a Newsweek international cover story.

All this creative energy needed somewhere to create –– and it found it, in the abandoned industrial warehouses of London and Manchester, and across the Atlantic in New York. Young artists could bypass traditional gallery spaces. Ravers had somewhere to gather. But while our online worlds have since expanded, the real-world space for anarchic creativity has shrunk.

Artist Petersen recalled the artistic freedom that came from living in London squats (empty buildings without the owner’s permission). “If you don’t have to worry about finding your rent, you don’t have to work as much. Therefore, what do you get? You get time. And when you have time, that equals creativity.”

What about originality?

Psychologist Routledge believes such nostalgia can actually drive innovation. For today’s youth, the ’90s is a new discovery, said the author of “Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life.” “The nostalgia they’re feeling has this almost future-orientated feel to it, where it’s like we’re mining the past for ideas of ways of doing things, that would be new and fresh for us in this era of overwhelming technological overload.”

Thomas sees other powers at play. In fashion, “very few people have an original idea anymore,” said the author of “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes.” Of the handful of designers who do, she pointed to Rick Owens and Iris van Herpen –– “they’re not even of today, they’re what we’re going to be wearing in the future.”

Luxury fashion, Thomas continued, is now caught in a cycle of keeping up with fast fashion, where new clothes are churned out every other week. But “creativity takes time,” she added. “So what do you do? You just keep looking back to the past and recycling the ideas because you just can’t keep up.” The Carolyn Bessette Kennedy-look is “kind of uniformish,” said Thomas. “This is why the marketing department doubles down on ‘let’s keep recycling the ’90s’ –– because it’s easy to wear, therefore it’s easy to sell.”

Past forward

Of course, plenty of things about the decade are better left behind. Thomas pointed to the “gigantic problem” of heroin chic, and recalled a photographer friend showing her the raw images of a model with track marks.

Elsewhere, fashion magazine editors are no longer the ultimate gatekeepers of style. “The internet has democratized fashion, and I do think there are perspectives that were being lost in the earlier era that now have an outlet,” said Michael Grynbaum, author of “Empire of the Elite: Inside Conde Nast, the Media Dynasty that Reshaped America.” Still, amid the cacophony of influencers, “the sort of expertise and discernment that Vogue represents, still has a place,” he added.

Enninful recalled how in the ’90s, “as a Black person, I was one of the few people in my industry.” In his very first issue at i-D, he tried to get a Black model on the cover and was told no. “We’ve progressed but we’ve also gone back,” said Enninful, who last year launched his own quarterly magazine, called 72. “I’ve seen black models disappear for 10 years… and I’ve seen them come back again.”

Conversations that started in the ’90s around race, identity and sexuality are still relevant now, said Enninful, acknowledging “it’s a tough time for young people.” Petersen also was struck by the seriousness of today’s youth. “The weight on them is much more than the weight that was us,” she said, adding “they seriously have to knuckle down if they’re going to do anything.

“They don’t have that early adulthood of freedom, that maybe we had.”

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