From cone bras at Jean-Paul Gaultier to Doc Martens and crop-tops on Lindsay Lohan and Agyness Deyn, grunge-era fashion is back. VIEW OUR GALLERY of nineties revival.
There’s Agyness Deyn sauntering through a crowd with her head shaved, kicking up her Doc Martens and swinging a long silver crucifix around her neck. And there’s Kelly Osborne, with hair the color of an eggplant, and it-girl Peaches Geldof head-to-toe in lace and leather, yanking a pink-haired friend in a leotard and platform boots out of the Viper Room in Los Angeles.
It would be easy to assume these were just a gaggle of girls on the grunge scene in the early 1990s—but these sightings happened in recent weeks. As these cool kids demonstrate, looking trendy this summer involves one thing only: digging into your bin of '90s band T-shirts, freshening up your flannel shirts, and reviving your teen spirit.
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Click the Image to View Our Gallery of the Return of '90s Fashion
Trends, of course, repeat themselves: The '70s enjoyed a brief revival in the last decade with teens mobbing Contempo Casuals to pick up their low-rise bell-bottoms. And, more recently, thanks to brands like American Apparel and its endless supply of spandex, hipsters everywhere could look like Richard Simmons. But somewhere in our generational recycling bin, the '90s got lost. No one really wanted to be seen again in mohair and ripped stockings.
Until now. From socks and sandals at Marni to cone bras at Jean-Paul Gaultier, fashion houses sent a series of trends down their spring runways that could have been straight out of an (extraordinarily well-dressed) episode of Friends. At the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum on Monday night, Margherita Missoni wore an architectural black Missoni dress that flapped open at the sides. “It’s my idea of grunge,” she told The New York Times. “I want to bring back the ’90s.”
Isabel Wilkinson is an assistant editor at The Daily Beast based in Los Angeles.
