Fashion Technology

Fashion in the '90s 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 twentieth 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 Eighties and many designers, taken with a vision of romantic poverty, perversely sober palette, with a face devoid of mistake-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 simply wanted comfortable, wearable clothes.

It was not until the Eighties that Marcia 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.

The 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.

Managing to be both classical and original, his fashions appealed to those who preferred to express their individuality rather than slavishly follow trends. 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.