Our obsession with the 1990s
From our UK edition
Why are we drawn ceaselessly back into the ever-more-recent past? The 1990s trend has been building for years now, with bucket hats, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy chic, Oasis reunions and documentaries about Oasis reunions… There are clearly deep reasons to revisit that decade. Some have scores to settle (Earl Spencer), while Gen Z’s interest seems tinged with yearning – as well as prurient curiosity about how barbaric it all was. It was the twilight of the Yellow Pages, the last days of video. You were nobody without a landline, nowhere without an A-Z. It was a time of libertinism, it was a time of HIV. Of ecstasy (the drug) and agony (Gazza cried, Diana died). The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain guides us carefully into this distant land.
