Museum curator Colleen Hill loves ’90s fashion so much that she wrote a book about Tom Ford, John Galliano and other stars of the period.
“I recall that the preschool I attended in Lansing, Michigan, where I grew up, had a dress-up room with beautiful stained glass windows, and it was full of jewel-toned chiffon scarves I was really interested in. Another standout moment was seeing the cover of an ABBA album — I loved their platform boots. (I still do!) And something that influenced both my style and my career was a book called Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties by Joel Lobenthal. I found it at the local library when I was about 10 years old. The cover has a great photograph of Lauren Hutton wearing a clear vinyl Betsey Johnson mini-dress with decals stuck on it, and the spine of the book is bright pink. My young self was really attracted to it. I checked it out of the library many, many times, and from that point on, I always wanted to dress like it was the ’60s. I went to thrift shops and made my own clothes and eventually segued into becoming a fashion historian.”
“I’ve always loved ’90s fashion; I’ve been buying my dream wardrobe slowly, now that I can afford the pieces I couldn’t at that time. And I’ve also been very interested in how FIT students have been dressing like it’s the ’90s for a number of years now. The benefit of working at a design school is that the students are fashion-forward — you always know what the next trends will be before other people. And we’ve been getting lots of donations of great clothes from that era. It’s at the point where a lot of people who have great Jean Paul Gaultier pieces, for example, are ready to part with them after having had them in their closets for a few decades. And more and more of these pieces can be found on sites like 1stDibs, for those who can afford and are interested in them. I was also interested in revisiting the decade. There are a few texts by Caroline Evans, Rebecca Arnold and Teri Agins that look at ’90s fashion around the end of the decade or in the early aughts. I wanted to build on those and look at it — as well as topics like cultural appropriation, which wasn’t called that at the time — through a contemporary lens and examine the key moments in the many trends that were occurring.”
“Stella Jean is one of them. Her work has a vibrancy and colour that I’ve loved since childhood, but I think it’s really challenging to balance that with something that also looks really chic and wearable; she excels at that. I’ve always thought that Pierpaolo Piccioli’s work is exceptional. I love Phillip Lim for my own wardrobe. He really understands how to flatter the shape of any woman’s body; I’m five foot four and I always find his pieces flattering. I also have pieces of his that I’ve had for at least a decade, and they still look great. And then there’s Mimi Prober, a New York-based designer who typically works with scraps of found material dating anywhere from the 18th century to the early 20th century. There’s a lot of old lace, for example, and she uses lots of natural-dye techniques. This is how she has always worked; it’s not trend-driven.”
“A wonderful Azzedine Alaïa leopard-print motorcycle jacket from 1991. We have the gingham version in the museum collection, which is also great. It’s funny, though, because I do tend to shy away from buying vintage things that could or should be in a museum collection. For me, it’s more about preservation than personal wear, thanks to my profession.”
“A 1930s black velvet capelet with gold embroidery that I bought on Etsy about five years ago. I purchased it to wear to the opening of an exhibition I curated called Fairy Tale Fashion — my favourite of the exhibitions I’ve done so far. I really laboured over what to wear to this opening; I didn’t want it to be really obvious, but it needed to be on theme. I will have it forever — I’ve only worn it that one time, but I will wear it again.”
“I bought one really special thing: a collector’s print Alexander McQueen scarf. One of the things I’m focusing on in my PhD is cabinets of curiosities and how that idea can be translated into a fashion exhibition. I had no idea how long the scarf would be available, and it’s enormous. I ended up using it as a video-call backdrop in my apartment. I don’t really have plans to wear it so much as to display it in the exhibition and have it as a memento of my research.”
Click through for some of Colleen Hill’s favourite labels from the ‘90s:
Photography courtesy of The Museum at FIT
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