How spring’s ’90s revival is helping one editor deal with her premature age crisis
See the 1990s trend on the runways »
For most of my 20s, I’ve been your archetypal hypochondriac (let’s just say a good old MRI really calms my nerves), but lately, my Woody Allen-like fear of the end has morphed into something even more frightful: the end of my youth. I’ll be 30 next April—a milestone I’ve been dreading since I turned 27 (which, let’s be honest, was traumatic enough). Most say the best is yet to come, but from where I’m sitting, my impending existential grapple with miniskirts has pushed me down a road of teenage wardrobe nostalgia where crushed velvet, neon and over-the-top everything reign supreme.
Fashion’s ’90s streak couldn’t have come at a better time. For me, the ’90s represent a period in my life when my biggest priorities were decorating my room with posters of Leonardo DiCaprio, sneaking into 14A movies like Cruel Intentions and The Craft and lining up outside MuchMusic to see The Backstreet Boys. Fast-forward to today and the ’90s couldn’t be more pervasive. Crop tops and Birkenstocks are street-style staples, witches are the new vampires and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is, well, fresh again. And while for many it may feel early for a ’90s redux, the evidence says otherwise: Cher Horowitz’s, like, totally important Alaïa moment happened 19 years ago. Aaliyah has been dead for 13 years. And Marc Jacobs’s infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis? That was 21 years ago.
For me, coping has meant live-tweeting old Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes and adopting a WWDMD (What Would Donna Martin Do?) dress code. I’ve stocked my closet with too many lingerie dresses for someone with a day job and have been wearing crop tops to work like it’s perfectly apropos. I’m living in an obsessive fantasy world, and designers are just egging me on.
Photography by Peter Stigter
Photography by Peter Stigter
Photography by Peter Stigter
Photography by Peter Stigter
Photography by Peter Stigter
The past year has seen an endless cavalcade of runway throwbacks (from grungy layers and tattered baby dolls at Saint Laurent to logo-laden sweatsuit reissues at DKNY), and spring collections continue to push the fashion envelope into terrifically trashy territory. Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s collection of fringy miniskirts, animal-print bra tops and backwards snapbacks conjured flashbacks of old-school L.A. Alexander Wang showed impossible-not-to-slip-a-nip crop tops, too-short schoolgirl skirts and logo-imprinted everything. Logomania also took hold at DKNY, Hood by Air and Moschino, where designers embraced the ’90s preoccupation with marking your territory. Meanwhile, psychedelic raver hues hit the runways at Versace, Christopher Kane and Libertine, proving that Molly ain’t just Miley’s invention. But not everyone who dreams of the ’90s does so in tacky technicolour. Newly minted 30-year-olds Jason Wu and Joseph Altuzarra both showed the kind of sleek and simple slip dresses Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy would have worn. Meanwhile, Rag and Bone and Narciso Rodriguez championed early-’90s minimalism via clean-lined, boxy silhouettes in a palette of black and white.
Considering my wardrobe is currently straddling the “hideous in a good way” vs. “nope, that’s just hideous” divide, I’d say this millennial falls on the trashy end of the ’90s spectrum. And while I’m sure I will someday embrace my 30s and retire my circa 1997 junior high floral party frock and my clear vinyl Fendi wedge kitten heels, until then I plan on revelling in the unadulterated youthful exuberance of ’90s fashion in all its glory. Because for all the mid-recessionary Gen X disillusionment of that decade, when I look back, all I see is me at 13, with a Gwen Stefani bindi, an armful of slap bracelets and happiness.
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://fashionmagazine.com/style/randi-bergman-age-crisis/&title=How spring’s ’90s revival is helping one editor deal with her premature age crisis&picture=https://fashionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Randi-Bergman1.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_178827" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Photography by Jaclyn Locke; hair and makeup by Veronica Chu for COVER GIRL; shot on location at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto[/caption]
See the 1990s trend on the runways »
For most of my 20s, I’ve been your archetypal hypochondriac (let’s just say a good old MRI really calms my nerves), but lately, my Woody Allen-like fear of the end has morphed into something even more frightful: the end of my youth. I’ll be 30 next April—a milestone I’ve been dreading since I turned 27 (which, let’s be honest, was traumatic enough). Most say the best is yet to come, but from where I’m sitting, my impending existential grapple with miniskirts has pushed me down a road of teenage wardrobe nostalgia where crushed velvet, neon and over-the-top everything reign supreme.
Fashion’s ’90s streak couldn’t have come at a better time. For me, the ’90s represent a period in my life when my biggest priorities were decorating my room with posters of Leonardo DiCaprio, sneaking into 14A movies like Cruel Intentions and The Craft and lining up outside MuchMusic to see The Backstreet Boys. Fast-forward to today and the ’90s couldn’t be more pervasive. Crop tops and Birkenstocks are street-style staples, witches are the new vampires and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is, well, fresh again. And while for many it may feel early for a ’90s redux, the evidence says otherwise: Cher Horowitz’s, like, totally important Alaïa moment happened 19 years ago. Aaliyah has been dead for 13 years. And Marc Jacobs’s infamous grunge collection for Perry Ellis? That was 21 years ago.
For me, coping has meant live-tweeting old Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes and adopting a WWDMD (What Would Donna Martin Do?) dress code. I’ve stocked my closet with too many lingerie dresses for someone with a day job and have been wearing crop tops to work like it’s perfectly apropos. I’m living in an obsessive fantasy world, and designers are just egging me on.
[gallery columns="5" ids="178821,178817,178822,178818,178819"]
The past year has seen an endless cavalcade of runway throwbacks (from grungy layers and tattered baby dolls at Saint Laurent to logo-laden sweatsuit reissues at DKNY), and spring collections continue to push the fashion envelope into terrifically trashy territory. Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s collection of fringy miniskirts, animal-print bra tops and backwards snapbacks conjured flashbacks of old-school L.A. Alexander Wang showed impossible-not-to-slip-a-nip crop tops, too-short schoolgirl skirts and logo-imprinted everything. Logomania also took hold at DKNY, Hood by Air and Moschino, where designers embraced the ’90s preoccupation with marking your territory. Meanwhile, psychedelic raver hues hit the runways at Versace, Christopher Kane and Libertine, proving that Molly ain’t just Miley’s invention. But not everyone who dreams of the ’90s does so in tacky technicolour. Newly minted 30-year-olds Jason Wu and Joseph Altuzarra both showed the kind of sleek and simple slip dresses Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy would have worn. Meanwhile, Rag and Bone and Narciso Rodriguez championed early-’90s minimalism via clean-lined, boxy silhouettes in a palette of black and white.
Considering my wardrobe is currently straddling the “hideous in a good way” vs. “nope, that’s just hideous” divide, I’d say this millennial falls on the trashy end of the ’90s spectrum. And while I’m sure I will someday embrace my 30s and retire my circa 1997 junior high floral party frock and my clear vinyl Fendi wedge kitten heels, until then I plan on revelling in the unadulterated youthful exuberance of ’90s fashion in all its glory. Because for all the mid-recessionary Gen X disillusionment of that decade, when I look back, all I see is me at 13, with a Gwen Stefani bindi, an armful of slap bracelets and happiness.){kind=link}