It was, as male model Tyson Beckford says in the opening episode of In Vogue: The 90s, “a great time to be alive”. Especially if you happened to be young, famous and beautiful. Beckford spent that decade gazing down imperiously on mere mortals, from the supersized Ralph Lauren billboards on which he starred in glossy advertising campaigns. Sort of like Christ the Redeemer over Rio, but in a tight white Polo vest and with one arm around Naomi Campbell.
In the 1990s, fashion had the power to anoint our gods and goddesses. A Vogue cover was a coronation ceremony. Supermodels were the sweethearts of popular culture, glossy magazine editors the power behind the throne. This imperial age of fashion was set in motion, with precision timing, by the January 1990 cover of British Vogue. Peter Lindbergh’s black-and-white portrait of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Tatjana Patitz announced the dawn of the supermodel age, and was the starting pistol for a decade when fashion was the engine room of popular culture. For the next 10 years, the party rolled directly from the front row to the Groucho and on to the following morning’s front pages.
