The Best Moments of the Last 25 Years in Fashion

0:09This is The Run Through, and I'm Nicole Phelps. Today, I am so happy to be joined in the studio by my wonderful colleagues, Mark Holgate, Vogue's fashion news director, and Laird Borelli-Person, Vogue's senior archive editor. Welcome, Mark and Laird. Thank you, Nicole. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you. Can we believe that the year 2025 is almost upon us? Oh, my God. It's crazy because it's also, not to get personal, but to get personal, it also marks my 25 years living in New York. So this whole episode of looking back over 25 years is really marked for me by living here in the United States.

0:49So that has given me a kind of interesting slash strange slash specific perspective on it. And you too, Laird, don't you have a milestone? July 2025 will be my 25th year at Condé Nast. Incredible. Well, we always look forward here at Vogue and at Vogue Runway, and there is a lot that's happening next year to be excited about. We'll get debuts at Celine, Givenchy, at Tom Ford, and Chanel. But in early December, we started a project looking back at the first 25 years of fashion in the 21st century, and that's what we're here today to talk about. We're going to start all the way back in the year 2000, which is the year that Style.com launched.

1:41Laird and I are both veterans of Style.com, and we agree, not just because we worked there, but because we're veterans in fashion, that it really did change the way the fashion industry ran. Do you want to put it a little bit in perspective, Laird? Sure. I mean, when I do research, it's really difficult to find imagery pre-internet and style imagery in any mass or concentration pre-style.com. The convention at the time was to do collections issues with an editor selection that editorials would have the look from a collection. So it was very, very curated. What style.com did was offer the entire collection.

2:28And I remember one designer saying to me, I don't really care what you write. I care that you review us because then the customer can see and make their own conclusion. And it always stuck with me. I mean, my approach to writing reviews is not to get too much into the nitty-gritty because I do believe that we have, you know, an interested and educated, you know, if you're coming to the site, you want to see. And so I don't feel like I need to do look one is white with ruffles. I think we can talk more about the ideas and the motivation and the connection to larger things, also with some detail.

3:06But, you know, the pictures are there so that people also can be players and curators themselves. There were some brands, though, that actually didn't want Style.com to cover their collections. and we were required to take the images down, actually, for fear of copy artists. Mark, do you remember the early days of Style.com? Did you use it as an editor? I did use it, but I have to say predating that was something called First View because when I went to work for New York Magazine, which is what brought me from London to New York in late 1999, they told me, you're going to have to pick your runway images from this website.

3:46I was like, what? Because I'd worked at British Vogue, and we used to have the deputy editor, Anna Harvey, in her tiny office, had this wall of bookshelves lined with huge black heavy binders with all these plastic sheets of tiny transparencies. It was probably by my eyesight so bad these days because I used to have to sit, if we were doing a story on, I don't know, knitwear or the short skirt or the slouchy trouser, you would go into her room and you would stand over a light box with a loop, which was like a little kind of magnifying glass thing that you peered through, which was quite hard for me because I had to stick the glasses on as well.

4:26It was like double lensing. And then you went through, flipping through, flipping through, flipping through, and literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of images. I mean, the difference is, of course, with style.com. It was available for everyone. And the revolution was to ally, to your point, Laird, a review with the collection in its entirety. First View was a kind of industry tool that, you know, people used just so they could pull, I don't know, a look from Helmut Lang or a look from Chanel or a look from Alexander McQueen. I think one thing that we don't talk about is it wasn't only the accessibility and the speed and the fear of copying.

5:05I think the role of luxury on a democratic platform that people were still discovering was still being figured out. In fact, it probably is still being discussed today, although less overtly. But how you dealt with things that were elite in an all-access platform was also a question. I mean, and how the platform worked. One of the essays that we published this month is about how the phone, the iPhone in particular, changed the way people acted at a fashion show. I mean, we used to clap, right? We used to clap. I still clap. I have to say I'm very, I've actually, yeah, I mean, I don't actually very rarely use my phone to film.

5:54You are the rare exception. I know, the dinosaur setting. And not only did we used to clap, we used to take notes and we used to do sketches. Did you sketch? Oh, no. Oh, my God. No, I tried it once and it literally looked like. But can I make a. It's terrible. Can I make a plea for the return of a line sheet? that you would find on your seat list of descriptions. I actually found them very useful, and I think in these days when people are upcycling and using recycling, you can't tell from looking that a trench is made out of recycled PET bottles. You need someone to tell you, so I miss those. I am so with you on that, Laird.

6:37With the phone came Instagram eventually, And that really catapulted fashion into a new sort of warp speed, right? And people became their own mini-publishers. You know, they're putting out their own coverage of the shows. And it maybe changed the nature of what we did at Vogue Runway, do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful to hear different voices. I tend to think as many people attend to show have as many opinions. I mean, there might be some consensus on best looks, but it also, I think, solidified my belief that, you know, we have something unique to bring. It's not the only message, but I think all of us in this room bring, you know, years of looking at thousands of shows.

7:28And that's one way of looking at it, but it's a, you know, it's a USP that I stand behind. And what about for all of us? I mean, I'm thinking back to coming to New York in 2000. I mean, where were we or what we were all doing in 2000? You were at Style.com. Where were you, Nicole? I was at Elle Magazine then and reading Style.com religiously. Those Sarah Mower reviews, they really were to me like the first and last word in fashion. They were like the Bible to me. She is really one of the greatest reviewers, I have to say. I mean, really, you know, Sarah kind of just managed to encapsulate so much.

8:11But it was interesting. I mean, it was, you know, because New York at that point in 2000, I mean, everything was happening. The LVMH Tower had gone up on 57th Street. You know, Mark had been working for Louis Vuitton for, I don't know, a year or two. Michael Kors had been at Celine for maybe a year or two. So, you know, New York just felt so buzzy and exciting and big and kind of glamorous to me coming from London, where we'd had amazing designers. You mean, you know, McQueen was still showing there. Hussein was showing there, you know, with people like Clements Ribeiro, Matthew Williamson. But then to come to New York was just, plus I got to see my idols.

8:49My idol, I should say, Helmut Lang. I got to see his show season after season. An idol for all of us. For all of us. We were all Helmut Lang obsessed. I can't think of any designers other than Helmut Lang and Margiela who have had more of an impact on fashion today. It's continuing. It's endless.

9:11Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

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10:02And we're back. Let's talk about the transformation of the fashion show. We hear a lot of complaints about small dark boxes, small black boxes here at Vogue.com. We like to let the light in. I remember, I mean, there were years in my early days as a young journalist at Women's Wear Daily and Elle magazine where it was very anonymous. It was an empty tent usually. Do you sort of trace back this blossoming or explosion of activity or scenography at shows to anything in particular? Or do you remember the years when it started to morph? I think for me it's John Galliano more than anyone with his stories and his, you know, sort of surrealist putting together of different things that would stick in your head that would create a picture image of two different things, a Russian princess, you know, a tundra, and put them together and then working with, I'm losing the name now, but the set designer.

11:07And I think this idea of telling like a fairy tale story, of having an inspiration book that, you know, used to be carried around. To me, I mean, McQueen was doing it too, but in a much more controversial way. And I think that John sort of paved the way for a sort of fictional narrative that was more familiar through movies and literature. I think also designers started to see it was a way to also establish an identity for themselves, who they were creatively, right? I mean, you know, we think about the theatricality of a McQueen show, you know, the one in the glass box or the one with the robot spray guns or, you know, the one with the merry-go-round, which I think was his last show in London, which was this kind of demented, dark, kind of creepy looking kind of fairground ride.

12:00But equally, Helmut Lang with his kind of rigor and modernity and that almost kind of choreographed street movement was in its own way theatrical and maybe more of a Pina Bausch kind of way, but it was theatrical, you know, and it really set the tone, I think, for the last 25 years that when we go to shows, you know, you kind of want an experience. You love an experience, I think. Yes, of course. I would argue, though, also for a vibe. I mean, because my beat was a lot of downtown young designers. And so it was, it didn't matter that the, to me, at least, that the show wasn't fancy, like Rachel Comey had, you know, showed on the street, but it would be the really great guy that also worked at, you know, a record store.

12:50It would be people that you knew from downtown. So this community or this feeling of sort of outsider-ness or coming-up-ness or like mindset was also and continues to be, I think, really powerful and exciting. Yeah, you say something really interesting, which is about the crowd. And I I think the crowd plays such an important role in the success of a show. Not just who is there, but how people feel. And, you know, when you're crowded in together and you can see the people across a little runway, it creates an incredible kind of energy. And for me, the best shows are always the ones where, you know, the dress is sort of brushing your knee as it goes by.

13:37I think about the Vet Mall show. in Le Depot. Yes. None better. In Paris. None better. A little stinky, but very, very cool. I do remember the PR for Vetements telling me, well, we put you upstairs because we thought Vogue might get the vapors and threw it down. I think we're maybe sleazier, seedier, perhaps more interesting things were going on when it was a nightclub come bar. But yes, we were upstairs. Bismarcky. Yes. A recent show that had that That sensation was the Prada show in September. They draped the whole room in this sort of icy green-blue satin, and the runway sort of snaked around the giant space of the Fondazione Prada.

14:24And we were really close to the people across the way, and everybody's craning their heads to see the next look come. And I think the way the runway is designed and not just like where it is, is just as important as the setting. You brought up presentations. So you made me think of Victoria Beckham's first collections, first shows at the Waldorf Astoria where she invited small groups of editors in one at a time and really sold her vision to us, narrated the whole collection. And, you know, Victoria Beckham is so world famous now. Going back to that moment, it was a turning point, I think. Yeah.

15:16It was so creative of her to do it the way she did it. Brave. And legitimizing. Yes. Super legitimizing. Super legitimizing and brave. I mean, you know, I think it also opened up that whole idea of who gets to be a designer, who can be a designer. Also probably reimagines the meaning and definition of designer, right? I think that's the other thing too, which actually has probably been a narrative throughout the last kind of quarter century. It moved the needle in a way and it brought fashion and celebrity and designardom into this new kind of relationship. Maybe we got ahead of ourselves talking about celebrity designers and we should talk about designer designers, star designers.

15:54Yes, designers who then became celebrities. Good one. Early in this kind of period that we're looking at, the big shock to me, the big change, the big kind of, I can't believe at the moment, was Tom Ford stepping down from Gucci in Saint Laurent because Tom had been unstoppable. I mean, the Gucci shows had been kind of these stellar, mega, mega pop cultural kind of moments. We'd obviously seen Donatella take the reins at Versace. So it was just this sense that designers were becoming bigger and bigger kind of cultural figures. And it wasn't so many years before that, you know, designers weren't were considered trade and weren't invited into society.

16:36I want to talk about a more recent phenomenon in the last quarter century, which is fashion's reckoning with its smallness, the sense that it was too elite and not for everyone. And over, I would say, the last 10 years, there's been a real, you know, a diversification of fashion. Do you agree? I think it's an ongoing process. I don't think it's a completed process. No, not at all, but. Yes. So, yes, there is a movement to take people as they are. Not in the 90s sense that you just sort of roll out of bed, but it doesn't matter what you look like or how you identify that you are part of this and you can be part of it and you should be part of it.

17:24I mean, this is generally known, but, I mean, it needs to be on both sides. You can't just go to a show and see representation of body type, et cetera, on the runway. You also need representation of people making the clothes and putting them down the runway. It needs to be on both sides of the scrim if we borrow the metaphor from unzipped. Who do you see as some of these influencers or pivot points in fashion sort of diversifying? Were there key moments for you? I remember seeing Andrea Pejic, who was a transgender model, have a portrait in Vogue. I think that was 2015 or 2016 and the first time a transgender model had been photographed in Vogue.

18:11And certainly I think of, you know, Ashley Graham and Paloma El Cesar. And I think Ashley, you know, was on Michael Kors' runway. And it was a very big deal because fashion has historically had such a, like, very, very narrow definition of beauty. And there was no room for curve models on the runways. I mean, it looks not different enough now, but we have at least watched the industry change. I think it's interesting to look back at Jean-Paul Gaultier's shows because today— Going back all the way to the 90s, you're talking about. Going back to the 90s, yes. And I would say that from our viewpoint, some of them might seem culturally appropriative.

18:58But in a historical concept, he was waves ahead because he had all sorts of diversity. Some of it doesn't look correct today. But he was always challenging what is beautiful. You think blonde and skinny is beautiful? I think this is beautiful. I think a tattoo is beautiful. All these things that we take for granted, it's so difficult to. You can't, once you've tasted something, you can't ever imagine what it tasted like, for example. I don't know what the metaphor is. But high-low dressing, that wasn't a thing. It's now just we take it for granted. Access to pictures all time. We just take it for granted.

19:37All these things. But now we are starting to appreciate and feel the need and responsibility to look bigger. But he was doing that back in the 90s. And I think it's that tension between how we look at shows now, you know, when I'm digitizing some of the things you're like, this would never, you can't believe that it happened. I mean, I think for me, it was just, you know, again, to go back to London, I mean, we saw a little bit with someone like Alexander McQueen, for sure. But more recently, I feel like New York's younger designers have been really, really fantastic and should be lauded for, you know, kind of tackling that conversation head on.

20:26You know, you think about Raul Lopez at Loire or you think about Rio Sport, the sense of community and the celebration. American designers were very important in actually pushing that because you don't see it elsewhere, really. I mean, right? And I think it's interesting to note that every, I think this is true, that every single winner at the CFDA Awards this past fall was an immigrant themselves or a child of an immigrant. So, it's a beautiful story, especially in the moment that we are in. And I mean, kudos to Virgil. I mean, absolutely the central figure in Virgil Abloh opening things up and showing what's possible, both in terms of issues of race, but also how you come at fashion.

21:18He didn't study fashion. He wasn't a celebrity coming into fashion. He was someone with a solid architectural background, knowledge of retail coming in and putting a perspective. But also the thing about Virgil is how many thousands of people have a text from Virgil that they post on the anniversary of his death because he was inclusive. He brought people up with him. And that's something like a brand that Who Decides War is trying to do, too. How can we lift people with us as we rise? And I think that's really beautiful and important aspect of fashion. More of that in 2025. Please. Thank you.

21:58Thank you. More on the first 25 after the break.

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22:44All right, we are going to talk about our own wardrobes a little bit. I want you to try to scroll back to the year 2000 and tell me about what you were wearing. Uh, Helmut Lang, um, a lot of Helmut Lang, a lot of APC, Margiela. I'm actually wearing a zip front ribbed Margiela cardigan right now, which, uh, I'm so old. I actually remember buying one from the first season that Margiela did menswear, which was late 1990s from Liberty in London. But yeah, pretty much that. It was kind of APC jeans, Helmut Lang jeans, um, Helmut Lang, Helmut Lang, Helmut Lang. I'm still not going over his leaving. Please come back, Helmut.

23:32We need you. We've moved on. He's moved on. We haven't. Sometimes, you know, relationships, you just get stuck in the past. What can I say? I mean, I used to wear pants in 2000. I wore pants on my first day at Style.com. But with like a shirt. And now I've morphed into shirt dresses as a uniform. But I remember it was a good time still for Century 21. so there would be you know basic things and then i still have like a margiela faux fur print things and um i used to have a montana suit um so yeah like strange things i would find that were i mean those are the days when you could go to century 21 and there would be samples from the gucci runway for sale i'd never seen anything like that in london that was century 21 was very important for that reason, for sure.

24:25I remember the sample sales at the news, Stella Ishii's showroom, and she sold Margiela sweaters for$75 each and runway dresses for less than$300. I remember the 2001 launch of Mark by Mark Jacobs, which meant a lot to me and to our colleague, Laia Garcia-Furtado, who wrote about it so beautifully on the site. and I wore my first pair of Mark by Mark Jacobs jeans. They had the crease, like the crease, the white crease, sort of folded into the front until they shredded. I had Helmut Lang's paint-spattered jeans that were ripped and my parents could not. You spent money for them? Do you still have them, Laird?

25:12No. I don't have anything from that period. I went through a bad breakup with someone I'd been for a long time and I got rid of every single piece of clothing and it went to Goodwill in Chelsea. Literally almost everything. Someone's lucky out there. But don't you think there's that karma? Sometimes I like to give really good stuff and then I hope that I'll find really good stuff. Maybe not quite as much stuff as I did. And what about Vogue? When you arrived at Vogue, Mark, paint a picture of what it was like then and how different it is today. Well, it was actually, it'll be my 21st year and it was it felt just kind of impossibly glamorous because you know you were I remember coming to the Conde Nast building at Fortime Square my colleagues my Vogue colleagues you know incredibly stylish but it's a different kind of stylish now it's it's great it's more kind of real and I think everyone then was kind of adopting more of a uniform so you know famously articulated by Plum Sykes.

26:14I feel like every three minutes I see that clip of her from Boss Woman talking about her outfit and about how for most people it would be the most fancy outfit of the year. And that's kind of what it was like. I was a little shocked because I come from New York Magazine, which was a weekly magazine that, you know, fashion was but a small, tiny part of it. So most people were thinking about other things and not really thinking about how they looked or how they dressed to the degree I saw kind of coming to Condé Nast. I just remember it was a lot of high heels high heels a lot so many heels it was so dressed up but i mean when i came to style.com it was a little bit different vibe even though it was mostly vogue people but um but it would be you know ann buford who was then the in head of the site coming in in a a really tight you know gucci tom ford suit but then she'd put it with slides do you know what i mean and then lauren du pont would come in more more preppy um and then candy you know with her motocross jacket and her CandyCast, you know, was...

27:15CandyCast is still, you know, one of my all-time favorites. This is a deep cut for followers of the run-through, but if you can do a Google search on CandyCast, Candy Pratt's Price, it's worth doing. So as we wrap up our look back, I want you to shout out a few of the most important shows to you from the last 25 years. Probably Voss from McQueen. which you can see and experience at the Lightroom, the McQueen show, with the glass box, which I just was, you know, it's been talked about a million times, so you don't need to hear me talk about it again, but it was an incredible theatrical experience and it was such a kind of high point of London.

28:01Well, I mean, give me downtown New York as for Imitation of Christ, Miguel. Miguel Adrover. Miguel Adrover. I remember, do you remember the one with the goat? Was it a sheep on the stage? Remember that one? To me, the two collections, the Burberry coat and then the next one, the sort of polo. The Quentin Crisp mattress. Yes. Amazing. And then the next one. I think I saw that mattress on Second Avenue before I was in Miguel Adrover's show. To me, it really captured. I think the things that really capture the energy of this city as I see it are super exciting. I want to shout out a late era Nicola Gesquière Balenciaga show.

28:43It was spring 2012 and it was the show where the bench broke in the front row and I was on the bench and that broke. and I remember the shock of the wooden bench sort of collapsing beneath us and then it was right before the show was going to start and so we all stood up and we took notes standing up and to me, it was such a unique moment and it was just so charming to do that and I'll never forget it. No, maybe I shouldn't tell this story, but a British former colleague of mine, it was a moment when I was actually quite happy to be tall because I was on the second row. So I could see over people's heads at that show, but my British colleague couldn't.