The 1990s

Layered, loose and deliberately unpolished - flannel over band T-shirts, ripped jeans, long cardigans and floral dresses with heavy boots - the Seattle music scene's thrift-store uniform, briefly and awkwardly turned into high fashion.

Oversized jeans, big jackets, work boots and designer logos - hip-hop's 1990s silhouette, and the women who wore it their own way, from TLC's baggy layers and Aaliyah's boyish cool to Lil' Kim's high glamour.

Clean lines, neutral colours and nothing extra - the pared-back luxury of Calvin Klein, Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, built on slip dresses, simple trousers and soft, unlined tailoring.

Very thin, pale and deliberately unglamorous - the waif look that replaced the supermodels' curves, launched by Kate Moss and a new generation of photographers, and criticised by 1997 as 'heroin chic'.

Low-rise trousers, cropped baby tees, platform trainers, metallics and tech fabrics - the playful, pop-futurist look of the last years of the decade, built for the millennium.

A Savile Row-trained East Londoner whose theatrical, dark and brilliantly tailored shows - the bumster trouser, 'Highland Rape' - made him the enfant terrible of 1990s London and chief designer at Givenchy by the age of twenty-seven.

The Milan designer of baroque prints, gold Medusa heads and body-conscious glamour - the man who put the supermodels on the runway together, dressed Elizabeth Hurley in the safety-pin dress, and was murdered in 1997.

The anonymous Belgian designer of the blank white label, the split-toed Tabi boot and garments remade from old clothes - the 1990s' most radical thinker about what a garment is, who later designed for Hermès.

The political-science graduate who turned her family's Milan leather-goods firm into the most intellectually influential label of the decade - industrial nylon, 'ugly chic', and clothes designed to make you think.

A young Texan designer who turned an ailing Florentine leather house into the sexiest label of the decade - velvet hipsters, satin shirts and 1970s glamour in 1995 - and helped invent the modern 'creative director'.

Loose military trousers with big bellows pockets on the thighs - adopted by skaters, ravers and hip-hop fans, then by pop stars in low-rise versions, and one of the most-worn trousers of the late decade.

The air-cushioned, yellow-stitched work boot designed by a German doctor and made in Northamptonshire from 1960 - adopted by skinheads, punks and goths before becoming the 1990s' favourite boot to wear with a dress.

Hervé Léger's body-sculpting dress built entirely from bands of stretch fabric sewn together like bandages - the supermodel era's ultimate going-out dress, and the glamorous opposite of grunge.

A plaid workwear shirt from the Pacific Northwest, bought cheap in thrift stores and worn open over T-shirts or tied round the waist - the single most recognisable garment of grunge.

A simple bias-cut dress on thin straps, borrowed straight from 1930s lingerie - the decade's defining dress, worn minimal and bare by Kate Moss, over a T-shirt by grunge kids, and as a wedding gown by Carolyn Bessette.

Stretchy, shimmering velvet with a deliberately crumpled pile - the 1990s revival fabric of slip dresses, chokers and scrunchies, of grunge-goth evenings, and of Tom Ford's 1995 Gucci hipsters.

Ultra-fine polyester and nylon microfibres, waterproof-breathable membranes and technical stretch blends - sports and outdoor textiles that crossed into everyday and designer clothing in the 1990s.

A soft, warm, quick-drying polyester pile developed by Malden Mills with Patagonia around 1980, which in the 1990s moved from mountaineering kit to the everyday zip-up of half the population - and, from 1993, began to be made from recycled bottles.

A tough, tightly woven black nylon, until then used for things like military tents and parachutes, that Miuccia Prada turned into the most coveted luxury material of the early 1990s.

See-through fabrics - chiffon, georgette, organza, stretch mesh and fine knits - worn in layers or on their own, from minimalist 'naked' dresses and Kate Moss's 1993 slip to club-wear mesh tops.

Ripped knees, faded washes, frayed hems and sandblasted 'wear' - the factory techniques that made new clothes look old, feeding grunge's thrift-store look to the mass market, at a real cost to garment workers.

How 1990s baggy clothes were actually cut - extra-wide legs, deep crotches, dropped shoulders and deliberately enlarged patterns - from hip-hop and skate jeans to grunge layers and Margiela's giant garments.

Angled, padded, underwired cups that push the bust up and together - an engineering idea from 1960s Canada that became a sensation in 1994 with the Wonderbra's 'Hello Boys' billboards.

Trousers and skirts cut with a short rise so the waistband sits on the hips, not the waist - launched by Alexander McQueen's shocking 'bumsters' in 1993, sexed up by Tom Ford's velvet hipsters, and everywhere by the end of the decade.

Jackets without big shoulder pads, stiff canvas or full linings - soft, light, fluid tailoring that followed the body instead of building a new one, and replaced the 1980s power suit.

Oasis, Blur and Pulp, the Union Jack reclaimed, and a new generation of London designers - the mid-1990s moment when British music, art and fashion felt like the centre of the world again.

'The Rachel' haircut, slip dresses over T-shirts, plaid skirt suits and knee socks - how a sitcom and a teen film became the decade's most influential style guides, taking designer and street trends straight to the high street.

Five women, five instantly recognisable styles, a slogan and a Union Jack dress - how the Spice Girls turned 'girl power' into the biggest pop phenomenon of the late 1990s and made fashion a matter of personality.

All-night dance parties in warehouses and fields, acid house smileys, baggy clothes built for dancing, neon and mesh - the youth movement that grew out of 1988's 'Second Summer of Love' and shaped streetwear through the 1990s.

Linda, Naomi, Christy, Cindy, Tatjana and Claudia - the handful of models who became global celebrities in the early 1990s, launched by a 1990 Vogue cover and a George Michael video, before the waif and the actress-cover took over.