The Minimalist Silhouette

Minimalism is the grown-up side of 1990s fashion. Like grunge, it rejected the excess of the 1980s, but instead of thrift stores and layers it offered something clean, calm, and expensive. For me, it's the silhouette that defines the middle of the decade.

The look was built on simplicity. Colours were neutral - black, white, grey, navy, camel, beige - and there was almost no decoration: no prints, no logos, no embellishment, very little jewellery. Shapes were long and lean rather than fitted or voluminous. The key pieces were the bias-cut slip dress, slim or straight-leg trousers, plain knitwear, long skirts, simple tank tops and T-shirts, and soft unstructured tailoring - jackets without the big shoulder pads and stiff interlinings of the 1980s. Quality of fabric and precision of cut did all the work.

Three designers are most closely linked with it. Calvin Klein, in New York, turned minimalism into a huge commercial success, from clean womenswear to the unisex CK One fragrance of 1994, advertised with androgynous young models in simple black and white. Jil Sander, in Germany, made precise, beautifully cut clothes in the finest fabrics. And Helmut Lang, an Austrian designer working in Vienna and then Paris and New York, mixed minimalism with technical fabrics and a slightly harder, urban edge. Miuccia Prada worked in a related, more intellectual register.

Minimalism was also about a new kind of status. After the logo-heavy 1980s, it suggested that true luxury didn't need to shout; you recognised it by the cut and the cloth. The most famous minimalist moment of the decade was a wedding: in 1996, Carolyn Bessette wore a simple, bias-cut silk slip dress by Narciso Rodriguez, then designing for Cerruti, to marry John F. Kennedy Jr., and it was copied endlessly.

I think minimalism is one of the most influential looks of the late twentieth century. It's quiet, and it can be severe, but it also gave women clothes that were comfortable, flattering, and free of the decade before's armour. A lot of what we now think of as a "classic" wardrobe - the black trousers, the slip dress, the camel coat - comes straight from the 1990s minimalists.