“Everything will be fine” column about a special decade: Sad faces of the 90s

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Oh, the nineties! Maybe liberal excesses lead to the kingdom of wisdom? To beauty, self-confidence, inner peace? Or rather, in rehabilitation clinics due to climate disaster? What about counteracting populism and fundamentalism? We look back with nostalgia, nourished by the Supermodels series.

The ’90s began with star photographer Peter Lindbergh’s group portrait of aspiring supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford in 1990 for British Vogue, and ended in 1999 with his portrait of superpolitician Gerhard Schröder for the magazine. “Life & Style”.

Meanwhile, the world seemed limitless, McDonald’s was now available in Moscow after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and everyone could travel wherever they wanted, and be where and with whomever they wanted. It was the “decade of freedom” (Jens Balzer), everyone felt called to discover their individuality and celebrate it collectively. Each quirk added a feature.

Talk show guests have confessed their sexual preferences, insecurities, addictions and failed cosmetic surgeries on private television. It was a superb, authentically staged drama. And proof that every person is actually responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness: can’t everyone become their own brand?

This would be too much for the unemployed. But they could position themselves as Ich-AG, as demanded by the then German Chancellor Schröder, because there is no right to laziness.

But the models managed to transform themselves. Previously, they were perceived primarily as living clothes hangers, but now they have shown individuality. They no longer wore brands, they were brands themselves: Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campell, Linda Evangelista. When they had to walk quickly down the runway to make a long dress flow more beautifully, there could be no doubt what was at stake: not the material they were wearing. You yourself were the material.

And today? You can see what happened to supermodels of yesteryear on Apple TV. It’s not just beautiful. They are outdated, like the ideology of the 90s, the ideology of unlimited individualism. Everything will be fine.

Ursula von Arx loves ’90s glamour. And I have to constantly remind myself that freedom should not be confused with selfishness. Von Arx writes in Blick every other Monday.

Source: Blick