00:01For the 30th anniversary of GQ Men of the Year,
00:03we're looking back at three decades of change in men's fashion.
00:06Today, style is the cultural currency of our time.
00:09From the runway to the street, online and off,
00:11menswear is now a powerful tool of self-expression,
00:13influence, and identity.
00:15So how did we get here?
00:21The 1990s, the birth of modern fashion.
00:24In the early 90s, menswear was teetering on the edge of revolution.
00:28Minimalism is the order of the day,
00:30but mainstream style was being challenged by waves of subversion.
00:33Teenagers worshipped king of grunge Kurt Cobain,
00:36while Wu-Tang Clan was spreading the gospel with boisterous streetwear.
00:39Come on, baby, pump it up!
00:41Skateboarding was one of the fastest-growing sports in the country,
00:44dictating how millions of kids dressed.
00:46Meanwhile, fashion advertising grew louder and more influential.
00:49Calvin Klein's underwear ads, featuring a crotch-grabbing marky mark,
00:52caused a gullible sensation,
00:54and Ralph Lauren minted Tyson Beckford
00:56as the world's first black supermodel.
00:58Into the fray stepped a young American designer named Tom Ford,
01:01whose fall 1995 runway show for Gucci
01:03was the big bang that marked the dawn of a new era in men's fashion.
01:06Ford's opulent velvet tuxedos and sexy silk shirts had a 70s look,
01:10but they embodied the rebellious, in-your-face attitude
01:12sweeping the culture at that very moment.
01:14The menswear rulebook had officially been thrown out the window.
01:17The odds, the rise of menswear tribes.
01:22As the millennium dawned, the radical fashion subcultures were now mainstream,
01:26with blogging and online forums stoking a new wave of style.
01:29Menswear began splintering into tribes,
01:31where you were Carhartt-wearing urban lumberjack,
01:33a supreme-obsessed hypebeast,
01:35a skinny jeans-clad indie sinister,
01:37or an Italian tailoring connoisseur.
01:39Whichever you were, there was a corner of the internet where you could nerd out.
01:43Fashion designers no longer sold clothes,
01:45they sold a lifestyle,
01:47and everyone wanted to end on the action.
01:49Pharrell Williams launched his own label, Billionaire Boys Club,
01:52and Marc Jacobs invited pop artist Takashi Murakami
01:54to collaborate on a line for Louis Vuitton.
01:56Against this backdrop,
01:58upstart men's fashion designers like Tom Brown
02:00were determined to further blow the lines between fashion and art.
02:02When Brown launched his shrunken suit in the early aughts,
02:05people scoffed.
02:06But by the end of the decade,
02:07Brown's theatrical runway shows were the hottest ticket in town,
02:10and high-water pants ruled the streets.
02:12Fashion had become personal, performative,
02:14and captivating to anyone with a point of view.
02:18The 2010s, style becomes culture.
02:21Instagram launched in 2010,
02:22setting the table for a decade
02:24when fashion fully merged with pop culture.
02:26Street style became just as important
02:28as what was happening on the runways.
02:30Influencers became celebrities,
02:31and celebrities became influencers.
02:33And thanks to visionary designers like Alessandro Michele,
02:36men's wear started to look lighter and more feminine,
02:38no longer defined by a rigid concept of masculinity.
02:41In fact, in this new anything-goes era,
02:43anyone with a big idea and access to a screen printer
02:46could become a fashion designer.
02:47Enter Virgil Abloh,
02:48a sneaker-obsessed outsider
02:49who rose to the highest ranks of luxury fashion
02:51by turning the industry on its head.
02:53In Abloh's world,
02:54community was cooler than elitism,
02:56connections as important as classical training,
02:58and luxury was about creativity
03:00rather than just craftsmanship.
03:01All of this new energy transformed Paris Fashion Week
03:03from an insiders-only showcase
03:05into a star-studded Coachella of clothing.
03:07A new generation of fans began following fashion
03:09as they would professional sports.
03:11And at the same time,
03:12men's wear-obsessed hoopers turned the NBA tunnels
03:14into their own runway shows,
03:16which became just as influential as the real thing.
03:18And when Abloh dropped his watershed Off-White and Nike collaboration,
03:22the ensuing global phenomenon proved that fashion
03:24had become core to modern identity.
03:26To stay on top of what's next, subscribe to GQ.
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