On 8 October 2026, an exhibition opened at the Tate Britain gallery in London The 90s: Art and Fashion, devoted to British art, photography and fashion of the 1990s. The display features more than 100 works and objects by nearly 70 artists, photographers and designers. The curator of the project is Edward Enninful, former editor-in-chief of the British Vogue, who himself came of age professionally in the cultural milieu of that decade. The exhibition is open until 14 February 2027.
The project turns attention back to a period when art, fashion, photography, magazine culture and the club scene interacted with one another ever more actively. Their intersection changed not only the visual face of Great Britain, but also the ways in which a person could speak about themselves, their body, their identity and their place in society. Today this history allows us to see how the modern idea of personal style took shape, and why the right to create one's own image independently became an important part of visual culture.
Art, fashion and photography: a shared cultural environment
In the 1990s, the customary boundaries between artistic disciplines grew ever less rigid. Magazine photography influenced art, fashion turned into a statement in its own right, and artists turned to everyday life, mass culture and personal experience. Important ideas were born not only in museums and galleries, but also on the pages of magazines, in photo studios, nightclubs and experimental spaces.
The exhibition brings together works by the artists of Young British Artists — a generation that changed the perception of contemporary British art — with photographs and fashion images of that era. Here Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Gillian Wearing and Yinka Shonibare meet the photographers Corinne Day and Juergen Teller, and the designers Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.
This juxtaposition is important in itself: it shows that visual culture is formed by the mutual influence of different creative practices. Clothing, a photograph or an art object can not only reflect the times, but also change the way society perceives itself.
The person as the author of their own image
One of the notable changes of the decade was a growing interest in individual experience. Artists turned ever more often to personal history, the body, memory and everyday life, turning them into material for a conversation about broader social questions.
This process was especially vividly manifested in the works of women artists. Tracey Emin turned to autobiographical experience and vulnerability, Sarah Lucas explored the body, sexuality and cultural notions of femininity, and Jenny Saville revisited the customary ways of depicting the human body and ideals of appearance. In their practice, woman was not only the subject of the image, but also the author of the statement, independently determining what to speak about and in what manner.
Photography was changing in parallel. The images of Corinne Day and Juergen Teller moved away from carefully constructed glossy flawlessness in favour of immediacy, imperfection and individual character. In such images, a person's value depended less and less on conformity to a single visual standard.
This did not mean that the former norms disappeared. Rather, alongside them there came to be more other ways of showing oneself and seeing another. One's own image gradually turned from a ready-made model to be repeated into a space of personal choice.
Beauty becomes broader
The change in artistic language also influenced the idea of beauty. The focus was not only on harmony and flawlessness, but also on expressiveness, character, physicality, individuality. Artists and photographers explored what might previously have seemed too personal, unusual or uncomfortable for the public gaze.
In the image of woman this change was especially noticeable. The body was ceasing to be exclusively an object of appraisal and was becoming a way of telling about one's own experience, freedom and identity. Femininity was ever harder to reduce to a single ideal: it could be expressed through strength or vulnerability, boldness or restraint, experimentation with clothing or a rejection of familiar rules.
This tendency did not belong only to women and did not arise in a single decade. However, the art of the 1990s made many such explorations especially visible, broadening the range of images and themes that could occupy a central place in visual culture.
A visual language of one's own
Fashion and photography became important instruments of self-expression. Clothing could communicate belonging to a particular milieu, or, conversely, could help one distance oneself from it. A photograph captured not only appearance, but also mood, position, a person's attitude to the world around them.
In this environment the image ceased to be exclusively something created by others. A person gained more opportunities to take part in how they are seen and how they present themselves. This was especially significant for women and for representatives of various cultural communities, whose stories and identity did not always find reflection in the dominant images of British culture.
A visual language of one's own is not simply a recognisable style. It is a way of choosing what exactly to show the world, which stories to tell and which ideas about oneself to reconsider. Art, photography and fashion offered different means for such a conversation, and their interaction made it richer.
Why the 1990s matter today
A return to this decade is not only an occasion to recall iconic photographs, designer collections and works of art. It helps to trace how many ideas familiar today took shape: about personal style, the diversity of identities, the connection between art and everyday life, and the possibility of speaking in one's own name.
At the same time, the 1990s were not a time when all boundaries disappeared or everyone received equal opportunities for self-expression. Artistic experiments coexisted with social contradictions, and new images did not abolish old stereotypes. But it was precisely the expansion of opportunities for creative statement that became one of the important legacies of the decade.
Bringing together art, photography and fashion, The 90s: Art and Fashion offers a chance to see cultural changes not as separate tendencies, but as parts of a common process. In it, personal experience became the material of art, clothing became a way of making a statement, and photography became a space for new views of the human being.
Ultimately, what is at stake is how our perception changes — not only of art, but of ourselves. When there are more ways of being seen, there are more opportunities to see another. And it is precisely in this that the relevance of the artistic explorations of the 1990s lies: they remind us that beauty does not have to fit into a single standard, and that one's own image can be not something imposed from outside, but something consciously created.
