Jefferson Hack’s Definitive Alphabetical Guide to the 90s: Art, Fashion, and Culture Explored at Tate Britain

As contemporary culture continues to look back at the final decade of the 20th century for inspiration, Dazed co-founder Jefferson Hack has offered a sprawling, deeply personal perspective on the era that shaped modern creative identity. Curated as part of the cultural landscape surrounding major retrospective discussions—most notably highlighted by The 90s: Art and Fashion exhibition running at Tate Britain through February 14, 2027—Hack’s alphabetical retrospective maps out the sounds, styles, spaces, and insurgent figures that turned the decade into a permanent laboratory for youth culture.

Rather than viewing the 1990s through a lens of nostalgic pastiche, Hack’s framework treats the era as a living blueprint of DIY ethos, raw experimentation, and radical community-building. From warehouse raves and independent zines to the emergence of boundary-pushing avant-garde fashion, the decade is remembered as a time when youth culture was not yet systematically marketed back to itself, but was instead actively building its own mythology in real time.

A Is for Acid House

At the foundational root of the decade’s countercultural explosion was Acid House. It was defined not just by the hypnotic, driving music, but by the profound permission it granted a generation. Warehouses, abandoned industrial spaces, and open fields were transformed into temporary autonomous zones. For a fleeting historical moment, social and economic differences dissolved on the dancefloor. Youth culture was entirely self-generated, laying down the tracks for a new century of communal expression before commercial algorithms and social media took hold.

B Is for Björk

Stepping onto the global stage as a singular, unclassifiable force, Björk channeled ancient folklore, pioneering electronic music, and high conceptual fashion into an aesthetic entirely her own. She made raw emotion feel futuristic. Working alongside visionary directors like Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham, she fundamentally proved that music videos could operate as a legitimate experimental art form, demonstrating that pop music could be simultaneously intimate, rebellious, and radically imaginative.

C Is for Club Culture

Before the homogenizing effects of the digital age and social media feeds, nightclubs functioned as the true laboratories of culture. The dancefloor was where underground identity was rehearsed, coded, and tested. DJs acted as editors of human emotion, seamlessly sampling and sequencing the anxieties and ecstasies of the era into something fluid and borderless. These scenes formed in the dark corners of cities and radiated outwards, permanently altering fashion, contemporary art, and media.

D Is for David Bowie

A lifelong shape-shifter who instinctively understood cultural shifts before they fully materialized, David Bowie served as an early champion for independent publishing ventures. Hack recalls flying Rankin and himself to Los Angeles for their first major celebrity cover shoot—an endorsement that carried immense validation for a young publication trying to carve out its own space in the cultural discourse. Bowie always knew where the cultural tectonic plates were moving, making his early support an unforgettable milestone.

E Is for Experimentation

Risk was not calculated as a corporate strategy during the 1990s; it was driven by pure instinct. Across sound, imagery, and personal identity, nothing felt fixed or permanent. Musical genres were quick to blur into one another, rigid gender codes were radically loosened, and traditional publishing began reinventing its own parameters. Simultaneously, early manifestations of the internet brought borderless sampling and the rapid exchange of ideas to the forefront of creative production.

F Is for Fashion

A new guard of visionary designers—led by Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Raf Simons, Helmut Lang, Marc Jacobs, and later in the decade, Hedi Slimane—transformed clothing into a vital new language for a generation. Rejecting traditional notions of glossy glamour, these designers embraced a more autobiographical, auteur-driven sensibility that brought high fashion into direct, visceral contact with youth culture.

G Is for Grunge

Rising out of the Pacific Northwest and quickly washing over global youth culture, grunge functioned as a necessary corrective to the excesses of the 1980s. It democratized aesthetics by allowing imperfection to become beautiful, effectively turning anti-fashion into the dominant style of the decade.

H Is for Heroin Chic

The complex intersection of fashion photography, reality, and public morality came to a head with the rise of the so-called "heroin chic" aesthetic. When then-President Bill Clinton publicly criticized publications like Dazed & Confused for allegedly promoting dangerous trends, it underscored just how potent and disruptive youth imagery had become in mainstream political discourse. Photographers were simply documenting the fragility, excess, and raw reality they saw unfolding around them, prompting an enduring debate: did their images manufacture culture, or did they simply expose it?

I Is for Independence

At the heart of the 1990s creative economy was a fierce commitment to independence. Whether through independent record labels, avant-garde designers, or self-published zines, there was a prevailing belief that if the established system did not serve you, you had to build your own. DIY was never merely an aesthetic choice; it was an active methodology for inventing the future.

J Is for Jarvis Cocker

Wry, intelligent, and hyper-observant, Jarvis Cocker and his band Pulp redefined Britpop through a lens of self-awareness and literary wit. When Rankin photographed the band for their landmark album A Different Class, the transparent cover functioned as a visual manifesto for a distinctively British, deeply questioning brand of pop stardom.

K Is for Kate Moss

Emerging as the defining face of a generation, Kate Moss single-handedly redefined global standards of beauty. Unpolished, unguarded, and playfully punk, she embodied a pure, unfiltered London attitude that mirrored the restless mood of the times.

L Is for Lee Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen elevated fashion to the status of high art through daring, narrative-driven collections that challenged societal norms. When he guest-edited Dazed and placed Paralympian Aimee Mullins on the cover—photographed by Nick Knight and styled by Katy England—the gesture was not about cheap shock value, but about fundamentally reframing power, physical ability, and human potential.

M Is for Metalheadz at the Blue Note

In the pressure-cooker environment of Hoxton Square’s Blue Note, London’s underground music scene found a physical home where heavy bass became architecture. During the legendary Sunday sessions run by Metalheadz, a vibrant new expression of Black British futurism took shape in real time.

N Is for Nirvana

Driven by conviction rather than commercial calculation, Nirvana fundamentally shifted the emotional landscape and collective psyche of a generation inward. All the unresolved teenage angst, alienation, and frustration of the decade were distilled into the raw sonic energy of the band and the uncompromising attitude of Kurt Cobain.

O Is for OK Computer

Before releasing the genre-defining album that would capture the anxieties of the impending digital age, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Colin Greenwood performed early renditions of these songs at the Tramshed in London for the very first Dazed Live event. Hack recalls standing alongside artist Wolfgang Tillmans as local fire services attempted to shut down the overcrowded venue—a chaotic night where the futuristic sounds of "Paranoid Android" fused with the wailing sirens of Shoreditch fire engines.

P Is for Primal Scream

Marrying rock, rave, gospel, and dub music, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica captured the spirit of restless cross-pollination and the relentless search for sonic novelty that came to define the decade’s musical landscape.

Q Is for Queer Cinema

Against the devastating backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a groundbreaking wave of queer cinema spearheaded by directors like Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes, and Gus Van Sant reframed marginalized narratives. These filmmakers brought desire, political anger, dark humor, and deep tenderness to the screen, charged with a fierce new sexual energy.

R Is for Rankin

As a co-founder and photographer, Rankin helped forge a new visual language through direct, intimate dialogues with iconic talent including Björk, David Bowie, and Thom Yorke. His innovative fashion collaborations with stylists like Katie Grand and Alister Mackie produced imagery that felt immediate, confrontational, and enduringly memorable.

S Is for Sign of the Times

Operating as an independent designer stall in London’s Kensington Market, Sign of the Times served as a crucial cultural incubator. Under the watchful eye of owner Fiona Cartledge, it became an essential crossroad where designers, artists, and musicians converged, trading ideas as freely as clothes and launching some of the era’s most notorious underground parties. It famously also served as an early workplace for artist Jeremy Deller.

T Is for Trainspotting

When author Irvine Welsh interviewed Iggy Pop for Dazed & Confused in 1995, he was famously surprised to discover that his rock-and-roll hero had never actually taken ecstasy. The cultural phenomenon of Trainspotting—first through Welsh’s gritty novel and later adapted into Danny Boyle’s electrifying film with its unforgettable soundtrack—crystallized the bleak, post-ecstasy comedown of early 90s youth culture, reflecting the deep economic hopelessness and lack of opportunity that pervaded the final years of the Conservative government.

U Is for Underground Resistance

Hailing from Detroit, the techno collective Underground Resistance introduced a fiercely political, uncompromising futurist philosophy to electronic music. Their sound hit the UK hard early in the decade before ricocheting across European club circuits and radiating back out to the global stage.

V Is for Vivienne Westwood

Long before the 90s and throughout its duration, Vivienne Westwood remained the undisputed queen of London fashion, championing style as a form of sophisticated rebellion. Her work involved sampling, distorting, and remixing historical references to challenge contemporary conventions.

W Is for Wolfgang Tillmans

Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans fundamentally reframed photography as a direct extension of lived experience. Capturing everything from intimate portraits of club kids and lovers to friends and sprawling underground scenes, he possessed a rare ability to make the everyday feel radical and the radical feel tender.

X Is for X-Girl

Kim Gordon’s trailblazing, femme-focused streetwear label brought together a creative community that included Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola, culminating in a runway show featuring Chloë Sevigny. In 1990s New York, creative energy frequently revolved around the orbit of Gordon and Thurston Moore.

Y Is for The YBAs

The Young British Artists—including Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Chris Ofili, and the Chapman brothers—collectively sought to break violently from artistic tradition while aggressively attempting to outdo one another. Sensation was utilized simultaneously as an artistic strategy and a cultural reset. As the first generation of British artists to actively court mainstream media attention alongside powerful collectors and gallerists like Charles Saatchi, Sadie Coles, and Jay Jopling, they built an unapologetic economic engine around their creative output.

Z Is for Zines

The entire ethos of the decade’s DIY culture found its purest expression in independent self-publishing and manifestos passed physically from hand to hand. This grassroots spirit was the literal foundation upon which Dazed was built: starting as a black-and-white poster zine featuring no staples, just four A2 sheets of paper folded down into an A4 cover, accompanied by a defiant note to the reader declaring, "This is not a magazine…"

The exhibition "The 90s: Art and Fashion" remains on display at Tate Britain through February 14, 2027.