Before Everything Got Serious

The nineties had no shame and that was the whole point. Platform trainers, tracksuits in colors without names, patterns that would make a graphic designer weep—it was a decade that dressed like it genuinely believed everything was going to be fine. I’ve never fully gotten over it, which makes me a reliable audience for any collection that points back in that direction without collapsing into costume.

Urban Outfitters’ spring line leans into the loosened-up, post-Cold-War early nineties—the moment when sportswear started bleeding into everything else and nobody thought that was a problem. Silk dresses layered over knitwear, shearling vests thrown over things that don’t obviously need shearling vests: the logic is deliberate collision. The silhouettes are athletic and the details soften them, which is exactly the tension worth playing with. A skate-culture undercurrent runs through the whole thing without being announced, which is the correct way to handle it—the decade’s rebellious streak worked best when it was too confident to explain itself.

What I respond to most is the restraint in the color palette: bright but not aggressive, the kind of palette that takes real discipline to land. Practical accessories in saturated tones push it sideways from pure nostalgia into something with its own point of view. The nineties at their worst were pure chaos; at their best there was total conviction in the weirdest possible choices. This collection catches at least some of that, which is more than most nostalgia exercises manage.