In Vogue: The 90s (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
-[sirens wailing in distance]
-[car horn honking]
[Enninful] I've worked in fashion
for over 30 years,
and I'm still crazy about it.
How are you?
As someone who's edited Vogue magazine,
I guess I'm part of the establishment,
an insider.
Maybe we need to break up
the column distributor
But that's not how I started.
Back then, I couldn't have
been more of an outsider,
maybe even a rebel.
[metal screeching]
[Enninful] One day,
I remember getting on the train
and this man got up.
Gave me his card,
and he wanted me to model for him.
I didn't really know
[chuckles] what modelling was.
Um, so I remember going home
and my dad literally said,
"No, you can't model,"
and my mum was like,
"No, not that industry, no."
You know, like most 16-year-olds,
I just pressured her and pressured her,
and this time she said, "Okay."
That first shoot I was like
It was so exhilarating.
It's really amazing to think
that that train journey
sort of changed my life.
[lively reggae music
SL2 "On A Ragga Tip" playing]
[Enninful] And we were all so young,
it felt like we were part
of something exciting
that hadn't yet become mainstream.
The underground scene
that I knew in London,
the heart of it, was rebellion.
We lived in bedsits,
we lived in unfurnished flats,
we went to clubs
that weren't the most glamorous,
you know, and that was our life.
It was music, it was the art scene.
We just wanted to change the world,
-show the world something new.
-[music concludes]
[Glen Luchford]
When i-D magazine came out,
it felt like the first fashion magazine
that really represented the street.
By the 1990s, I was at i-D,
the youngest fashion director in history.
A bit of fun at i-D.
[Enninful] We were on the edge,
we were the cool kids,
we were against the system.
[man] So, tell me,
what's the best thing about i-D?
We just present an alternative.
We present different ways to view clothes.
It was a magazine by young people
for young people
and just really giving youth a voice.
You know, we put together things
that had soul, that had meaning,
that felt personal to us,
and we would create a shoot that way.
It was a truly independent magazine.
[Enninful] The word "commercial"
was the dirtiest word.
It's like, "We don't
do commercial pictures,
"we don't do commercial clothes."
So, everything was anti-establishment,
anti-fashion, so we called it grunge.
Grunge was really just a state of mind.
Being fashionable used to mean
looking good.
Well, thanks to a fad
that started in the Pacific Northwest,
high fashion now means, well, you decide.
Anything that wasn't glamorous
and elegant was grungy.
When the music wasn't like pop music
but really dark,
it became "grungy music", right?
If the fashion wasn't the big shoulders
and big hair, it became "grungy fashion".
[male reporter] The grunge look
is an urban lumberjack,
anything goes ensemble
of duck boots,
tattered shirts, and long underwear.
The whole rebellious,
rejecting luxury and like
Where everything was going
and just having
an allergic reaction to it.
I mean, it was just so raw and so real.
We heard of this incredible
husband and wife duo,
Kurt Cobain and Courtney.
And we were obsessed
with Courtney's style,
the little princess
with the tiara and the socks.
It was so grunge.
[Kim Kardashian] All we wanted to do
on the weekends
is do these like mock-up
little photoshoots in our garages.
Messy hair and baggy pants
and we definitely
had, like, this attitude, for sure.
All of our parents were like,
"What are you guys doing?"
Like, you know, "Dress
"You gotta dress up."
But for us Gen Xers,
it was a way to put a stamp
on who we were as a generation.
People couldn't ignore the fact
that there was a shift.
There was really something happening,
and no force on Earth can stop an idea
whose time has come.
Grunge. Mmm.
Yes.
No, Anna was not the biggest,
biggest fan of grunge, I wouldn't say.
[chuckles] She just
It wasn't her thing.
Anna was appalled, frankly, by grunge.
[in French accent] So suddenly
you need the big boots,
big looks of poverty, no look,
this thing clack, clack.
I don't like the idea to look poor
when you are not poor. I hate this.
Grunge was not joyful
and it was not uplifting
and it was not covetable.
You didn't really wanna
be in that picture.
[Grace Coddington] For me,
personally, I love grunge.
One felt there was a change in the air,
and I sort of got hooked.
Yeah, so did you have a story in mind?
-I'll find one.
-Okay.
Absolutely, I'll find one.
So, yes, I took the jump, and I said,
"We have to do this grunge story."
But Anna wasn't really going for that,
you know.
Grace and Anna, it was love-hate.
Um, row is a bit heavy.
But row, yes, I should say so.
[chuckles]
Can you get me a car
to go to, um, Rick at 12:30?
[Kristen McMenamy] Grace,
a little powerhouse,
she breaks the rules
but she's like a naughty little kid
breaking the rules,
like, "I hope I get away with it."
I think I've told Anna about it,
but only half.
-I like the stripe.
-Yeah
I don't think the word "grunge"
ever came out.
I say something I want to do,
she says no,
and then I bring it round the other way,
and come from this direction.
She says no, so I come from this direction
and that direction and eventually,
I kind of wear her down.
So, yes, I'm stubborn.
We hated grunge.
But the new generation
of designers loved it
and Vogue had to reflect that.
I love Marc.
He have something that I love.
[Jacobs] When we did
the grunge collection, I was like,
"I hope the audience likes it."
But I didn't care. [chuckles]
[Tonne Goodman] Marc Jacobs had just
taken the reins at Perry Ellis,
which was this very preppy, classic,
Upper East Side brand.
It was for, you know, the New Yorker
who dressed well,
quite restrained, quite traditional.
[chuckles] And he was determined
to shake things up.
[Jacobs] I was gonna be
the youngest person ever
to run a huge house on 7th Avenue.
But I had made a decision
that I was going to make and create and do
based on what inspires me.
[reporter] now that we have
-a light on you.
-I think they look gorgeous, huh?
I had crazy energy.
I mean, we couldn't do enough.
My agent was like,
"You've gotta do this show."
You know, it was all kind of like
pinning things together
at the last minute. It was so exciting.
[McMenamy] It was a high risk show,
and I remember just, like,
chatting with Naomi
about the looks, and being like,
"What? What's he doing?"
I was at that show and I remember
being completely stunned.
The whole world was like,
[gasps] "What the hell is this?"
Carlyne Cerf from Vogue was helping me
and she was like
[mimics French accent]
"I hate grunge, I hate grunge."
I hate grunge!
[in normal accent] But she wouldn't leave.
Carla Bruni, she was in this dress,
and it just didn't seem right.
I was like, "Well, we'll just cut it,"
and Carlyne loved the idea.
She went, "Cut the dress," and,
I just took her scissors
and roughly chopped it.
Barely covering her bum. [chuckles]
When you really looked at the collection,
it was very, very sophisticated.
They were very beautifully orchestrated
patterns on patterns on patterns
and the palette was very kind
of washed out.
[Jacobs] We were layering the clothes
with a flannel shirt
with a knit beanie,
and the girls just coming out in, like,
Doc Martens or Converse.
It was like complete confidence
that this was good,
and it was right,
and it was exciting, complete.
I was part of the grunge thing,
that's how we dressed.
So the fashion
wasn't shocking to me at all,
but it was to everyone else.
After the show, it was like,
"Jesus, what has happened?"
[Bowles] That collection made Marc
an overnight star.
But a star without a job.
That was it.
When people say,
"You were fired from Perry Ellis
"because of the grunge show,"
like, it just made me, like, this rebel.
There was really something happening
and, like, nobody could ignore it.
[Bowles] Back at Vogue,
Grace, God love her,
pushed for a grunge shoot.
And Anna let Grace do her thing.
Yeah, we went off to the country
and, you know, we had a great day.
I was working a lot
with the great Steven Meisel at that time,
who was an extraordinary photographer.
I had McMenamy who I was crazy about.
And then Naomi,
they were loving it,
we were having such a great time.
[Campbell] I never asked,
"What are we shooting?"
I've never asked that.
When I got there and I saw what it was,
I was so excited.
I remember Grace putting on
a big flowery Ralph Lauren dress,
and then she put a flannel shirt
over top or something,
and then, like, boots and she said,
"Ralph Lauren's gonna kill me."
But she did it anyway!
[Coddington] It was grunge
and it was taken from grunge
but it was still quite chic.
[Anna Wintour] When Grace is on a mission,
she is on a mission.
I mean, that was part of why
I felt so lucky to have her at Vogue
because she did have an eye
that I don't pretend to have.
And she saw things
that many of us didn't see
and she saw them first.
[Coddington] To suddenly be presented
with this look
must've been quite shocking for her,
but she trusts her team.
So if they bring it to her
with enough conviction,
she will print it.
I pulled out Vogue
and started looking through it,
and I just was mesmerised
by these images.
We saw how they were kinda picking up
on this pop cultural change with grunge.
I think that when you have Steven Meisel
presenting grunge,
you're presenting it
in a very, very sophisticated way.
[Enninful] One of my favourite
fashion stories ever,
you had all the hallmarks of grunge,
the plaid,
the woolly hats, the striped sweaters,
but you had supermodels modelling
and I'd never seen that before.
It showed that, "Oh, my God,
"what had been happening in London
had now gone mainstream."
I thought if Vogue can do grunge,
why can't i-D magazine do supermodels?
"Oh, my God, let's do a Naomi cover."
We met, instantly we bonded,
it was like Naomi's my kindred spirit.
She had curly hair
and I thought, "Oh, my God, how perfect."
I was in my Whitney Houston phase
and I wanted that bodyguard haircut.
[Enninful] Even though
we were the same age,
she was a supermodel
and she was the one with the money,
so she would have to buy the food,
sometimes we'd make her pay for the van.
There was no budget, so we would shoot
after nine o'clock at night.
I think I had to do my own makeup,
sleep at a friend's place.
But we did it because it was Edward.
[Enninful] That cover
really was very important
because she was a superstar.
Then we tried Helena Christensen.
Then we tried Christy Turlington.
The readers loved it.
We got so many letters,
this is back in the day,
where you got letters from readers
and I thought, "Okay."
[Linda Evangelista] Doing the i-D,
I felt so cool,
I was like, "Oh, my God."
I'm like I felt, like, relevant.
[Valletta] We got to have fun
and experiment,
and you get to do things
that you don't normally get to do.
All these models knew that, for longevity,
and for cool,
they had to work for i-D.
[man] Any other hassles
on cover shoots?
I think the worst hassle's
when the girl can't wink.
The i-D winking, yeah, of course,
who can forget that?
I don't know who came up
with that idea for the wink,
but it's cursed us all forever
because most people can't wink.
Kate Moss can't wink.
If you look at all Kate's covers
So many of the models couldn't wink.
I can't.
[laughs]
Literally, it's one of my like,
my whole face, I can't do it,
I cannot do a glamorous wink.
So I did a few like this.
It was always like, "No, an i-D cover,"
but, of course, historically,
I'd always thought they were the coolest,
so yeah, I loved doing them.
[camera shutter clicking]
Look straight.
Yeah, yeah and then try to wink.
[Kasterine] I really loved working at i-D
because, of course,
that gave us a platform to create shoots
that were really personal
and, you know,
that felt very new at the time.
But then I got a call
from someone at Vogue
and she said, "We need a lingerie story,
would you be interested in doing it?"
Now, a normal lingerie shoot
that would appear in Vogue in 1993
would be more often than not
shot on someone like Claudia
in a very expensive location,
wandering down a beach,
looking really suntanned and gorgeous.
I thought this maybe could be a moment
where I could do something
completely different to that.
So I said, "I'd love to do that,
"but could I shoot with this photographer,
Corinne Day?"
Strangely, they said yes.
They didn't know what they were getting,
and I said, "Can we work with Kate Moss?"
[Moss] I just felt really good,
the whole shoot, I felt really comfortable
and it was in my flat in London.
You know, it wasn't glamorous.
Our bedroom was,
like, a bedsit. [chuckles]
That's the kind of fashion I liked.
It was much simpler.
I loved creating the images with them.
[Kasterine] She's sort of, you know,
jumping around her bedroom
and she's got her neon pink pants on,
her hair's just loosely in a ponytail,
and she hasn't got much makeup on.
But it's actually just very normal.
She's just a teenage girl in her bedroom.
I think Vogue
had the foresight to understand
that this was an important shoot
to publish,
because it was something special
and new and different.
I mean, obviously Vogue wanted it
but the public were not ready.
[Kasterine] Immediately
they were completely vilified
and slammed in the press,
and they were absolutely appalled,
is the word I think I'll use.
[laughs]
Perhaps we'd underestimated
how that look
that we had been shooting
for magazines like i-D,
that had, in our minds, been quite normal,
but if you transfer that
into the context of Vogue,
then it becomes something very different.
That look,
very undernourished-looking model
made people uncomfortable.
I detest it, I really do.
I I think that it's an unhealthy thing
to promote, that look,
and I don't see any reason for it.
[Goodman] My initial reaction
to the shoot with Kate,
those images certainly
did not look healthy,
they certainly did not look well-fed
and this is gonna become a trend?
This is gonna be something
that, you know,
we're gonna embrace and endorse?
[Moss] I think
because I was just skinny
and people weren't used to seeing skinny.
But if I'd been more buxom,
it wouldn't have been such a big deal.
You know, it's just my body shape
was different from the models before me.
[Enninful] The whole thing just blew up
and that piece in Vogue
really triggered
a huge amount of hysteria,
what became known as heroin chic.
[Kasterine] The label "heroin chic"
was just sort of appalling to us.
But if you look at the broader picture
of what was happening in music and film,
you've got films like Trainspotting,
which, of course,
was dealing with the horrific
subject matter of kids addicted to heroin.
We all know
what Courtney and Kurt were up to,
but you'd never get away with labelling
somebody or someone's work like that now,
you know, it's slanderous in some ways.
They were saying, "It's Kate Moss's fault,
it's Kate Moss, you know, she's,
"you know, glamourising heroin chic."
People's parents would come up to me
and say, "My daughter's anorexic."
You know, it was awful.
There was one time
that my mum called me and said,
"Darling, I've just read that
you're a heroin addict, is that true?"
Many of us at Vogue
worried about "heroin chic" or anorexia,
all the things that are associated
with that look
and it rocked, not only the industry,
but it got to such a fever pitch,
and I remember physically
being in the White House
when the Clinton administration
took it on.
We now see in college campuses
and neighbourhoods
heroin becoming increasingly
the drug of choice,
and fashion leaders are now admitting
that images projected in fashion photos
in the last few years
have made heroin addiction
seem glamorous and sexy and cool.
You do not need to glamourise addiction
to sell clothes.
Heroin chic did a lot of damage
to London, you know,
all of a sudden we were seen as careless,
we were seen as radical,
but that wasn't the intention.
The intention was young people
photographing other young people
to show the world
what was happening in London.
[Big Ben chiming]
[dancey rock music playing]
[Enninful] There was such a great energy
in the city.
There was so much happening,
so much bubbling under.
You had all these incredible designers
coming out of Saint Martins.
Lee McQueen.
Hussein Chalayan.
Stella McCartney.
Then you had all these incredible artists
coming out of Goldsmiths.
[McCartney] Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst,
we were all just in the same room
at the same time.
There was this freshness
and recklessness
of breaking of boundaries.
Musicians, the artists, the models,
the photographers,
everyone would hang out together
and influence each other.
We were, like, going to museums together,
we were going to all the films,
we were going to all the gigs,
Blur and Jarvis and, you know, Oasis.
Like, we were all at the same things,
and we were going to all the clubs.
I was going, of course,
to the sex clubs in London. [laughs]
Also, "No sex we are British,"
it's not true, it's not the reality,
you know?
It was just buzzing,
it was like London was alive.
Hi, I'm Hamish Bowles,
I'm the European Editor
at Large for American Vogue.
I hope you can hear me over the din.
Ahem.
I'm in London for fashion week and I
I had young London thing to do for Vogue.
Someone who had been saying
"This young designer
called Alexander McQueen,
"you've got to see him."
So we went up to this derelict warehouse.
-[people chattering indistinctly]
-[birds squawking]
[Bowles] It was dark, enclosed room.
There was the sound of birds.
[bell ringing]
[Goodman] Lee McQueen was a genius.
I mean, he was an enormous,
enormous talent.
First of all, he was a master tailor
and then the fact that he really
birthed something in London
that was absolutely unique.
He was playing with the duality of London,
the wild and sophisticated.
McQueen liked to provoke and to shock
and to have people talking about him,
it was part of who he was.
[woman] What do you think?
Um I thought it was
rather wonderful, I must say,
sort of exhilarating to watch.
Middle America might not
be quite ready for this.
By the time it ended, I was in shock.
It was something incredible
that I hadn't seen before, actually ever.
[Katy England] I think Lee
was very honest and very real
and he didn't put on airs
and graces for people.
[McQueen] Well, did it piss you off?
-[journalist] No.
-It should've done, that was the idea.
His vision was quite dark.
[reporter] McQueen has always been known
as a rebel
and he sent his models staggering
down the catwalk in torn clothes,
looking like they'd just been violated.
[Enninful] The journalists were outraged,
but the kids were loving Lee McQueen,
you know,
youth will always love something
they can relate to,
something they see as anti-establishment
and Lee was that.
Well, I've always been a bit of a rebel
with a cause. [chuckles]
[man] Which was?
Which is to destroy
the fashion industry at large.
-[man] From within.
-From within, at the core.
[Enninful] Everyone thinks of Lee McQueen
as this dark person,
but I've never laughed with anyone
more than I did with him.
[England] When I first met Lee,
he came up to me and he said,
"Are you Katy England?
I'd like you to style my next show."
I was young, and I was excited,
and it felt like just an instant fit.
Camera up, please.
[England] Lee was making the clothes
himself.
We didn't have money for a fitting model.
I would try on all the clothes
and Lee would make alterations on me.
My first Santa's sleigh girl.
[both laugh]
When Lee left Saint Martins,
he didn't have any money at all.
He was signing on for unemployment benefit
as Lee McQueen.
He was very concerned
that people from the dole office
would see him in the press
and that he wouldn't
get his unemployment benefit,
hence the name
he put on his first collection
was Alexander McQueen, not Lee McQueen.
[woman] Did they want you
to be a designer?
No, my dad wanted me to be a plumber.
But I got sort of mixed up
with the costume,
you know, the all-in-one just turned me on
so much. [laughs]
What I love about Lee
was his eye for tailoring,
his eye for proportion, you know,
and he was always so knowledgeable,
you know, of history,
not just British history,
but world history.
I knew he had the talent,
I knew he could take an idea
and really, sort of, transform it
into something magical.
For me, the moment of the shift
was the Dante show.
I felt really that was the moment
when people sort of took him seriously.
It was chaos backstage.
[people chattering indistinctly]
[England] It was a really,
really chaotic show
because the collection had arrived
so late.
[people chattering indistinctly]
And it wasn't like
he had an awfully big fan club
of fashion journalists at that time.
The people are coming
to see Alexander McQueen, for sure.
Are they coming to laugh, to gawp,
to walk out of here going,
"Would you wear that crap?"
"No, of course, I wouldn't."
He thought it'd be a bit of fun
to put a skeleton on the front row.
He was just doing a little dig at the way
the press had responded to him so far.
[chamber music playing]
That was the first time I walked for Lee.
It was a special show, that one.
It was amazing, it was almost
a spiritual experience actually.
[Wintour] Everything was a bit perverse
as well as quite, quite dark.
I've always been drawn
to English designers
because they're so incredible
at doing so much with so little.
They seem to be able to pull things
out of a paper bag
and they're not worried
about their investors, or their backers,
they don't have any.
[England] He had the antler horns.
He had the masks,
little Jesus figure on the nose.
It was just a really lovely balance
between something that felt polished,
but it still had his raw energy.
[Enninful] What Lee showed the world was
that London fashion could be rebellious,
it could be exciting and wild,
but also sophisticated.
The world took notice.
Right at this moment in time,
Alexander McQueen is possibly
the most exciting, outrageous talent
that British fashion has.
In America, they'd heard about him
and they wanted
to bring the show to New York.
And it was just chaotic.
[people chattering indistinctly]
[woman] Oh, man! What a scene
at the Alexander McQueen show
in front of an abandoned old synagogue.
The show in London was in a church
that was still in use,
but the synagogue is not in use any more,
so it's gonna be kind of crazy,
a bit more madder than the London show.
[woman laughing] Because he wants
to climb over the car!
[England] So many people
wanted to come and see it.
We hadn't quite expected that.
[man] We are packed wall to wall!
We have closed the place down now.
It's dead. Have a nice night.
The American production team
were panicking
because they had never seen
anything like that before.
It was actually quite scary.
Rumour has it that there was a problem
getting Anna Wintour through the door.
There are a lot of angry people out there
who we couldn't get into your show.
So what do you say to that?
-Sorry!
-[both laugh]
And I said to him,
"Lee, Anna Wintour's outside the door
"with André Leon Talley and
Grace Coddington and she can't get in."
And he was like, "Oh, fuck 'em."
He He didn't care. [laughs]
I was like, "Oh, my God,
what are you doing?"
It's like, nobody would do that but Lee.
[McQueen] When I'm paying £30,000
to do a show,
I will do whatever I like.
Because it's my £30,000
and my half hour to do anything I like.
The synagogue was very difficult
to get into,
but I did get in, and yes,
he rocked the boat,
but I think that sense
of slightly annoying people,
he was into that.
He was incredible, Lee,
he was such a laugh,
he was so cheeky, he was so talented.
I went to some of his shows
and it definitely cemented the fact
that I want to be a fashion designer,
and so I started looking at, um, colleges
to study fashion design
and there was only one.
This week we're coming to you
from Central Saint Martins
in Charing Cross Road,
one of London's leading fashion colleges.
Everyone had gone to Saint Martins.
Galliano had gone there, Lee was there.
I mean, I really wanted to get
into Saint Martins,
but I didn't love it when I got there.
Because the weirder and more wild
and crazy your creations were,
the better you were at being a designer.
If you did anything
that was remotely kind of normal,
you were like the biggest loser
in the world.
So I'd spent two and a half years
creating dresses out of spaghetti
and like, I mean, none of it was wearable.
And so when it came to my degree show,
I was like,
"Oh. Am I brave enough
to do what I wanna do?
"Like, have I actually got the balls
"to do something
that's really quite normal?"
[people chattering indistinctly]
[McCartney] I was obsessed
with antique fabric and antique lace,
basically vintage clothing.
And so I was like,
"I wanna make those kind of clothes,
"but I wanna be able to wear them,
modernise them."
[announcer] Stella McCartney
fashion designs.
[techno music playing]
We used to go to the graduate shows,
we were all very excited.
There was a lot of hype
around Stella McCartney.
And Stella presented a collection
that was quite classic,
very female friendly
and featured Naomi and Kate.
[McCartney] All the other students
were choosing their models,
then they were getting their mates.
I had mates,
but my mates were the supermodels.
I was like,
"Everyone's gonna hate me if I do that."
And I just thought,
"You know what? Sod it."
Like, just like, "Life's too short
and you're genuinely my mates."
[woman] Naomi, why are you here?
I'm here to support Stella McCartney
in her graduation.
When she called me, she said,
"It's my graduation
"and I really would love you girls
to be a part of it."
So we flew to London to do the graduation,
and I don't think anyone's
ever had a graduation like that.
We were just hanging out
in, like, Notting Hill,
going to the same bars or restaurants
or whatever
and I didn't know she was a McCartney.
And then I saw her driving around
in a Mercedes and I was like,
"She's at college,
how can she afford that?"
And then she told me,
and then she asked me
to do her graduate show.
Stella's a friend of mine so,
and she was doing a show,
so she asked me to do it.
Lots of important designers
have come out of Saint Martins
and some huge designers in the future
will come out from this show.
Those girls were the hottest girls
on the planet.
They were doing every show in every city.
And they did a little college,
you know, fashion show.
That, for me, was like, it was amazing.
[Campbell] I've never seen any graduate
from Saint Martins
have their collection on the front cover
of every single newspaper.
[Enninful] A lot of students were like,
"We don't have Stella's background,
"we don't have Stella's connections."
So Stella, from the beginning,
even though that was great for her,
also suffered a huge backlash
about privilege.
As the child of such famous people,
you know, it became this whole drama.
I was like, "Ahhh!
Get me out of here!" [laughs]
There was a lot of hype
around Stella McCartney,
but there was so much talent
in London at the time
and British designers
were in demand everywhere.
I was already installed in Paris
at Givenchy.
And then I got the phone call
from the company president,
which made me nervous
because it was a Friday afternoon
and you don't normally get invited
to Mr Arnault's office
on a Friday afternoon.
I thought, well,
I tried my best at Givenchy,
maybe it just didn't work out,
I'm not ready for it, whatever.
But no, he then asked me if I would like
to be the artistic director
at the house of Dior.
[reporter] John Galliano
is bringing his talents
to Christian Dior,
an international standard setter
for style and elegance.
I never dreamt of going to Dior,
that was very
No. No, no, no.
It's the greatest house in the world
and every fashion student
dreams of being a little part of it,
but to be given the reins of the house
is just something
that I would never believed would happen.
It was an amazing moment for London.
Our designers were being hand-picked
to head these storied French houses.
[reporter] And it's not
a one-man revolution.
Alexander McQueen,
who will take over from Galliano
as Givenchy's top designer is British too.
When Lee was offered the job at Givenchy,
he was 27-years-old.
Such an opportunity comes along
once in a lifetime.
Lee really went for it.
You know,
he didn't falter with that decision.
Catapulted onto an international stage.
[McQueen] I love working for Givenchy,
I mean, I love the ateliers.
The people are really lovely.
You know, it's hard work,
but life's hard work anyway.
So, you know,
and if you're dedicated to work,
it's never gonna be easy.
[clapping]
[Enninful]
He was a working-class designer,
so was John Galliano who was before him.
They were these working-class kids
in these ateliers of high society,
British designers
who took the fashion system
and turned it upside down.
I was in my little studio apartment
in West London
and people were starting to, like,
wanna buy my clothes.
I was selling to a couple of stores
in Japan and in London
and we were like just really busking it,
like we didn't know
how to do business, and I was like,
"I don't know what I'm doing."
Okay, definitely.
And I remember just getting
the phone call
of the CEO of Chloé.
The only reason I knew about it
was my mum used to wear Chloé in the '70s.
So when I was scouring through
her wardrobe,
I'd see this brand, Chloé, I loved it.
It was beautiful.
And they kind of asked me
if I would be interested in going
and being the creative director
of the house,
I was like, "What the hell
are you talking about?"
[engine whirring]
[McCartney] It was like a big job
and a lot of pressure.
I was so overwhelmed,
but it was a done deal.
I mean, that was it.
[reporter] She's never staged
a major catwalk show,
but her Chloé boss says
she was the right person
to replace Karl Lagerfeld.
[people chattering indistinctly]
Stella taking on Karl Lagerfeld's role
at Chloé
was almost like Little Red Riding Hood
taking on the Big Bad Wolf.
I don't feel that you can really
tell the story of '90s fashion
without telling the story
of Karl Lagerfeld.
[Bowles] I loved what Karl had been doing
at Chloé,
but he was also creative director
for Chanel.
[reporter] He has single-handedly
made the name of Chanel
wildly trendy again without jeopardising
its status as a fashion classic.
[Claudia Schiffer] He was a true genius,
like Mozart,
and he would often wake up to sketch
in the middle of the night, for example,
and I remember him sketching so rapidly,
as if his hands could barely keep up
with the ideas in his mind.
His brain needed to be constantly at work.
It's instinct.
He drew ever since he was a child.
That was his thing.
I always was interested in fashion
before I even knew
fashion was called fashion.
Karl's mind was exceptional.
There wasn't anything
that you could bring up
that he wouldn't know everything about.
He was not only a great designer,
but he was also a philosopher,
a poet, a writer, a photographer,
a furniture designer,
an architect, interior designer.
He was so many things.
You know, he was like an emperor.
[Enninful] Karl Lagerfeld was unparalleled
in the '90s.
And for Stella,
she had to navigate this world
that she'd never encountered before.
[McCartney] When I started at Chloé,
Karl Lagerfeld did the most genius quote,
I think,
he said, "I knew they'd take a big name
to fill my boots,
"but I thought they'd use a big name
in fashion, not music."
And I was like, "Oof, bitch."
[laughs]
[people chattering indistinctly]
[reporter] Stella McCartney
couldn't have chosen
a more dramatic location
for her fashion show.
This is the Paris Opera,
and if you have a look around here,
it really is the most opulent of places.
My first show at Chloé,
literally, I was like,
"I don't know what's going on."
They said, "You need
to put down something like 80 looks,"
and there were thousands of people,
and I was just like, "Okay."
[Wintour] It was very difficult
at the beginning for Stella.
Maybe things had happened
because of her surname.
[reporter] When she took over at Chloé
from Karl Lagerfeld,
many said that at 25,
Stella McCartney was too young,
they said she got the job
because of her dad.
But she followed her creative instincts.
"This is what I'm gonna do
and this is who I am.
"I'm not Karl Lagerfeld,
I'm Stella McCartney."
[upbeat music playing]
[Moss] And the clothes were beautiful.
I know she was inspired a lot
by her mother
and her mum's wardrobe
from the '70s and stuff,
so she did do things
that weren't so out there.
But she knew what she was doing.
Not only does she have a real talent,
Stella has always
been very clear and defined
in what she wants and what she was doing.
[clapping and cheering]
[Alexander] She was an absolute triumph.
I think that she'd foiled all the doubters
and she sent down a collection
that was so pretty
so girlie, so romantic and so sexy
that it just knocked spots
off a lot of things.
[cheering]
I think they're beautiful clothes,
very feminine
and I think she's a very talented girl.
It did really well. I mean, look,
yeah it's true,
there's no better revenge
than just like kicking arse.
And then Karl Lagerfeld very quickly
retracted the comment
and would spend sort of many a weekend
saying, "Can I take your photo?"
I'd be like, "No, because I'm getting
on the Eurostar
"and I'm going home, and riding my horse."
London's young designers
had conquered Paris.
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Bowles] But it was Princess Diana
who offered the ultimate seal of approval.
[people shouting indistinctly]
I think all of us were so captivated
and fascinated by Princess Diana.
At that time, she was the most famous
woman in the world.
She was enjoying fashion
and the spotlight
that she put on, particularly,
British designers.
I remember one day, we all jumped
into this old van and we went to London
where we met Princess Diana.
She'd been invited to the Met
and she would wear one of my dresses.
The Met Gala is the most influential
red carpet in the world.
It was like a blessing, I mean, wow.
We went to Kensington Palace
and discussed drawings
and I was trying to push a pink,
but she was not having it, "No, not pink."
That was real, real fun.
So we did the dress
and subsequent fittings
and it was beautifully done, you know,
very kind of correct,
you know, the corset,
everything was correct.
[car horn honking]
[Galliano] Fast forward to the event
and I just remember her
getting out the car,
I was like [gasps]
I couldn't believe it.
She'd ripped the corset out.
She didn't wanna wear the corset.
She felt so liberated,
she'd torn the corset out.
The dress was much more sensuous.
The cameras went mental.
The paparazzi was blinding
which made the dress really bling
and the jewels and everything.
[Wintour] I don't think that anyone
had worn Galliano for Dior
on the red carpet
at such an important moment before.
It was a really amazing opportunity.
[Bowles] It was like Diana had embraced
the fashion rebels.
I mean, wow,
Diana was my first couture client.
Great, you know?
It just felt like a triumph
of British fashion,
it felt like a triumph of all the work
we'd been doing in London.
[Wintour] And so London became a place
where you went to look
for the best talent.
[Galliano] Yes, there was an influx
of British designers
holding incredible positions
in historic French houses.
So it was kind of an electrifying time.
[McCartney] We just would hang out.
You know, Lee and I went
out for dinner many times
and I would do the same with John,
and there was a moment there where we were
kind of running the show, I would say.
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Bowles] Everything turned.
Fashion became about the youth
rather than the establishment.
[people chattering indistinctly]
It was amazing to think
that what had started in London
essentially had now gone
on an international level.
[clapping]
[Enninful] Fashion was changing.
We weren't kids any more,
everybody was growing up.
It really felt like a revolution
was underway.
There was a sense
that everything was changing.
We were on the front page
of every newspaper
and we're like, "What the hell is this?"
Did we know what was coming?
No, but we knew something was coming.
[Coddington] I said to Anna,
"This is the beginning of the end,
"where are we going with this?"
What? You're gonna, like,
bring back the '70s?
You're gonna bring back sex?
That's not happening.
Action!
[Enninful] Fur, feathers, sequins.
It was extremely boring.
Let's get women on the red carpet
in our clothes.
I just remember Madonna and Courtney Love
saying, "Best dress."
[laughs]
[theme music playing]