Watch The 3 Decades That Shaped Modern Men’s Fashion

[Narrator] For the 30th anniversary of GQ Men of the Year,

we’re looking back at three decades

of change in men’s fashion.

Today, style is the cultural currency of our time.

From the runway to the street, online and off,

menswear is now a powerful tool

of self-expression, influence, and identity.

So how did we get here?

[lively music]

The 1990s, the birth of modern fashion.

In the early ’90s, menswear was teetering

on the edge of revolution.

[people cheering] [chisel banging]

Minimalism is the order of the day,

but mainstream style was being challenged

by waves of subversion. [audience cheering]

Teenagers worshiped king of grunge Kurt Cobain,

while Wu-Tang Clan was spreading the gospel

of boisterous street wear.

Come on, baby, pump it up.

[skateboard wheels whirring]

[Narrator] Skateboarding was one

of the fastest-growing sports in the country,

dictating how millions of kids dressed.

Meanwhile, fashion advertising grew louder

and more influential.

Calvin Klein’s underwear ads,

featuring a crotch-grabbing Marky Mark,

caused a global sensation.

And Ralph Lauren minted Tyson Beckford

as the world’s first Black supermodel.

Into the fray stepped a young American designer

named Tom Ford whose fall 1995 runway show

for Gucci was the big bang

that marked the dawn of a new era in men’s fashion.

Ford’s opulent velvet tuxedos

and sexy silk shirts had a ’70s look.

But they embodied the rebellious in-your-face attitude

sweeping the culture at that very moment.

The menswear rule book

had officially been thrown out the window.

[upbeat music]

The aughts, the rise of menswear tribes.

[modem dial tone beeping]

As the millennium dawned,

the radical fashion subcultures were now mainstream

with blogging and online forums stoking a new wave of style.

Menswear began splintering into tribes

where you were Carhartt-wearing urban lumberjack,

the supreme obsessed Hypebeast,

a skinny jeans clad indie scenester,

or an Italian tailor and connoisseur.

Whichever you were,

there was a corner of the internet where you could nerd out.

Fashion designers no longer sold clothes,

they sold a lifestyle and everyone wanted in on the action.

Pharrell Williams launched his own label,

Billionaire Boys Club,

and Marc Jacobs invited pop artist Takashi Murakami

to collaborate on a line for Louis Vuitton.

Against this backdrop, upstart men’s fashion designers

like Thom Browne were determined

to further blur the lines between fashion and art.

When Browne launched his shrunken suit in the early aughts,

people scoffed, but by the end of the decade,

Browne’s theatrical runway shows

were the hottest ticket in town

and high water pants ruled the streets.

Fashion had become personal, performative,

and captivating to anyone with a point of view.

In the 2010s, style becomes culture.

Instagram launched in 2010, setting the table for a decade

when fashion fully merged with pop culture.

Street style became just as important

as what was happening on the runways.

Influencers became celebrities

and celebrities became influencers.

And thanks to visionary designers like Alessandro Michele,

menswear started to look lighter and more feminine,

no longer defined by a rigid concept of masculinity.

In fact, in this new anything goes era,

anyone with a big idea and access

to a screen printer could become a fashion designer.

Enter Virgil Abloh, a sneaker-obsessed outsider

who rose to the highest ranks of luxury fashion

by turning the industry on its head.

In Abloh’s world, community was cooler than elitism,

connections as important as classical training

and luxury was about creativity

rather than just craftsmanship.

All of this new energy transformed Paris Fashion Week

from an insiders-only showcase

into a star-studded Coachella of clothing.

A new generation of fans began following fashion

as they would professional sports.

And at the same time, menswear-obsessed hoopers

turned the NBA tunnels into their own runway shows,

which became just as influential as the real thing.

And when Abloh dropped his watershed Off-White

and Nike collaboration, the ensuing global phenomenon proved

that fashion had become core to modern identity.

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