Editor’s Note: When we talk about Y2K in fashion we talk about a look, but it’s 1999 that is the turning point. As Nicole Phelps turns her attention to this special year, we are adding five archival shows to the archive.
At Chanel’s fall 1999 ready-to-wear show, the set was stark and open, models walked around an oval with 1999 printed in its center. There was a touch of the medieval, perhaps even survivalist, in the shearlings and flat musketeer boots. Belts of metal chains were tough, the amulets that dangled from them read as protective talismans, which were well-suited to the what-comes-next? mood of the time.
