Future Nostalgia

Nineties beauty makes a triumphant return by way of Bollywood and finds its muse in the decade's most iconic faces.

- ARUSHI SINHA

NO MATTER HOW you feel about it, it’s hard to deny that we are living in the era of the comeback. From film and TV to the world’s most-watched runways, the 1990s have captured the hearts and imaginations of a newly minted generation. Like fashion, beauty has always looked back to move forward, which is why this season’s coveted beauty looks find their roots in the last decade of the millennium. It might seem paradoxical, at first, to think about our increasingly digital world being so consumed by the aesthetics of an analogue era. Or it might make perfect sense.

In the Big Tech cultural landscape, there has emerged a collective yearning for the decidedly undigitised ’90s, for the unretouched faces that run so counter to our Facetuned algorithms and for finding inspiration in unmanicured beauty. In India, this has translated to taking a look back at the Bollywood blockbusters that framed so many of our childhoods, and to the actors whose most iconic roles still loom large for late millennials who were but impressionable youngsters at the time these films were released.

From a beauty perspective, there has never been a more interesting time in Bollywood than the ’90s. The impetus was very much on crafting a modern look that was rooted in traditionally Indian sensibilities. Decade-defining films such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) not only embedded themselves into the cultural zeitgeist but also fashioned an entirely fresh beauty vocabulary.