DESIGN OF TWO DECADES

BAZAAR celebrates 20 years of cutting-edge fashion, passion, drama and imagination.

- SANJEEVA SURESH

To commemorate BAZAAR Malaysia's 20th anniversary, we embark on a two-decade. retrospective of game-changers that have shaped the fashion industry as we know it.

The year was April 2003-the Y2K scare was in the rearview mirror, taking the minimalism of the '90s along with it. This was the year John Galliano combined latex, organza, fur and fetish at his scandalous Autumn/Winter '03 showcase at Dior. As the then artistic director at Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs brought personality and a contemporary twist to the label's travel accessories. Julien Macdonald was in his third season as creative director at Givenchy, trying to fill in the shoes left by his predecessor, the late, great Alexander McQueen. The noughties were in full swing bringing forth a new era of experimentalism.

THE GAME CHANGERS

Throughout the mid-to-late 2000s, the fashion industry was dominated by groundbreaking visionaries including the one and only Karl Lagerfeld. Having prolifically transformed Chanel in the '80s and '90s, Autumn/Winter '03 saw Karl Lagerfeld continue to combine house codes with pop culture. He did so by taking signature "Chanelisms"-which included the tweed suit, multi-layered pearls, the little black dress, the quilted pattern, and the camellia flower and updating them, modernising the Chanel suit with shorter proportions and perfecting the A-line skirt.

In a move that was ahead of its time, Karl Lagerfeld partnered with H&M to deliver a capsule collection of menswear and womenswear. This would mark the foreshadowing of future high fashion collaborations and the democratisation between what was luxury and mass market. This was soon followed by similar collections from Stella McCartney, Comme des Garçons, Lanvin, Versace, and later Balmain and Kenzo.