Edward Enninful's 90s Show Opens at Tate Britain With McQueen, Westwood and Galliano, and the First Review Is Mixed

Tate Britain opened The 90s: Art and Fashion on Thursday, October 8. It is curated by Edward Enninful, the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, together with Tate Britain curators Jessica Vaughan, Helen Little, Dominique Heyse-Moore, Alex Farquharson and Celeste McEvoy, and it runs until February 14, 2027. Tate says it gathers nearly 70 artists, photographers and designers and more than 100 photographs, paintings, sculptures and garments.

The route is seven rooms, according to Tate's release. It starts with DIY attitude and anti-fashion grunge, with photography by Corinne Day, Nigel Shafran and Juergen Teller, then moves through print media and beauty, real people as muses, and a nightlife room covering acid house, jungle, hip-hop, drum and bass, queer club nights and raves. Further on are body horror, minimalism and AIDS-era work, including Damien Hirst and the designers Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, then Cool Britannia and Black British designers, with Steve McQueen's 1993 film Bear, Chris Ofili's No Woman, No Cry and tailoring by Ozwald Boateng. The last room looks at the past and the future, with Yinka Shonibare, Maud Sulter, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood, whose house showed its Spring 2027 collection in Paris this season.

What it costs and who's behind it

Time Out lists tickets at £22 standard, £20 concession and £5 for Tate Collective members aged 16 to 25. Tate's release says the show is free for Tate Members and open daily from 10am to 6pm. It also says the exhibition is supported by McQueen, with Dazed as media partner, which is worth knowing when reading coverage of a show about British fashion in the 90s.

The first review

Luxury London, in a piece published October 7, was mixed. Its reviewer liked the raw, collage-style hang, with photographs and works pinned to walls rather than framed behind glass, and singled out Vinca Petersen's 1995 rave and nomadic-life photographs with handwritten diary extracts, and the Alexander McQueen room, which includes the AW98 "Joan" dress and armour-style bodices made with Shaun Leane. The complaint was scope: seven rooms for a whole decade, which the review says leaves the show thin, with the Young British Artists treated lightly and Ofili's painting tucked into a dim corner.

The review also notes that Day and Teller photography outnumbers the artworks, and ties that to the curator's own contacts from his i-D years. That is one critic's read, not a consensus, and we haven't seen enough reviews yet to call one. What isn't in dispute is the pull: for anyone who works in fashion, a Tate show where Westwood, McQueen and Galliano hang next to Hirst and Emin is a rare thing.