Roopal Patel is an Indian American Luxury Fashion Consultant
What we considered to be so much part of our everyday fashion vocabulary today, where we see all these designers restarting with these big houses, was just beginning then [in the 90th].
Fashion Week was at Bryant Park and there were a few shows like Marc Jacobs, or when Alexander McQueen came to town, that were offsite, Helmut [Lung] was offsite, but it was very intimate. It wasn't the way it is today where you have a thousand people at the show. You may have had 200 to 250 and it was really the trade and you know fashion greats.
I had a very different vibe then, I was very into minimalism. I was kind of obsessed with Helmut Lang and [Martin] Margiela.
At the time it really was the social women, the society ladies. There were the cool girls, like Aerin Lauder - everyone loved to see what Aerin was wearing. Carolyn Bessette was very much in that time period. Calvin [Kleine] was very influential in the '90s.
Tom Ford just started at Gucci and was getting great notoriety - like Madonna wearing that head-to-toe velvet suit at the MTV awards. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Calvin Klein and Donna Karan were the big American names at that point in time, Helmut [Lung] was the cool kid on the block and you had Marc Jacobs and John Galliano who starting the revival of the old fashion houses.
I went to Bergdorf Goodman as an assistant in the fashion office and that was really my first exposure into the world of retail. Dawn Mello was president at the time and she had just left Gucci where she found Tom Ford.
There weren't paparazzi standing outside. There weren't all these photographers. People really didn't know what fashion was and what was happening in the tents.
I was pretty much a minimalist. I liked a lot of black at the time, which is very different from my wardrobe now, because I live in color.
I feel like fashion was much more exclusive. There weren't as many parties. There weren't as many social gatherings. It wasn't required that designers have events to lure customers or editors or any of that - it was about a show. If there was a dinner or a party, people would go out after. New York nightlife was about late nights and dancing.
I really loved when Prada Sport came into fashion, which kind of created all the nylon which she had for quite some time. You also wanted a Prada bag, you wanted a Prada shoe, not that you don't today, but that craze for Prada accessories was really big. It was a really big deal.