'Rock 'n' roll swagger': 10 iconic images capturing the chaotic energy of '90s Brit culture

It was the last hurrah of analogue, old-millennium life in the UK, as the era's chaotic, thrilling energy spilled into music, fashion, art and hedonism. Now the decade is being celebrated in a major exhibition at Tate Britain.

The 1990s in Britain felt like a collision course of scenes – music, club culture, art, fashion, all vividly spilling into each other. A youthful generation was full of DIY innovations and an appetite for adventure and hedonism. This hot-mess energy fuelled the era's creativity: it was thrilling and chaotic, and often contradictory. Dancefloors might erupt anywhere. Everything from art to restaurant cuisine or stand-up comedy had rock'n'roll swagger. Tate Britain's new exhibition, The 90s: Art and Fashion, channels some of that energy.

Exhibition curator Edward Enninful forged his own path in the '90s, becoming fashion editor at i-D magazine aged 18. "We tend to remember the decade through iconic fashion, art and music, but there was a much bigger shift in who got to participate in culture and whose voices were being heard," Enninful tells the BBC.

"There was a sense that the old hierarchies were breaking down – artists, designers, photographers and musicians were all moving between disciplines, collaborating, challenging conventions and creating new possibilities. Over time, some of that outsider energy was absorbed into the mainstream… I don't see the 1990s as a closed chapter, but as a moment whose influence is still unfolding across British culture."

Back then the pursuit of fun was a serious undertaking – perhaps because the '90s largely happened at night, in realms where boundaries easily blurred. Or maybe this was our "last hurrah" to break the pre-millennial tension. It was an era of creative risk-taking in a world that, now, is continually tuned for the algorithm.

Here are 10 images from The 90s exhibition, each offering a sense of that still-vital energy: to live in the moment, and to feel the future tantalisingly within reach.

Corinne Day's naturalistic photography was a world away from 1980s gloss, and it helped to define a starkly different '90s aesthetic. This image, featuring regular model Rosemary Ferguson, was taken for The Face magazine shoot entitled England's Dreaming; it's resolutely gritty yet elegantly androgynous and poetic. Helen Little, curator of contemporary British art at Tate Britain, highlights "this new kind of realism" in The 90s catalogue: "narratives of life and friendship with a casual, unfiltered documentary style characterised by natural lighting and minimal retouching".

British designer Alexander McQueen emerged as an enfant terrible of the fashion world in the early '90s – and he sealed his iconic status with sharp designs that entwined beauty and brutality. His creations converged with the art, music and nightlife scenes; his clothes were presented with intense theatricality, as with this climactic scene from his autumn/winter '98 collection (inspired by the martyrdom of Joan of Arc). 

"McQueen's fashion shows were subversive and dramatic spectacles, comparable to performance art rather than commercial showcases," writes curator Jessica Vaughan in the exhibition catalogue. "He repeatedly returned to themes of conquest and persecution."

Cultural landscapes shifted throughout this decade, and a once-desolate east London district became a creative and social hotbed – fuelled by innovative club nights like Metalheadz, helmed by DJ/producer Goldie at the now legendary Blue Note in Hoxton Square. It was a focal point for jungle music, the fast-paced electronic dance music genre that emerged in the UK rave scene during the early 1990s. Eddie Otchere's vibrant portrait captures the night's irrepressible spirit. "Goldie wanted to incubate a scene built on the talents of a group of like-minded producers and artists for the purposes of throwing jungle culture into the future," Otchere tells the BBC.

Sexual politics proved a powerful force in the '90s, splayed across activism, commercialism and creativity. While a rising generation of Young British Artists took a brashly unapologetic, irreverent approach to the theme, Steve McQueen was a London contemporary who forged his own minimal yet hard-hitting style, standing apart from the YBAs. McQueen later went on to win the Turner Prize in 1999, and to create landmark feature films and TV including 12 Years A Slave and Small Axe. He is now Sir Steve McQueen. 

He both directed and starred in his breakthrough black-and-white short film Bear. It's a two-hander alongside Vernon Douglas, with both men stripped and silent, physically tussling between aggression and tenderness, evoking dynamics including black masculinity, strength, sexuality, and spectatorship. McQueen reflects on this era of work in an exhibition catalogue interview with Afua Hirsch: "When you are doing something through the act of making, you can't put things in reserve, you've got to go all out."

While supermodel Naomi Campbell's R&B fusion album Babywoman sounded slightly flat, its imagery has always felt epic – with the fashion star elevating seemingly mundane surroundings (a tiny bathroom in NYC), shot in sleek, high-contrast monochrome by photographer Ellen von Unwerth. "Through my lens, women are glamorous, humorous and multifaceted," von Unwerth told i-D magazine. "After all, what is gender if not something to play with?"

Throughout the '90s, Dave Swindells was the nightlife editor at London listings magazine Time Out. He was also on the dancefloor as a photographer, flowing through the crowds with his camera – as with this scene from pioneering club extravaganza Kinky Gerlinky.

"This was one of the most joyful and purely hedonistic nights I've ever experienced, and great fun to photograph," Swindells tells the BBC. "It celebrated performative dressing up and the first Vogueing ball in the fabulous Café de Paris was pivotal. It was raucous and riotous and set the scene for dozens of Kinky Gerlinky spectaculars in the West End."

There's an exuberant intimacy to this shot of then 24-year-old supermodel Kate Moss, nestled among bedsheets, her candy-coloured locks (dyed for a recent Versace show) streaming across the pillows. Fashion photographer and longtime collaborator Juergen Teller captures the post-party moment with characteristic candour, as well as a fantastical edge: Moss is glowing, like a burst of pink sunshine. Moss would describe this portrait as "the real me" in her retrospective book Kate: "Because it is just us having a laugh in my bed. There wasn't a hair or makeup artist or anything."

In 1998 Swiss photographer Mischa Haller – who had moved to London – created a series Not Going Home. In this shot from the Welsh capital, the four young women look strangely immaculate amid the after-hours fall-out; crucially, it's also a splendidly insouciant contrast to the tabloid shaming of hard-partying "ladettes".

Haller tells the BBC: "It's this celebration of going out as a group, having fun together. This was right outside a club on the high street, and I photographed these people before the street cleaners came. It was still dark, so I had to use flash. You kind of had these leftovers from last night, then people spilling out of the club in the morning, so it's kind of two worlds colliding. These are in-between moments."

In the 1990s Norman "Normski" Anderson was a photographer, DJ and broadcaster (his BBC TV show Dance Energy was inspirational viewing for young music fans). "Everyone was making stuff up because we were free enough to do it," Normski tells the BBC. That giddy swirl of intrepidness and innocence resounds in this headspin shot, taken at a London hip-hop party that Normski was covering for i-D. "This is me on the ground, practically upside down. The camera is as close as I can get to this guy, trying to catch the spin. I want to be the B-boy. There's an energy that I love, which is being amongst it."

There's an exhilarating, kinetic quality to Elaine Constantine's photography – and you can practically hear the engines revving and smell the petrol in this image, taken from her Burn Up series on "boy racers" (originally shot for The Face). Constantine was similarly young at the time, and shared an enthusiasm for customised cars. "Going to that carpark in Northampton that night felt a bit like going to a rave… the spontaneous meet with loads of young people, organised through word of mouth and independent radio," she tells the BBC.

"You could feel that excitement of something that belonged to them. Things are much safer now, more monitored. I think that original movements were still incubating in that time and able to develop between likeminded people, so it genuinely felt like creativity was blossoming. My life growing up in the north through the 70s [also] gave me the desire to create images that expressed individual freedom. We need to try and get that back somehow, but that's a huge conversation and hopefully a new and insatiable generation that will make that happen."

The 90s: Art & Fashion is at Tate Britain from 8 Oct to 14 Feb, 2027.

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