Mastering Minimalism with a 90s Attitude
90s minimalism is back – warmer, sexier, and more rebellious than ever. Three razor-sharp winter capsules (16 pieces total) that channel Gwyneth’s town-car cool and Carolyn’s midnight nonchalance. Quiet luxury you can wear like you never tried.
LAST POSTSWINTER LOOKSMINIMALISM
12/2/2025
Some images are indelible. They lodge in the mind like a perfectly cut diamond—small, sharp, impossible to dislodge. Mine is Gwyneth Paltrow, December 1998, stepping out of a black Lincoln Town Car on a snow-dusted Mercer Street: a razor-edged camel coat slicing through the night, a black cashmere turtleneck so fine it looked liquid against her collarbone, hair scraped back with the indifference of someone who knows the camera will wait. The quiet, lethal certainty that the evening—and every photograph that would follow—already belonged to her.
Twenty-seven years later, in the winter of 2025, that image no longer feels like nostalgia. It feels like prophecy.
The fashion pendulum has swung back, but not to the austere, Teutonic minimalism of the 2010s—those cold marble floors and whisper-thin knits that looked like penance. This is something richer, more subversive: a return to the late-90s attitude that made restraint feel like the ultimate flex. Think Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy vanishing into a paparazzi storm in nothing but a floor-skimming black coat and sunglasses after dark. Think Helmut Lang suits with sleeves shoved to the elbow because perfection that looks labored is no perfection at all. Think Kate Moss in a bias-cut slip and a man’s chrome watch, making excess look suddenly… provincial.
The runways have been murmuring the same sermon for three seasons now. Phoebe Philo’s long-awaited return at her namesake label—those elongated cashmere tunnels, capes that swallow the body whole, trousers that pool like ink. The Row’s monastic serenity, now rendered in double-faced vicuña so plush it feels illicit. Khaite’s ankle-skimming cardigans and butter-soft leather that moves like a second skin. Totême’s coats cut with the precision of origami. Even Loro Piana has abandoned its safari fantasies for shades of midnight, ivory, and the kind of navy that makes black feel loud.
This is not minimalism as deprivation. This is minimalism as seduction—warmer, more tactile, threaded with the exact brand of 90s nonchalance that once turned Calvin Klein adverts into cultural scripture. It is the art of editing until only the indispensable remains, then wearing what’s left like you never considered the alternative.
Below, three tightly curated capsules—sixteen pieces total—that translate the moodboard into something you can step into tomorrow morning, coffee still scalding in hand.
Capsule #1 – The Architecture of Confidence
Tailoring as psychological armor, only softer than steel.
Begin with the coat: a double-breasted wool-cashmere in deepest charcoal, peak lapels sharp enough to draw blood, hem kissing mid-calf with ceremonial gravity. Underneath, a tailored black blazer—slightly nipped, single-button, cut from a wool so dense it holds its shape like architecture—layers over a white ribbed crew-neck in extra-fine merino (the kind that feels like wearing a cloud that happens to be chic). High-waisted barrel-leg trousers in the same black wool break perfectly over glossy ebony penny loafers with a low vamp and a mirror shine. Finish with slim oval sunglasses in warm tortoiseshell—frames that say “I read the brief, and I’m already bored.”
The silhouette is lethal in its restraint: strong shoulders tempered by controlled volume below, the coat doing the heavy lifting so you never have to. This is the outfit that photographs like a 1997 Vogue editorial shot by Peter Lindbergh and functions like a uniform you’ll mourn on laundry day.
Shop the look
• Long double-breasted wool coat → Zara; tailored black blazer → Zara; white ribbed crew-neck → H&M; black barrel-leg trousers → &OtherStories; leather penny loafers → Zara; slim oval sunglasses → &OtherStories
Capsule #2 – The Leather Rebellion
Minimalism that still knows how to stay out past midnight.
The hero is a limited-edition cropped leather bomber—black, buttery, with the boxy 90s proportions that made Kate Moss look permanently borrowed-from-the-boys. It lands over the same white ribbed crew-neck (repetition is the ultimate luxury), now paired with fluid navy wide-leg trousers in brushed jersey that ripple like water when you walk. The same penny loafers return, because genius borrows, mastery steals. A vast fringed wool scarf in storm-cloud grey is flung once around the neck and left to trail behind you like cigarette smoke. Rectangular metal-frame sunglasses—chrome, unforgiving—stay on indoors, because some nights refuse to negotiate.
Texture is the secret language here: high-sheen leather against matte jersey, rigid structure against languid drape. Swap the crew-neck for a whisper-thin silk slip at 11 p.m. and the same capsule morphs into something midnight-appropriate without adding a single new piece. Quiet rebellion, served ice-cold.
Shop the look
• Cropped leather bomber jacket → Zara; white ribbed crew-neck → H&M; navy wide-leg trousers → Uniqlo; leather penny loafers → Zara; fringed wool blanket scarf in grey → &OtherStories; rectangular metal-frame sunglasses → Massimo Dutti
Capsule #3 – The Art of Luxurious Ease
Proof that subtraction can feel like the most decadent act of all.
Begin with the drama: a wool wrap coat in the deepest petrol-teal, exaggerated shawl collar, belt knotted with the deliberate carelessness of someone who has places to be. It cascades over the softest cashmere-wool roll-neck in black—fabric so fine it feels like wearing forgiveness. Perfectly faded mid-blue wide-leg jeans (the wash that took three years and a small fortune to achieve) bring the 90s insouciance, grounded by sleek black leather boots with a just-enough heel for cobblestones and conscience. Jewellery is silver only: a Cartier Tank Française with diamond indices and the thinnest rhodium-plated tube hoops that catch light like private jokes.
The proportions are pure poetry—generous volume above, relaxed ease below, the roll-neck adding warmth without bulk. This is the uniform that looks quietly, obscenely expensive whether you’re buying white lilies at the farmer’s market or slipping into a last-minute gallery opening in the Marais. Effortless, eternal, expensive.
The Final Reckoning
Sixteen pieces. Three distinct moods. One unshakable attitude.
In an era that keeps trying to sell us more—more colour, more hardware, more noise—the most radical statement we can make is to decide, calmly and finally, that we already possess everything we need. And then to wear it like we never cared in the first place.
This is not minimalism as austerity. This is minimalism as power. The kind Gwyneth understood in 1998, Carolyn weaponised in 1999, and that—miraculously, mercifully—we are finally ready to inhabit again in 2025.
Next on The Chic Vitality
