Actress Jennifer Aniston, who portrayed Rachel on the TV show Friends inspired a craze in the mid 1990s for a longer version of the shag haircut. Women across the country demanded that their hairstylists give them the "Rachel" or Friends cut, a face-framing, multilayered look. Friends debuted in the 1994-1995 television season on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network and was still running at the end of the decade.

Carolyn Bessette made headlines, not just for marrying John F. Kennedy Jr. (son of President John F. Kennedy) on 21 September 1996, but for wearing a simple, yet elegant, white slip dress designed by Narciso Rodriguez. Bessette-Kennedy went on to become a symbol of the new American style with its clean, classic lines before she and her husband died in a plane crash on 16 July 1999.

Bill Blass retired at age seventy-seven after sixty years in...