Setting a New Direction.

Several major trends in style in the 1990s were established almost from the start of the decade. Men's wear and women's wear designers created softer, less constructed clothes—and often second lines at lower costs—to match the buyer's needs in the United States. Designers also turned out fashions that were more relaxed and casual than their 1980s counterparts. Building designs also targeted specific demographics, as architects continued to mold modernism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism into forms that matched their clients' needs, the surroundings of the buildings, and the environment. Structures soared to new heights. Frank O. Gehry began work on the $100 million Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; construction on Richard Meier's J. Paul Getty Center in California was under way; and Cesar Pelli & Associates was working on the 1,483-foot-tall Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, which in April 1996 superceded the Sears Tower in...