Gucci Fall/Winter 1995

LED scrolling belt buckles were a defining accessory of the mid-2000s "McBling" era (roughly 2003–2008), a maximalist, logo-heavy aesthetic born out of hip-hop's bling culture and reality TV excess; think Von Dutch hats, Ed Hardy, and Juicy Couture tracksuits. Each buckle housed a tiny programmable LED dot-matrix display; tiny buttons on the back let you type in your own name, a phrase, or a message, which then scrolled across the buckle in glowing red or blue text. They snapped onto any standard belt strap, making them an easy, affordable way to stand out at clubs, parties, and under UV blacklight, exactly the kind of flashy, look-at-me accessory the era was built on. I always wondered what happened when the battery ran out. Did people have to charge the belts?

In 1990, Linda Evangelista told Vogue, "We have this expression, Christy and I: we don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day," a line about herself and Christy Turlington that's gone down as the most quoted (and most misquoted, often rendered as "get out of bed") sentence in modeling history. That same year, all five women on this cover, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford, appeared together for the first time, photographed by Peter Lindbergh in New York's Meatpacking District for the January 1990 issue of British Vogue. The image is widely credited with launching the entire concept of the "supermodel": women famous enough to be recognized by first name alone, commanding fees and cultural power that rivaled actual celebrities. It was influential enough that George Michael cast all five in his "Freedom! '90" music video after seeing the cover.

Edmond Goyard created the "Goyardine" canvas in 1892, inspired by his own family history. The Goyards had been "Compagnons de Rivière," a guild of log drivers who floated firewood down rivers from the Morvan forests to Paris, and the pattern's piled-up dots are meant to evoke stacked logs. The dots also form three chevrons stacked together into the shape of a "Y," the central letter of the Goyard surname. Edmond signed his canvas with his own name in white lettering, just as a painter signs a painting, making him the first Parisian trunk-maker to do so. Unlike Louis Vuitton, Chanel, or Gucci, which all monogram around a founder's initials, Goyard's design leans on a single letter pulled from the middle of the name instead. The canvas itself was also a technical innovation: a waterproof linen-and-cotton weave, lighter and more durable than the plain linen other trunk-makers were using at the time.