It's been 22 years since the Spice Girls took London's St Pancras Renaissance Hotel by storm in the video for their debut anthem "Wannabe", but their influence on popular culture hasn't swayed. In February of this year, an Instagram group-selfie published by Victoria Beckham, which gained almost two million likes, and an official statement mentioning the "many exciting possibilities" that the group could explore in the months ahead have sparked a frenzy of reunion rumours and even mentions of a new film. From the return of Buffalo boots – a staple of the singers' 1990s attire that's now being stocked by Browns and Farfetch – to crop tops, athleisure and slip dresses, much of the style they popularised in their heyday is still front and centre on the high street. Meanwhile, their message of empowerment couldn't be more topical in the age of #MeToo.
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"Today, you don't need to go into a lot of shops before you find a T-shirt with "Girl Power" on it," says Alan Smith-Allison, super-fan, collector and curator of the upcoming SpiceUp exhibition. The display, opening in London on July 28 and then in Manchester on August 24, will be a more comprehensive iteration of a first retrospective that Smith-Allison set up in Cyprus in 2016. This time, in addition to his personal arsenal, the display will include important pieces on loan from other collections, along with contributions from costume and fashion designers. The exhibition is the result of a serious collaborative effort between international Spice Girls collectors – a first, according to Smith-Allison – and it's aimed at fans and the uninitiated alike, who will discover the group and its career history through around 7,000 items of merchandise and 300 items of clothing and shoes.
Exuberant, loud and unapologetic, in the 1990s the Spice Girls introduced a generation of teenagers to a new way of finding and defining themselves beyond the normalised canons of femininity and masculinity. Their stage personas – labelled by Top of the Pops magazine as Posh, Ginger, Scary, Sporty and Baby soon after their debut – were undeniably stereotyped and commercially constructed, but they also brought a surprisingly liberating message. "In the 1990s, I felt that I wasn't fitting [with the idea of] how a boy should be," explains Smith-Allison. "Then the Spice Girls came along and said, it's alright to be yourself – embrace it and release your quirkiness. That was what really resonated with me when I was 15 and a bit lost."
Their empowering message seeped through their lyrics and their carefree attitude but, perhaps most of all, was embedded in their unique style, which followed none of the rules previously applied to pop groups – record companies used to favour an "all dress the same" protocol – or the formalities of etiquette. When the group met Nelson Mandela and Prince Charles in Johannesburg in 1997, each of the singers stayed true to her own style: Melanie Brown rocked a burgundy crocodile jacket over an exposed bra and matching green trousers designed by William Hunt; Melanie Chisholm wore a DKNY tank top, tracksuit bottoms and Nike Air Max 97; Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell donned mini-dresses and platform shoes; and Victoria Beckham, honouring her posh reputation, chose a gold satin suit.
"They each dressed to suit themselves, showing a strong and confident set of female personalities that appealed to a wide and diverse audience," says Liz West, the Manchester-based curator who won a Guinness World Record with her extensive Spice Girls collection, which she lent in its entirety to the SpiceUp show. "If you didn't like how one girl dressed, there was a good chance you would like another." At the beginning of their career, the quintet built their wardrobes on high-street, vintage and handmade clothing, making it easy to be copied by teenagers on a budget worldwide – even Beckham's emblematic "little black Gucci dress", which wasn't as posh as we were led to believe. According to Smith-Allison, the dress' first version from the "Wannabe" video was a copy of one of Halliwell's dresses that Beckham particularly liked and that she had made by a local tailor for £20. Similarly, most of Halliwell's style from the group's early years was created by rummaging through Camden Market.
Despite having a commanding manager and working with different stylists, the five pop stars were also very hands-on in the creation of their look – which probably explains why, despite being a manufactured group, they rarely received any backlash about the authenticity of their personas. Brown's hair horns, one of the group's most copied hairstyles, were created by the singer herself by wrapping her hair around two plastic cups. Another time, recounts Smith-Allison, Brown gave the finishing touch to a pair of red-soled, leopard-print Buffalo boots with a black marker, which she used to single out the "B" on one of the shoes' tongues. Most famously, Halliwell concocted her 1997 BRIT Awards Union Jack dress – the "holy grail" for a costume collector, according to Smith-Allison – with her sister, sewing two tea towels emblazoned with the Union flag onto a Gucci dress that she deemed "too boring". Unfortunately the dress – which fetched over £41,000 at a 1998 Sotheby's charity auction, becoming the most expensive piece of popstar clothing ever sold – isn't included in the SpiceUp exhibition, but can be found on display at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.
With time, the group progressed from high street to custom-made and designer dresses, including looks made by Julien MacDonald, Paul Smith and Roberto Cavalli, but their sense of individuality and involvement remained mostly unchanged. In 2012, Halliwell got directly in touch with Suzanne Neville, a London-based designer specialising in bridal and eveningwear, to create her outfit for the group's performance at the London Olympics closing ceremony. "Geri knew that she wanted to wear red and have a boned bodice," explains Neville, "so my vision for the costume was very much driven by her and it evolved as we were creating the design." At the ceremony, Halliwell wore a red dress with a structured corset in crepe with a plunging neckline and a short skirt in silk chiffon, embellished with 24-carat-gold filigree and crystals by Halo & Co. The look was finished with a nod to the singer's 1997 BRIT Awards costume, a Union Jack bustle fluttering at the back.
Like West and Smith-Allison, Neville believes that the group's message of positive energy and fearlessness, perhaps initially created as a brilliant marketing ploy, has long outlived its commercial nature. The popstars led the way for a generation of young women who are not afraid to speak their minds and stand out from the crowd. "The Spice Girls were very invested in being themselves and I think that had a massive impact," says Smith-Allison. "People [became] confident in who they wanted to be without having to follow [the rules of] what a girl or a boy should be."
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SpiceUp runs from July 28 to August 20 at London's Business Design Centre, before moving to Manchester Central from August 24 to September 4.
