Fashion is something of a necromancer. Which, in case you weren’t an RPG fan growing up from the 1970s onwards, means it communicates with dead trends to create new ones – and sometimes even revives them entirely.

This year, if we weren’t scouring vintage stores for a quality suede overshirt, then we were re-discovering 1990s-era casual wear brands (Ellesse, anyone?) we’ve unreservedly snubbed since originally sporting them.

Proving fashion’s penchant for reanimation, 2015 was all about the 1970s and 1990s; two decades that both high-end runways and high street windows everywhere have referenced for this season and next, but that couldn’t be further apart in their aesthetic leanings.

So, partially in an effort to make up our own minds, we asked a select group of style authorities to tell us which of the decades is their favorite, and why.

The 1990s

Already lying about your age? Then look away now. Because we’re as close today to 2040 as we are to 1990. Yes, the decade of Pogs, boybands and Mortal Kombat is now far enough in the past that it’s officially considered ‘vintage’, which also means it’s newly ripe for contemporary fashion to pick over.

“My observation is based purely on the sex factor; I’d say both the 1990s and 1970s had a lot to offer fashion,” says designer and London Collections: Men maverick Katie Eary, who has touched upon both decades in her eclectic collections, “[but] 1990s indie was not sexy, unless you like that unwashed vibe. I’m not saying the whole of the indie scene is like this, but by the 1990s, commercialization of all the things we love started to happen.”

Kurt Cobain

The 1990s, then, was the era not just of Noel and Liam’s military surplus parkas and the clean-cut cool of Calvin Klein and Helmut Lang, but also of badly made high street clothing and flashy brand names. As Eary puts it: “commercial and sexy never seem to appear in the same sentence.”