Way Back Wednesday: The Inaugural 1995 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards

Before Red Carpets Became Content, VH1 Made Fashion the Main Event

Today’s Way Back Wednesday takes us to December 3, 1995, when VH1 decided music stars and fashion people deserved one giant, gloriously ’90s room together. The result was the inaugural VH1 Fashion & Music Awards, broadcast live from Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue Armory with actors, designers, supermodels and rock stars all sharing the same stage.

Steven Weber hosted the first edition, but the real attraction was the collision of worlds VH1 was selling: the people making the clothes, the people wearing them, and the musicians turning personal style into pop mythology. This was before every awards-show arrival became its own social-media news cycle. VH1 was making the fashion conversation the actual program.

Madonna Won Twice — Then Handed Tom Ford His Moment

Madonna was one of the night’s central figures. She won both the critics’ and viewers’ votes for Most Fashionable Artist, with ex-husband Sean Penn making a surprise appearance during her award moment. She also crossed over to the designer side of the ceremony, presenting Tom Ford with the Fashion’s Future Award as his transformation of Gucci was becoming one of the defining fashion stories of the decade.

Gianni Versace received the Frock ’N’ Rock Award, with Naomi Campbell at his side — about as perfect a snapshot of the era as one could ask for. The event also drew designers including Miuccia Prada, Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld, while Claudia Schiffer appeared with Lagerfeld as fashion’s biggest names moved freely through what was technically a music television awards show.

Prince Opened the Show With “P. Control”

Then there was Prince. At the time officially billed as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, he opened the ceremony with “P. Control” from The Gold Experience. A special promotional cassette featuring the House Mix and Club Mix of the track was also distributed to guests at the event — because of course Prince turned an awards-show performance into its own collectible artifact.

The rest of the live lineup was stacked: Tina Turner, Elton John, The Pretenders and k.d. lang all performed. A Los Angeles Times review published two days later argued that the musical production numbers were actually more compelling than many of the awards themselves, which tells you just how heavily VH1 leaned into spectacle for its first attempt.

The Supermodels Were Not Decoration — They Were the Culture

And then came the supermodel power. Iman, Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer were among the major fashion names documented at the event, part of a moment when models had escaped the runway and become full-blown pop stars in their own right. The show even included filmed segments looking at the relationship between rock stars and supermodels, plus the influence of photographers and designers on music-video culture.

That is what makes the 1995 show such a fun time capsule now. Fashion television had not yet been flattened into endless red-carpet commentary. Music television still had enough cultural power to invent an awards franchise simply because style and sound were crashing into each other everywhere. Madonna, Prince, Versace, Ford, Naomi, Iman — VH1 was not chasing a crossover. The crossover was already happening.

More From the 1995 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards

The images below all come from the inaugural December 3, 1995 event in New York City, capturing the mix of musicians, designers, models and presenters that made VH1’s first Fashion & Music Awards such a distinctly mid-’90s spectacle.

It lasted as a concept because the premise was dead-on: fashion and music were never separate universes in the first place. In 1995, VH1 just gave the relationship a stage, a trophy and a guest list that reads like somebody raided the best table at the coolest party in Manhattan.

Watch the Full 1995 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards

The complete inaugural broadcast includes Prince opening with “P. Control,” plus Madonna, Tom Ford, Gianni Versace, Tina Turner, Elton John, The Pretenders, supermodels and more from VH1’s December 3, 1995 fashion-and-music spectacle.

Sources: Los Angeles Times; Getty Images archival event records; Billboard archive; RR Auction; Madonna archival records.