In August 1993, Kurt Cobain met with Los Angeles Times journalist Robert Hilburn wearing a short dress over his flannel long johns. “Wearing a dress shows that I can be as feminine as I want to,” he told Hilburn. “I’m heterosexual, that’s a big thing. But if I was gay, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
The words may be outdated, but Cobain’s views on gendered clothing couldn’t be more modern. It’s just one example of how the Nirvana frontman, and partly the grunge movement as a whole, unwittingly predicted attitudes towards clothing that are still popular today, 30 years after his death, from turning second-hand shopping into a stylish option to the idea that self-expression should trump convention when it comes to clothing.
“Grunge was an anti-fashion moment that quickly became a high-fashion phenomenon and remained in fashion for decades to come,” says Colleen Hill, curator of costume and accessories at the FIT Museum in New York. “Once in style, it didn’t mean runway fashion. [but] General street fashion will never go away.”
Cobain in a floral dress in 1990. © Steve Double/Camera Press. Cobain in large sunglasses, striped shirt and ripped jeans with bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. © WireImage
Grunge style originally emerged in the mid-1980s as a way to layer up shabby thrift-store finds to withstand the changeable, cold, rainy climate of the Pacific Northwest, where the grunge music scene emerged. “People didn’t have much money, so they chose these clothes to stay warm without spending a lot of money,” says Michael Lavin, a friend of Nirvana and photographer who documented the scene at the time. This eclectic style was epitomized by Cobain’s combination of oversized cardigans, stripes, leopard print, and large plastic sunglasses.
The clothes – flannel shirts, band T-shirts, fluffy sweaters, floral dresses, ripped denim, Converse sneakers and Dr Martens – were nothing new or eye-catching in themselves, but the way they were combined and the anti-fashion messages they conveyed spoke to disaffected kids, just as much as the music, which was filled with anger, isolation and alienation.
“I remember popular music before Nirvana and afterwards very clearly. There was a lot of really corny stuff. [Nirvana] “It wasn’t cheesy,” says DJ Mikey Pendon, who grew up in a small town south of Houston, Texas, and discovered Nirvana in high school. Of his attire, Pendon says, “When I was a teenager, I already had messy hair, and it was easy to maintain. [bands] When you do that, you start doing things their way. Grunge was about rejecting fashion and not caring, but it was ironic because we all wanted to be like them.”
Though the grunge sound emerged in the mid-1980s, it wasn’t until Nirvana’s sophomore album, Nevermind, in 1991 that the genre went mainstream. “They were new to the scene, but Nirvana were the band that really raised the bar,” says photographer Charles Peterson, who worked for Sub Pop, the independent music label that released Nirvana’s first single in 1988. “I think a lot of it was still leaning on traditional tropes, but Nirvana really broke the mold with their blend of harshness and melody and heavy basslines that you could jump to and dance to.”
Just as Nevermind brought grunge music to MTV and most American screens, the album and band’s growing popularity brought the grunge style to the catwalks. American designer Christian Francis Roth recalls seeing the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video on MTV for the first time and running out to buy Nevermind, which inspired his Spring/Summer 1993 collection. “My work was based on humour, and was rich in technique and colour. [the grunge] Look, I went to the studio and [the record] I turned it on, turned up the volume, and started designing.”
In a world where hoodies make their way into haute couture shows today, it’s hard to comprehend the impact that grunge-inspired collections from Ross, Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis, and Anna Sui had on the fashion industry in the winter of 1992.
Perry Ellis by Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 1993 © WWD/Getty Images Anna Sui Spring/Summer 1993 © Toronto Star/Getty Images
“Commercially, it didn’t work for anyone. Mark lost his job at Perry Ellis. The buyers hated it. They didn’t know how to sell it. They thought it was punk but was even less sophisticated than that, made for teenagers and didn’t understand how women would wear it. We were broke for a while,” Ross recalls.
“It was hated at first. The establishment didn’t get it,” said Ian R. Webb, then fashion editor of The Times, describing grunge as “finding beauty in places where there shouldn’t be beauty.”
If the establishment didn’t like the style, most of those who were active in the grunge scene genuinely hated seeing it on the catwalk. “It was infuriating. It was everything we hated,” Lavigne recalls. “We were anti-fashion. We wanted nothing to do with fashion. Designer was the worst, dirtiest word you could imagine.”
Grunge still resonates today because people are now dressing more uniformly.
However, grunge was a big hit on the streets, boosting sales of products like LL Bean flannel shirts, and department stores stocking “distressed” clothing. As is often the case in the fashion world, something that is initially misunderstood or deemed ugly can quickly become stylish. In December 1992, grunge was featured in Vogue magazine’s “Grunge and Glory” feature, styled by Grace Coddington, photographed by Steven Meisel, and written by Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman. While grunge did not last long on the runway as a simple visual expression, its influence pushed silhouettes and outfits in new directions.
“Something that’s tailored and polished and clean just breaks everything up,” says Ross. “It allowed me to try prints that I wouldn’t normally use, silhouettes that are in some ways more abstract and expressionistic, and it allowed for layering in ways that people wouldn’t have thought about.”
“It really changed the way people dressed,” says Webb, drawing parallels with the Belgian Deconstruction movement brought to Europe by Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela.[Fashion] “Fashion became more free-flowing, with unconventional pattern combinations and the idea of mixing evening and daywear and menswear and womenswear. In a broader sense, it still resonates because people’s clothing is now more cohesive.”
From Christian Francis Roth’s grunge-inspired Spring/Summer 1993 collection © Penske Media/Getty ImagesNaomi Campbell in Todd Oldham’s Autumn/Winter 1994 collection © Fairchild Archive/Getty Images
Like many subcultures, grunge borrowed from and reacted to earlier movements, including punk, and was an expression of rebellion against the status quo. What makes grunge different from other styles, and perhaps more accessible than previous styles, is that its rebellious spirit was based on very mundane elements, making it easy and cheap to imitate.
Grunge music and style was born out of Gen X’s feelings of alienation and is periodically rediscovered and adopted by new generations of teenagers. You can see a lot of grunge in the cardigans, hipster flannel shirts, and unkempt vintage clothing that was popular during the indie era that millennials came of age in the late 2000s and early 2010s. You can also see a lot of grunge in Gen Z’s love of vintage clothing, genderfluid approach to dress, and uninhibited expression through clothing.
My first encounter with grunge was in 2002, when a classmate in middle school lent me a Nirvana CD. Like millions of other teenagers, I became a huge fan, feeling that their music and lyrics perfectly and uniquely expressed how I felt. I remember buying a second-hand green skirt around that time and pairing it with a pair of worn-out Converse All-Stars of a different color and some black and white striped knee-length socks. I knew it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, but I also remember never feeling more like myself than when I was wearing this rebellious little outfit.
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