1993: Nirvana, Soundgarden and Phish are on the airwaves. Guys are wearing plaid. John Major’s the Prime Minister. Kurt Cobain’s in mohair cardigans. Self-assured teens are using their clothes and music choices as a way to rage against the capitalist machine, all while watching their faves on MTV. It’s the golden era of grunge.
That first wave of grungecore, which bubbled in Seattle, ended sometime around 1997. Grunge had begun to collapse with Cobain’s death, and Soundgarden calling it quits was another bad omen. But the nihilist movement is having a moment again. Sure, it might be 2023, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d been sent back to the time when vintage band tees were brand-new merch. (Just don’t touch anything...)
Justin Bieber is a patron saint of the grunge revival. He is out there in very grown-up and very beat-up ripped denim – wavy oval sunglasses too (yes, a lot like Cobain’s). Then there was A$AP Rocky at the Met Gala: for fashion’s biggest and maddest night out, he wore a grungified plaid skirt over a pair of jeans (Gucci, naturally). Then, he jumped over a barrier, because yeah, rock, baby! Harry Styles – who covered Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 2019 – has a thing for baggy mohair cardies, vintage tees and colossal jeans.
A collection of the world’s biggest designers are also shifting their gazes to the figureheads of the initial grunge explosion – Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell – and making an active push against the stealth wealth of “quiet luxury”. For AW23, hyper-specific riffs on Cobain and co were seen in Paris and Milan. Gucci revived plaid skirts, slashed jeans and minuscule beanie hats, pairing them with structured blazers cut from wool.
Matthieu Blazy, the guy making moves at Bottega Veneta, got Kate Moss in a checked shirt that harked back to the ’90s. This one, however, wasn’t some threadbare throw-on from vintage mecca American Rebel. It was luxe, and cut from leather without looking like actual leather (which is kind of a signature at Bottega these days). Acne Studios, the former overlord of minimalism, is now all about chequerboard shorts, massive tailored blazers and baggy denim. Meanwhile, the new kings of cool at French label Egonlab went supersized on the aesthetic and made a case for massive raw-dyed and dirty-looking jeans, checked shirts and jackets, and oversized knits. That’s a lot of grunge.
But what’s going on? The initial wave of grungecore arose from the pervasive omni-ennui of the time, and this latest version is coming from a similar place. The loud and steady ticking of the Doomsday Clock and the chaos of the world in which we’re living (global boiling, societal collapse and so on) has been stitched into the very fabric of the distressed knits and leather slacks at Burberry. Or the grubby jeans that you can (and should) get down at Egonlab. The plaid shirts and fishnet long-sleeves that Givenchy are pushing? Grungified. Bieber’s runaround knits, too. If fashion is a mirror to the world, then grunge 2.0 is cool and clear in the reflection, and recent men’s collections sing the same angsty emotions of the OG movement. Almost 30 years on, what lingers is the smell of teen spirit.
Photographs by Richard Dowker
Styled by Itunu Oke
Model: Nick Fortna at Supa Model management
Fashion assistant: Steph Jones
Grooming by Hiroki Kojima
Inset images from Getty
