VOGUE CHAOS ISSUE 11: Under The Influence of Designer Drugs

Kurt Cobain’s influence on fashion, grunge, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen

Kurt was born in the redneck town of Aberdeen in Washington where majority of the people worked in the logging industry. Raised in a broken family, in poverty, homeless for his teen years and huffing on fumes to get high, Kurt was not the kind to care about fashion at all. He wore t-shirts from brands he idealized and kept his blonde hair long, like a girl. He would once be arrested for writing ‘Homo Sex Rules’ in graffiti. Associating himself with punk-rock, he felt compelled to reject anything mainstream or commercial, atleast at face value and from the peer pressure he faced from his circles in Olympia, where he was infatuated with Tobi Vail of Bikini Kill, who was one of the faces of riot grrrl.

The 80s were all about glamour and being big big big. Kurt would have none of it. He could not afford any of it. Before the release of his debut studio album Bleach, he was supported by his then girlfriend Tracy. There is no way to sugarcoat it, at that point of time he was a total bum. His apartment overran with pet fur and feces, unwashed utensils piled up, never brushing his teeth, eating junk food, and getting high whenever he was not playing music. With the release of Nevermind, Nirvana shot to popularity at a time Kurt was sleeping in his car. Even with the millions that followed, he never thought to spend on fashion.

With Nirvana and Pearl Jam topping the charts, punk was becoming mainstream in 1992, which was the very anti-thesis of this subculture. Punk brought with it several freedoms especially in terms of feminism, LGBTQ rights, and HIV awareness which were important issues then. With Kurt’s tragic death, the band and the movement became even more popular as everyone wanted to dress and embody the values of their favourite singer, the one who captured their teenage angst as he wrote songs to process his own life full of depression and drugs. Drugs were an important part of this culture at a time War on Drugs was in full swing.

At the time when Kurt and Courtney were on the cover of Sassy Magazine and a fixture on MTV, a young Marc Jacobs working at Perry Ellis decided to do a grunge collection inspired by them. Kurt was embarrassed by his thin stature caused by a stomach condition and liked to wear bulky and baggy clothes. Courtney was the embodiment of the female counterpart of grunge who made lingerie as outerwear popular in what is known as the kinderwhore look.

Few weeks before the collection was released, Sonic Youth, a band represented by Nirvana’s label Sub Pop and who opened for them several times, called Marc to ask if they could shoot their music video for Sugar Kane at Perry’s showroom. They wanted a ‘real’ girl and not a model to star in it and they ended up choosing an intern named Chloe Sevigny. When the collection came out, Suzy Menkes declared that ‘grunge is ghastly’ and almost ended Marc’s career. She actually held an anti-grunge rally during Milan Fashion Week and distributed badges saying that. (Get a life, Suzy)

A lot of people who don’t consider themselves ‘fashion people’ end up being so stylish, because they deliberately go out of their way to avoid what is fashionable at the moment, and in doing so, they create the next fashion.

Marc Jacobs

Sorry for the detour. Marc was fired from Perry Ellis and no one would touch him. The collection was a commercial flop as distinguished clients refused to be associated with grunge, and the subculture did not want to associate itself with high fashion, and probably couldn’t afford it. Marc Jacobs sent samples of the collection to Kurt and Courtney. In a 2010 interview, Courtney reportedly said, “Do you know what we did with it? We burned it. We were punkers – we didn’t like that kind of thing.” This shakeup forever changed the way people think about what is considered beautiful. To pick up where Marc left off, we had Alexander McQueen in 1992 with Jack The Ripper Stalks His Victims.

London was the birthplace of punk and also where Nirvana was first popular, following in the footsteps of the Sex Pistols and Vivienne Westwood. McQueen was another tortured character who bore an uncanny resemblance to Kurt’s life and attitude. Both of them had a fixation with piss, feces, deviant porn, rape, death, and other things people considered dirty. With shows like Highland Rape and The Golden Shower that would distress any normal person came a message that was intended to be highly feminist.

The air of outright defiance is central to grunge. During a live session with MTV, Kurt was explicitly asked not to play his controversial song ‘Rape Me’ but the prankster played 15 seconds of the song but before MTV could cut to commercials, he switched to the agreed upon ‘Lithium’. Alexander McQueen was no less defiant of authority, he reportedly wrote ‘I am a cunt’ in the lining of a suit for Princes Charles when he was working at the Saville Row. There was a lot of plaid, depression, drugs, and suicide they had in common.

There have been many attempts by corporates to hijack grunge, but not on Courtney’s watch. In 2019, Demna sent a t-shirt that said ‘Corporate Magazines Still Suck A LOT’ down the runway at Vetements, which was a reference to a Tshirt that Kurt wore on the cover of Rolling Stone. (Damn Rolling Stone cannot catch a break!). Courtney HATED it and left a comment on their Instagram, ‘You guys WHAT the FUCK? I hate being put in this position. You should know better !” She had also hated the original Marc designs but then Marc got Frances Bean Cobain, their daughter, to star in a campaign, which she later defaced herself. Nirvana also sued Marc for using their smiley face in their grunge redux collection in 2018. Punk Rockers are very adamant about not being reduced to an aesthetic. This kind of discipline and resolve to not go get that bag is hard to find in this hustle generation.

If we look at fashion these days, there is no popular counterculture or grunge in the public consciousness which probably means we are due for one. The dissatisfaction is brewing and soon we will have a decade defining movement. Can corporates simply opt-in to grunge? No, the streets will simply create something new, destroy something sacred, and move society forward.