Seluar Lusuh Part II(Grunge Fashion)
This post actually the continuosly article from Seluar Lusuh part I that i`ve wrote about basic grunge knowledge. From my point of view that grunge is a phenomenon in late 80`s in Washington DC. Bands like Mudhoney, Green River ,Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and many more are the early band in this phenomenon....as usually and as we known when this phenomenon come bigger in worlds music scenery xspecially Underground, Grunge is not excepted with their fashion, attitude and their philosophy....Now i would like to shared something about Fashion, Grunge Fashion......
Grunge fashion
Grunge fashion was essentially a mix of punk ethic and outdoor wear. Hard, durable fabrics that didn't cost much (so it didn't matter if your friend stole them off you) and that you could wear for years. Grunge kids usually did - that's why holes in clothes started becoming a part of grunge fashion.
The punk influence behind grunge style makes sense - punk has always been anti-establishment, and initially it wasn't expensive.
Why the outdoor wear? Well, it's not overly warm in Seattle, where grunge originated. And outdoor wear is cheap. And it's function over form, so it was a good way to retaliate against the futuristic (hey, it seemed that way at the time) high fashion of eighties glamour pop. And if you wear it right, ie. A lot, and preferably in the rain, or covering yourself with beer at every gig and washing infrequently, you can end up looking a step or two above homeless. Essentially, the grunge look grew organically - there was no attempt to consciously come up with a style. The grunge look just grew into itself.
Music journo Charles R. Cross said, "Kurt Cobain was just too lazy to shampoo," and there may have been some truth in that. Seattle grunge label Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman said, "[Grunge clothing] is cheap, it's durable, and it's kind of timeless. It also runs against the grain of the whole flashy aesthetic that existed in the 80's."
Grunge clothing and hair was generally unkempt. Men shaved infrequently and tended to go for long hair. If they dyed their hair - and this goes for the women too - they didn't dye it too often - hence dyed roots being part of the grunge look. Then again, dyeing your hair blonde takes effort and is, for some, too much of a nod towards trying to better your appearance and ascribing to a commercial sense of beauty, so a lot people had natural hair and left it be to grow and do its own thing, only occasionally getting a friend to hack at it with blunt scissors when feeling pissed / maudlin / strung out. Dreds were not uncommon, though less so in America.
How to wear grunge style
Layers of tops are essential. Good for braving the elements / outdoor gigs. Good for hiding your body and saying the body doesn't matter too much - not compared to music, anyway.
Flannel shirts were huge for men and grunge women liked them too. Flannel was popular in Seattle as outdoor wear.
Anything plaid became accepted grunge style. Plaid flannel shirts. Long baggy plaid shorts. Tartan kilts were also good for women or men(ending above the knee but well below the crotch, ladies!)
Ripped denim. Ripped mainly because grunge kids were anti high-fashion and wore their clothes half to death. Once grunge style became popular and mainstream, people would buy their jeans and rip them in a bit before wearing them to get the grunge look. A pale, half-dead stonewashed denim was ideal for jeans.
Baggy clothes were essential for boys and girls. No skinny fit. Baggy jeans only. And baggy worked well with the layers of tops. Grunge clothes never fitted because you'd just wear something you'd found in a bin, bought very cheaply, or stolen off a friend who was skinnier/fatter than you.
Charity shop / thrift store clothes. With the recession, we'll probably see a new mutation of grunge as people start dressing solely from charity shops, and start creating combinations of daywear that Primark never intended in all its years.
Flowery cotton dresses. But only for men. Okay, women could wear them too. But only with heavy combat boots or Doc Martens.
Cardigans and very baggy jumpers. Chunky knit cardigans with old leather buttons were everywhere. Holes weren't just for jeans - every grunge cardigan or sweater ended up with a hole in it for you to put your thumb into so it doubled up as a pair of fingerless mittens.
Hoodies. Of course. How could we not mention hooded tops! You could get thin hooded tops to stick under long-sleeved tees. Or fat hoodies to wear on top of all your other layers, preferably with a really baggy cardigan over the top.
Hair was ideally lank, for boys, or stiff with yesterday's sweat from a gig. Dye jobs were common, especially bleached hair, but they were irregular - having your roots show for anything up to three inches was common in grunge style. As Hole singer Courtney Love testified in interviews, her rocking layered haircut was mostly achieved by holding her cigarette to close to her hair ends and burning it off by mistake. The word we are looking for is unkempt.
Combat boots. Or worn old high top sneakers or baseball boots. Or
Doc Martens.
Accessories - Beanie hats. Or leather thongs tied round your wrists. Grunge fashion wasn't huge on accessories, unless it was tattoos, piercings and lots of dangly things round the wrist.
Essentially, grunge was/is/shall be again a non-style created by poor kids who wanted to reject the commodification of their world.
Boys - aim to look one hot meal away from homeless.
Girls - you can up the punk rock quota. Female grunge bands usually did. They wore the heavy boots, but usually with punk net tights (with holes in, of course). Kilts and silk slips (or other charity shop dresses) and the usual punk rocker wear were common for girls. So long as the hair was unkempt, the boots were big, the clothes were old and ill-fitting, you were pretty much grunge. Especially if you threw a baggy old cardigan with hole-thumbs over the top of your sexy rock outfit.
Getting into grunge fashion is, even today, easy and cheap. No-one sells cardigans or plaid or flannel for huge amounts on
eBay - it's all still stuff you can root around and find in second hand stores, or that people want to throw away.
However, be aware that - by trawling the second hand shops in the new millenium - you may actually find yourself part of a new wave grunge. Entirely by accident. Just because you have the same anti-commerical ethos, but different things are now available in the shops. Don't worry. Your slightly different look will probably still be grunge. There may be people out there doing the same as you, creating a new, organic style purely by chance.
And with grunge it was always about the gigs, in the end. Let music, poverty and social alienation lead the way, and we'll all shuffle forward into a Brave New Grunge!
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| Kurt Cobain |
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