Here We Are Now (7 page)

Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, came to his personal style out of necessity and fell into a fashion-icon role almost entirely by accident. His tousled hairstyle, for example, was due partially to the fact he couldn't afford shampoo, and therefore washed his hair with body soap. In 2003, a hairstyling product line called Bed Head was launched that sought to create, with a twenty-five-dollar shampoo and accompanying products, the same look Kurt achieved with a twenty-nine-cent bar of soap. Kurt essentially rolled out of bed and, moments later, was a style icon.

There were three central factors that influenced what clothes Kurt wore, and that in turn would shape his particular fashion influence: the climate in western Washington, where he lived (wet and cold); his financial situation (dire); and his shame about being thin (large enough that he wore layers of clothes to try to mask his physique). This last factor was the most significant to his clothing choices. Kurt was so skinny that clothes seemed to hang off him, so he wore layer over layer. He was also always cold, so a long woolen coat was not out of the question for him even in summer. For one trip to the beach in 1987 with his then girlfriend Tracy Marander, he wore a pair of thermal long johns, two pairs of Levi's, a long-sleeved shirt, and two sweatshirts. On the warmest day of the year in the Northwest, he might be dressed like he was wintering in Cleveland.

Kurt was also destitute for most of his adult life. A majority of his clothes came from garage sales, thrift shops, or surplus stores. There was one army-navy store in downtown Olympia, Washington, that supplied his thermal long underwear and many of the ten-dollar flannel shirts that would become the stuff of legend. The colors were often dark yellows, light blues, olive greens, and black. These hues would become the color spectrum of Grunge fashion. They were less a conscious plan by Kurt to pick that palette than they were an outgrowth of the fact that these garments had originally been designed as outdoor wear.

When fashion designers began to mimic Kurt in late 1992, it marked a show of Kurt's sway in culture, but it was also a watershed moment in fashion itself: never in the history of fashion had so much money been spent trying to look so ordinary. Whether Grunge could even be considered a legitimate fashion trend was constantly debated during Kurt's lifetime, and still at times is debated in the fashion press. “Grunge is nothing more than the way we dress when we have no money,” designer Jean Paul Gaultier said in 1993.

Vogue
first celebrated the idea of Grunge fashion with a December 1992 feature in which skinny models were pictured in sweaters, flannel shirts, and $600 scarves that were made to look as if they were from Goodwill. But in an about-face,
Vogue,
one of the first magazines to use the word “Grunge” in reference to fashion, by the end of the nineties called the trend a “clumpy downtrodden look” and “one of the worst” of all nineties trends. Like Grunge music, Grunge fashion became a lightning rod for controversy.

Kurt's emergence as a fashion influencer began as
Nevermind
flew up the album charts in the fall of 1991 and the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video became a hit. Radio and MTV were primarily responsible for breaking
Nevermind,
not the press. Consequently, most of the public first saw Kurt, as was the case with the Beatles, on television. He was tremendously photogenic on television, where the camera added the ten pounds he needed. He had that certain star quality that was a combination of attractiveness and mystery, so he looked entrancing in photos. To put it in the words of one writer for
BuzzFeed,
“Kurt Cobain was super hot.”

With blond hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide mouth, Kurt had movie-star looks without effort or makeup. He was almost impossibly handsome for a rock star, but his long hair and relaxed style of dress underplayed that and made him appear boyish, even at twenty-seven. His hair, which was so light when he was young it was nearly white, made him stand out in an era when most male rock superstars had dark hair. Other than Elvis (born blond, but who dyed his hair black), or Robert Plant, Kurt may be the single most influential natural blond in rock history.

But Kurt's hair didn't stay blond. He was fond of dying it outrageous shades, and with wild shades of dye. He preferred to use Kool-Aid for hair dye, which made for odd colors. It was an unconventionally handsome look he presented, perfect for the style of music he was playing. If he'd arrived to stardom in a suit and with short hair, his looks would have lessened his punk-rock authenticity. Kurt was able to have it both ways: to be a teen idol to women and gay men, but also to be taken seriously as a musician.

The world's crush on Kurt began with the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video clip. However, the video mostly hid his good looks behind distorted visual effects and smoke and by keeping the camera focused on every point but Kurt's face. But when Nirvana first appeared on
Saturday Night Live
in January 1992, he didn't have that ability to direct the camera angles; his handsomeness couldn't be hidden any longer and a fashion star was born. It was Nirvana's network broadcast debut, and millions tuned in. The clothes Kurt wore that night were probably not a conscious attempt to craft a particular image, but it was a style that nonetheless would prove lasting. He wore a “Flipper” T-shirt, plugging one of his favorite indie bands, and an oversize light-blue cardigan sweater. His jeans were so ripped there was as much skin showing as there was fabric. Under his jeans, Kurt wore long underwear, as per usual. That he had on multiple layers under hot studio lights and did not sweat profusely was remarkable.

His look emphasized his ordinariness, and that was dramatically different from the approach of other bands of the era. A month before Nirvana was on
Saturday Night Live,
the hair-metal darlings of the moment, Skid Row, had been the show's musical guest. Their style—big hair, all black leather—was in dramatic contrast to Kurt's. Two weeks preceding Nirvana's appearance, MC Hammer had been the musical guest, representing another style extreme with his gold chains and parachute pants.

As always, Kurt's wardrobe was so limited that there was constant repetition. He was photographed in his same
Saturday Night Live
outfit often. In the “Teen Spirit” video, he wore roughly the same clothes, though his shirt was brown-and-green striped for that shoot. His clothing choices that fall became what the public would come to think of as the Kurt Cobain uniform, or, in a larger framework, the Grunge look. Rarely did it vary—Kurt complained to a friend, a month after
Nevermind
was released, that he only owned one pair of jeans.

None of this is to suggest that Kurt was oblivious to the fact that image was one of many elements of show business. He wore T-shirts of bands he liked—including Mudhoney, Daniel Johnston, and the Melvins—because he wanted to serve as a human billboard. But he was also often photographed in a long-sleeved shirt featuring the name of the UK music magazine
Sounds
. He had been given the T-shirt for free, which was often the main reason Kurt picked a particular garment.

In the fall of 1991, Kurt began a relationship with Courtney Love, who knew the names of every famous designer in the world. Love, in her own way, had helped launch a trend with the baby doll, or “kinder-whore,” look, a mishmash of femininity and grit that has also had a lasting design impact. Sometimes Kurt and Courtney wore the same clothes, with her donning one of his army jackets and him occasionally wearing one of her slips over his clothes. As he became more famous, he tried harder to play against gender roles, wearing a tutu onstage and for photo shoots several times. On a half dozen occasions he wore dresses in concert, again playing off expected gender roles. Unlike his normal style, which he took up for practicality, Kurt's cross-dressing was a very conscious attempt to poke fun at the seriousness of rock archetypes. That trend did not catch on. Kurt was a beautiful man, but—wearing a slip with his skinny arms and four days' stubble on his chin—he did not come off as a glamorous woman.

At the end of 1991,
Sassy
magazine approached Kurt to appear on its cover, and he agreed, with the condition that he must appear with Courtney. The photo session was set for the day following
Saturday Night Live.
For the shoot, the magazine ordered a variety of clothing samples for Kurt to try on, to see what look he felt comfortable with. He rejected them all and said he preferred to wear his own clothes. He showed up wearing the exact same clothes he'd had on television the previous night. Courtney, in contrast, had requested specific labels and high-end designers. “She wanted earrings from Tiffany's, and clothes from Agnès B, and a few others,” recalled Andrea Linett, then the fashion editor of
Sassy
. “Courtney was the first time I'd seen anyone in a Grunge band who was really into labels.” Linett had thought to bring an old sweater of her father's, and Kurt preferred that to the designer clothes. He wore Linett's father's sweater for some photos (including one that later appeared in
Vanity Fair
), but he wore his own light-blue cardigan sweater for
Sassy
's cover.

That cover photograph, showing Courtney kissing Kurt, proved to be iconic and is the most famous photo of the two of them together. The clothes Kurt wore that day, particularly his oversize fuzzy cardigan, would have an impact on fashion designers for years. Linett thinks that the styling of that photo shoot was an overlooked key ingredient. “Grunge is not about the design of clothes, but instead the styling approach,” she said. With Kurt, that styling meant unkempt, baggy clothing, hair that appeared unwashed even if it was clean, and the intentional juxtaposition of different styles (letter sweaters meet distressed jeans). Linett, who later went on to work in fashion at
Lucky
magazine and then eBay, says the Grunge look continues to affect fashion because it's not about one color or cut of fabric. “My mother could put together an outfit that you'd call Grunge from her closet, if it was styled correctly,” she said.

Even in Seattle, some were seduced by the fashion trendiness. That was never clearer to me than at the 1992 Washington State fair. Booths sprang up along the midway, next to the ones that sold sunglasses and corn on the cob, hawking
GRUNGE GEAR.
Their wares included CDs and T-shirts by the hit bands of the day, but also flannel shirts, ripped-up jeans, and combat boots.

Almost identical flannel shirts could be found at hundreds of surplus or outdoor stores, some just outside the gates of the fair, for half the price of the shirts at the booth. But even in Washington, even a few dozen miles from where Kurt Cobain wrote the songs that made
Nevermind
a hit, vendors had discovered that the word “Grunge” made things sell like hotcakes.

One can easily date the exact moment when Grunge overtook high fashion: November 3, 1992. On that day, designer Marc Jacobs unveiled his Spring 1993 collection for the Perry Ellis line. Jacobs's first model, Christy Turlington, came on the New York catwalk to a barrage of flashbulbs and gaped mouths. She was wearing a black knit skullcap, a sleeveless flannel shirt, a fuzzy sweater similar to what Kurt wore on the cover of
Sassy,
combat boots, and a trench coat. It was, as one headline proclaimed, “The Day That Grunge Became Glam.” Later during that same week, Anna Sui debuted her take on Grunge, which included more hippie-ish elements, while hot young designer Christian Frances Roth showed Grunge outfits using leggings and shirts tied around waists, for a more subdued influence.

But it was Jacobs's designs, and his $300 flannel shirt, that got the attention of the mainstream press. Jacobs's “Grunge collection” was discussed on network news broadcasts, in newspaper stories, and in the opening monologue of late-night talk shows. The very idea that “Grunge” could be a term even used in fashion was enough to draw a laugh from many.

Some in the fashion press lauded Jacobs's creativity, but others were apoplectic. James Truman, editor of
Details,
a magazine that would feature Nirvana on the cover in November 1993, was one of the most quoted. “[Grunge is]
un
fashion,” Truman said. “Grunge is about
not
making a statement, which is why it's crazy for it to become a fashion statement.” Fashion writer Suzy Menkes handed out
GRUNGE IS GHASTLY
buttons. Fashion critic Bernadine Morris said the Jacobs collection was “mixing everything up . . . A typical outfit looks as if it were put together with the eyes closed in a very dark room.”
Vogue
's spread on Grunge fashion spurred one reader to write to the editor: “Your rendition of Grunge fashion was completely off. If the whole idea is to dress down, why picture models in $400 dresses? No one who can honestly relate to music labeled Grunge is going to pay $1,400 for a cashmere sweater (especially when they can buy a perfectly comfortable flannel shirt for fifty cents at the local thrift store).”

The controversy grew further when Marc Jacobs admitted he'd never even been to Seattle. Jacobs might have been his own worst enemy with the fashion establishment when he stated in the press that his Grunge collection was “a little fucked up,” and admitted he found “a two-dollar flannel shirt on St. Mark's Place” and had sent it to Italy to be copied in $300-a-yard plaid silk. All of Jacobs's models wore knit beanies, a look that was closer to a yarmulke than the inexpensive knit watch cap favored in the Northwest.

Jacobs had taken over design duties at Perry Ellis International after Ellis's death, but the Grunge collection would prove to be his undoing at the prestigious fashion company; he was fired when his designs failed to sell. “Though [Jacobs] had delivered a much-discussed and much-photographed Grunge-inspired collection for spring, the board of Perry Ellis International did not foresee making money on his women's wear,”
The New York Times
reported.