According to the book Surfers Soulless Skinheads and Skaters which talks about different sub cultural style from the forties to the nineties, “Membership of subculture groups, whose ideas and lifestyles are at variance with those of the dominant culture, is usually dominated by the young. For some it is fleeting and forms a rite of passage; others move through a series of subcultures, and some remain committed to one, long term. Belonging to a subculture can be liberating, offering, for example, certain freedoms in lifestyle, sexuality and politics.
By defining their own geographical, social and sartorial boundaries, subcultures also provide a sense of belonging which is independent of the family. ” (Amy De la Hay and Cathie Dunghill, 1996) Grunge style was sort of rebellion against the starched yuppie, first appearing in Seattle in the late sass. America’s answer to Punk Rock, described both a new generation of loud, guitar-orientated rock music and the attitude of its exponents. Grunge was originally a genre of alternative rock; the fashion scene however is different.
Grunge fashion was influenced by grunge music, which achieved mainstream popularity in 1992 due to the overwhelming success of the band Nirvana and their hit single Smell Like Teen Spirit. In Great Britain, Grunge was the name given by the music press to a loose and short-lived collective of new rock bands. The Nor has since been used to describe the attitude, scruffiness and loud music referred by youth who identify with this kind of music.
The Grunge fashion is a combination of second-hand clothing like lain flannel shirts worn with faded stonewashed blue Jeans and heavy boots. The grunge scene was commonly associated with dark color palettes like maroon, forest green, indigo brown, and the GRUNGE In 1988, a Seattle record label called Sub Pop released a boxed set with a compilation of grunge bands like Nirvana, Soundboards and Mudstone and it came Ninth a booklet with pictures by Charles Peterson, the photographer credited for reading grunge’s hair-sweat-and-guitars look.
Sub Pop also sent it to the nation’s alternative-rock intelligentsia describing its bands’ punk-metal guitar noise as ‘grunge”, the first documented use of the now-ubiquitous term. “The vibe now is a little bit like the early ass’s, before metal ceased to be heavy and relied on adrenaline highs as opposed to despondency,” said Simon Reynolds, the author of Blessed Out (Serpent’s Tail, 1990) a chronicle of rock subcultures. “There’s a feeling of burnout in the culture at large. Kids are depressed about the future. ”
James Truman, the editor in chief of Details, the young men’s style magazine that took grunge to the masses, said: “To me the thing about grunge is it’s not anti- fashion, it’s UN fashion. Punk was anti-fashion. It made a statement. Grunge is about not making a statement, which is why it’s crazy for it to become a fashion statement. ” Hollywood also weighed in with a grunge-scene movie, “Singles” released on the [ear 1992 by director Cameron Crower. Then came fashion designer Marc Jacobs who Nas hailed as “the guru of grunge” but has never even been to Seattle that time.
On April 1993 he launched a grunge-themed fashion show called Couture Grunge and Heroin Chic. During the spring fashion shows, designer Marc Jacobs debuts the seemingly oxymoron “couture grunge” that emulates the loose flannel shirts, shabby cardigans, wrinkled and torn pants, and the notoriously thin body frames of grunge rock and its largely Seattle-based musicians. This look involves an element that some call “heroin chic”, characterized by extremely thin models like Kate Moss, and controversially alluding to drug use as an element of the latest trend.