25 March 2015 // Stefanie Barz //Berlin

//HEAR & SEE

MARC JACOBS & GRUNGE - WHEN A STREETSTYLE BECAME HIGH FASHION

The absurdity of reproducing culture is one of fashion's inspirational foundation. So as far as it can get, I assume, is when Grunge as a music and streetstyle culture became first a mainstream and then a high fashion trend, even though it originally developed from a punk anti-fashion sense – meant to disturb wider parts of society – to a nonfashion aesthetic.

On the other hand it was quite a brave step that Marc Jacobs took with his 'grunge' collection in 1992. As a designer for Perry Ellis he decided to turn fashion principles upside down by copying and presenting the comfortably sloppy-mismatch sort of outfits worn to shreds by youngsters of that time on the catwalk – and not the other way around like usual. In fact he got fired.

I can only wonder why designers nowadays do so a lot... it might be the will to involve the wearer as a creative force and mirroring the visual appearance as well as statements of society... it might be a marketing strategy to profit by actual trends and giving them just a slightly new direction... giving room for identification with a music scene affiliation... it might just be pure joy to experiment with pictures of people that experiment with their individual styles... it might be nostalgia or the music hiding here and there between seams and yarns and colours and cuts – a haunting melody, singing it again and again. Replay. Remix.

Music video 'Sugar Kane' of Sonic Youth showing parts of Jacob's 'grunge' collection:

Courtney Love, Hole

Marc Jacobs, Grunge

Nirvana, Kurt Cobain

Babes in Toyland

Marc Jacobs, Grunge

Alice in chains