FASHION : Grunge-a-Go-Go : Anything Old, Full of Holes, Even Downright Grubby Fits New Look
The basics are filthy hair, ravaged flannel shirts, stained Ts, leftover love beads, mismatched stripes and high-top tennis shoes or work boots so old and moldy they look as if they’ve been dredged from a swamp.
Grunge is fashion’s road kill and it’s cycling through the garment industry faster than Greg LeMond.
The style--or anti-style--rode to fame on the backs of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, Seattle musicians whose sartorial lack of splendor was so noteworthy that “grunge” became the name of their music as well as their look.
As Nirvana’s hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” saturated the airwaves in the fall of 1991, teen-agers began showing their allegiance by adopting the Nirvana style: a knit stocking cap, a plaid flannel shirt tied around the waist and clunky untied boots or beat-up tennies.
Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum, the Minnesota band that has been around for a decade, claims his group originated grunge. “They’ve co-opted our fashion sense,” he quipped recently in Time magazine.
The same claim could be made by millions of kids in America, there being nothing new about dressing from the bottom of the laundry bag. (Ask any parent.) But in fashion, like music, timing is everything.
Grunge is popular now because it is a radical departure from the slick styles of the late ‘80s. Anything that reeks of conspicuous consumption or high prices is out; low-priced, recycled, anti-style is in.
But in America, even taste-free dressing offers opportunities for profit.
Showing they were plugged into the Zeitgeist of the grunge scene, New York fashion designers Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui and Christian Francis Roth sent models clomping down the runways in untied combat boots, knit caps, mismatched stripes and extra shirts (albeit silk) tied around their waists. The unfashion, anti-Establishment look became a fashion trend. Examples:
* Vogue magazine devotes 10 pages to it this month, using clothing by Banana Republic, Pendleton and J. Crew. The writers describe grunge as mixing “rough-and tumble work clothes with waifish thrift-shop finery,” except the designer dresses shown only look secondhand. A $360 floral-print Ralph Lauren dress is topped by a $37 plaid shirt. A $860 Calvin Klein button-front dress is paired with a $98 J. Crew jacket and a $45 Banana Republic plaid shirt tied around the waist for verisimilitude.
That insouciant, unwashed-hair look on the models is achieved with liberal dollops of Sebastian’s Molding Mud (also called Pate de Modelage; $15 for 6.5 ounces), another high-fashion tool for those attempting a low-life look.
* The summer movie “Singles,” a rose-colored look at the Seattle music scene starring Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda, glosses over the grubbiness of grunge. Dillon’s long locks are fluffy and trimmed. His leather jacket appears to be the real thing, not the cracked plastic so many true grungeophiles prefer. Fonda’s Doc Martens are squeaky clean, her tights are holeless and her hair has the bounce and blunt cut of a shampoo spokesmodel.
* First-with-the-trend stores on Melrose Avenue have been restocking grunge basics. And two stores deeply committed to the grunge scene have opened in the past month, American Work Wear on Melrose and Urban Outfitters in Santa Monica.
All of a sudden, the eeeeeiuuuu gross of grunge has been replaced with ohhhhhhh cute. Spruced-up grunge is ready for mass consumption.
Conveniently for mainstream retailers, the Northwest look had been bubbling up in fashion and home furnishings since David Lynch’s television series “Twin Peaks” introduced the region to the masses in 1990. Anoraks, lumberjack shirts, hiking boots, pine furniture, Mission-style furniture, plaid upholstery and evergreen-motif table settings have been the coming wave.
The popularity of another TV show, “Northern Exposure,” further entrenched the back-to-the-piney-woods trend. Northwest began to supplant Southwest: Out went howling coyotes, cowboy boots and Navajo blanket prints; in came moose, work boots and plaid flannel.
With a little artful styling, the plaid shirt that so many stores ordered for their Northwest promotion will fit the grunge look. The same flannel shirt and quilted anorak shown in the men’s department as perfect presents for Dad, for example, become, presto-chango, the grunge rock look in the young men’s department when the shirt is tied around the waist of a thermal underwear top.
Grunge is a very adaptable fashion trend. You can find it in thrift stores for a pittance. It can be had at Sears and worn into a state of grunge, or it can be bought brand new but look old and worn.
Urban Outfitters, a 14-store Philadelphia-based chain, opened the day after Thanksgiving in Santa Monica and has customers four deep around its cash registers buying $18 ribbed knit caps, $44 hooded sweat shirts, $38 wool vests and $36 plaid cotton shirts with that already-lived-in look. The offerings for women include $6 corduroy hair scrunchies, $84 crocheted long dresses, $34 floral skirts sewn to vintage men’s vests and $16 plaid underwire bras.
“I have to laugh when I see people buying that stuff,” says Raul Yrastorza, a bartender at Small’s K.O. on Melrose Avenue, a club where grunge fashion proliferates.
“Most of the people who come in here don’t have a lot of money. They’re musicians or actors. They’re scraping by and they wear the clothes they do because they’re affordable. Going out of your way to dress like that . . . that’s interesting.”
Grunge is also insidious. Laurie Williams, manager of Urban Outfitters, says people buy grunge and don’t even know it. “A percentage of our younger, trendier customers are into grunge rock, but we have a wide variety of customers and a lot of them are dipping into that look whether they realize it or not.”
Where to Get Grungy * Secondhand Tony. Pre-selected vintage clothing at ’92 prices:
Aaardvark’s Odd Ark, 7579 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (213) 655-6767
Jet Rags, 6111 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (310) 465-7767.
Playhouse, inside Fred Segal, 500 Broadway, Santa Monica (310) 395-7565
American Rag, 150 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles (213) 935-3154
Colours, 124 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles (213) 937-8816
* Secondhand Cheap. Scrounge through mountains of disco-era discards to save bucks: Salvation Army, citywide
Goodwill stores, citywide
Pasadena swap meet, second Sunday of each month, the Rose Bowl
The Chic & Cheap Antique Market, last weekend of the month, except this month, Dec. 19 and 20, 110 N. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles.
* New and Cool. Where dressing low-life is as easy as saying charge it: Finals, 7374 1/2 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (213) 653-8292
Urban Outfitters, 1440 Third St., Santa Monica (310) 394-1404
X-Large, 1766 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles (213) 666-8816
Yo Baby Yo, 7617 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (213)-655-2083
American Work Wear, 7457 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (213) 653-5151
Spirit, 7415 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (213) 852-1415
How to Grunge * Grunge:
Blue jeans shredded from actual wear and tear.
Faded flannel shirts pilled with fuzz balls.
Naugahyde or vinyl jackets, preferably with cracks.
Knit caps with moth holes.
Tights with runs.
Boots without a doctor’s label.
T-shirts from defunct rock ‘n’ roll bands.
Filthy hair that hangs in greasy tendrils.
* Grunge Not:
Blue jeans artfully sliced to reveal tattoo and aerobically firmed cheeks.
Flannel shirts so new they feel like a baby’s blanket.
Real leather jackets.
Knit caps bearing messages or logos.
Doc Martens.
T-shirts bearing grunge-rock band names.
Squeaky-clean hair smeared with pate.
