Here We Are Now

by Charles R. Cross

  The Advocate story furthered the perception that Kurt was possibly bisexual (though no evidence of this exists). “His bisexuality caused a lot of discussion, and he made a point of it being public,” sexuality expert Dr. Pepper Schwartz told me. “I think the idea of incorporating that into his life, and still being married, made bisexuality seem like another flavor, or, if you will, a choice one could make.”

  Kurt already had a large gay following, but his comments further cemented that connection. Kurt was a style icon not just in music but also in fashion—and particularly within gay culture. Several popular websites break down his most famous outfits so they can be emulated and copied exactly. Out magazine ran a piece in 2013 titled “Get the Look: Kurt Cobain,” which detailed where to shop for clothes to mimic Kurt’s look.

  It would, oddly, be in fashion that the word “Grunge” would continue to survive in current culture, a life that the word has not had within music. It was the constant need for trend stories that created Grunge in the first place, and by the middle of the nineties, after Kurt’s death, that trend was declared dead by the same kingmakers who had flown out to Seattle and looked for patterns in every coffeehouse or concert stage. The Grunge movement, just as Kurt had predicted, had “phase[d] into nothing.” The headlines, at least in music, moved on to further stops, with hip-hop culture and electronica.

  To many kids in Seattle today, Grunge means their parents’ music. It is often, however, thought of fondly and with nostalgia, not unlike how teenagers in the seventies looked back upon the sixties. To teens today, Grunge is a more meaningful era from back when rock music mattered, and when, or so they imagine, every street corner sported a future superstar dressed up just like Matt Dillon in Singles.

  THREE

  THE $6,000 COBAIN TRENCH COAT

  Style & Fashion

  Of all the aspects of Kurt Cobain’s legacy, Kurt himself would be most surprised by his impact on fashion. We know that to be true because by 1992, two years before his death, Kurt was already a fashion icon, and he expressed amazement to friends that a style of dress he had adopted out of practicality had become the stuff of runway shows. It surprised Kurt, but then everything the year after Nevermind was head-shaking. Many rock stars have an impact on fashion, but Kurt’s influence has truly been a bizarre outgrowth of his fame, and one that will last (even if his music will undoubtedly be his greatest legacy). Kurt very much planned his musical career, writing out imaginary interviews with magazines in his journals long before he became famous. But he never considered that if he became a star, his ripped-up jeans and flannel shirts might one day end up on the runways of New York fashion shows.

  Kurt became a fashion icon essentially by accident, but in the fall of 1991 so much of what he did and said had a larger effect on the consumer marketplace than he could have imagined. That irony and power of accidental marketing was never greater than in the case of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Kurt wrote the song after seeing graffiti written on his bedroom wall by a friend who was taunting Kurt, implying that he had another girl’s scent on him. He had no idea when he crafted his lyrics that Teen Spirit was the name brand of a deodorant marketed to teenage girls. It was only after the song was recorded, and on its way to being a monster hit, that he found this out. He was astounded that he’d written a song—one that would go on to become Nirvana’s anthem, his own signature piece—without knowing that the title referred to a product. When the song became a hit, sales of Teen Spirit deodorant skyrocketed. The brand, produced by Mennen, added new fragrances to capitalize on the attention. The year after Nevermind was released, Colgate-Palmolive bought Mennen for $670 million.

  When we address Grunge’s impact on the larger fashion industry, we are actually talking about more than just Kurt, because he wasn’t the only style influencer. Instead, fashion’s interest in Grunge also was an outgrowth of the impact of the handful of bands and musicians associated with that genre who became, at least for a time, household names. That would include Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and Layne Staley, who were all also trendsetters who saw their styles mimicked widely. But as Kurt was the biggest star of Grunge, and in many ways its unwilling poster boy, his influence is outsize by comparison. At the very least, the impact of Grunge on fashion without Kurt, or without Nevermind’s thirty-five million sales, would have been significantly less.

  Rock stars have been shaping fashion since the early days of rock ’n’ roll. When Elvis slicked back his hair, millions followed suit. The Beatles influenced hairstyles and helped introduce the Nehru jacket to Western culture. In the eighties, hip-hop act Run-DMC wrote a song called “My Adidas,” fueling the resurgence in status sneakers. The names of shoe brands pop up regularly in hit songs today, and popular music plays an increasing role as a marketing tool for all apparel.

  Kurt Cobain stands out from that pattern because he was an unwilling style role model, and initially an unaware one. The Beatles knew they were fashion icons, evidenced by their matching and made-to-order costumes for the Sgt. Pepper’s album art. But Kurt was the unusual fashion magnet whose style was more a reflection of his own laziness than it was an effort to impress. He didn’t put on a different set of clothes before he walked onstage; his stage clothes were sometimes the only clothes he had. One of the reasons Kurt became such an icon was because he rarely changed his clothes. He cemented a singular look by keeping the same clothes on day in and day out, or at least wearing a very limited array of tattered items. Never in history had a rock star been so consistent with a style. Though he changed his hair in the last year of his life and began to wear sunglasses to hide from admirers, his clothes remained the same for more than a decade.

  The term that often comes up when fashion writers talk about the “Grunge look” as “anti-fashion,” which is one of the keys to understanding why Grunge style has been so lasting. Since it’s a “reactive” style—a rebellion—it comes in and out of favor whenever a designer feels fashion needs a reboot.

  Punk rock was also clearly accompanied by a fashion that went in an unusual and unexpected direction, and it preceded Grunge by a full decade. Many of the styles created by British punks eventually found their way onto fashion runways, modified by designers. But with the original punk rockers, their choices—Mohawk haircuts, safety pins through lips, distressed Wild One leather jackets—were conscious attempts to make a statement. Vivienne Westwood helped create that punk aesthetic, and has explained that punk’s goal was “seeing if one could put a spoke in the system.”

  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 down
town 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 o
utfit 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.