Free Here We Are Now by Charles R Cross

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.
    Fans of Grunge music passed on the designs because they thought them overpriced. “Designers co-opted Kurt Cobain’s protest and commodified it,” wrote Nika Mavrody for The Fashion Spot, “marketing a high-fashion version of the Seattle music scene’s anti-fashion aesthetic to young people, at exorbitant prices.” Another astute observation for their failure came from Walter Thomas, creative director at J. Crew: “By the time you see [a trend] in Kmart, it can be three years [after that trend first hit the catwalk]. The difference with Grunge is that it was already for sale at Kmart, not to mention the Salvation Army.” The Grunge look had started in Kmart, or thrift stores, but it didn’t become trendy until it was worn by a rock icon.
    In time, fashion writers began to shift their opinion on Jacobs’s designs. Eventually, some fashion blogs hailed his Grunge collection as “ahead of its time” and “genius.” Furthermore, some of the creations of other designers during that 1993 season that incorporated Grunge elements, like Anna Sui’s, did sell, perhaps because they were influenced by the Grunge look, albeit at higher quality and prices, but weren’t a direct copy. When a garment had just a touch of Grunge, like a tattered fringe, it found more acceptance than an entire outfit.
    Grunge style, surprisingly, has stuck around. One fashion website recently called Kurt “an avid texture mixer” for contrasting sweaters with ripped jeans. What Marc Jacobs had described as his