Rock star Style Kurt Cobain

Cool (or hoping to be cool) men in the Nineties were very influenced by music. A massively mainstream style in the UK and US grew out of Seattle based bands such as Nirvana, to create a look called Grunge. Suitable for both men and women, and almost interchangeable in most respects, you can look at singer Kurt Cobain for both the rockstar and the down-home embodiment of the men’s version.

The Rock star Style of Kurt Cobain

Rockstar: bleached, long hair (straggly), eyeliner, crazy sunglasses, a little goatee beard and pretty, though ripped dresses on top of clunky boots.

Down home: straggly bleached hair, crazy sunglasses, little beard, a really ratty cardy, over a band t shirt and clunky boots.

Kurt Cobain also really rocked a stripy tee, a plaid shirt and Converse, just to ring the changes from those boots.

Kurt Cobain and 90s Grunge fashion

So although Kurt Cobain has long hair in all these pics, he varied between a scruffy yet masculine look, and a more androgynous look.
He (alongside others on the Seattle scene) was quite influential on the way people dressed – for most people in suburbia, it was less of the dresses and more an enthusiastic embrace of the plaid shirt, with maybe a little eyeliner on a Saturday night.

Nirvana was the soundtrack to many a teen and twenty something’s life at the time, and there was something very romantic about Kurt Cobain’s screamed vocals, occasionally mystifying but surely very meaningful lyrics, and those puppy dog eyes.
Not to mention his relationship with his matching bleachy-haired, pretty, ragged dress and stompy boots wearing wife, Courtney Love. She was the lead singer of Hole.

Here is their wedding day, which, to the sadness of many female fans, happened in 1992 (Yes, Kurt Cobain is wearing pyjamas).
And then they had a child, called Frances Bean Cobain, six months later.

Dead at 27

But sadly, even more sad than Kurt Cobain actually getting married, he committed suicide in 1994 – only about 18 months later. He was only 27.

It led to a lot of conspiracy myths – did we say that Kurt Cobain’s fans were sad at Love’s involvement in his life? Well, that might be an understatement. Many of them hated her, and when he died, believed that it was at the very least her fault, or at the worst, that she (indirectly, to be sure), dunnit.

Kurt Cobain had substance abuse problems, depression, partly caused by chronic stomach pain that he suffered, (which was his reason for taking heroin in the first place), and he also left a handwritten suicide note. However, 20 years later, the debate rumbles on.
The music that he made is still hugely popular, and tremendously iconic of the decade.

Kurt_Cobain_wearing_dress

• 1990s
• Icon
• Iconic
• Style