The return of grunge beauty

Hole’s ‘Celebrity Skin’ blares out of the sound system while a sea of girls, wearing ripped knits and chiffon granny dresses under faux leopard-print coats, peer out from behind wisps of hair. A Friday night in Kurt Cobain’s 1990s Seattle? Nope. This is Donatella Versace’s AW19 catwalk collection.

In early 1994, just a few months before he took his own life, Cobain told Rolling Stone that grunge was ‘going to be passé’. How wrong he was. Fast forward 25 years and the whiff of teen spirit is in the air once again. It’s there in the sulky persona and anti-fashion fashion of the planet’s fastest-rising pop star, Billie Eilish — ‘The connection she has with her audience is the same thing that was happening with Nirvana in 1991,’ noted former drummer Dave Grohl at the start of this year. And it’s there in the guitars (and Dr Martens boots) of Mercury Prize-winners Wolf Alice. It’s also found in the demeanour of Netflix’s Russian Doll, and more overtly in Her Smell: a film starring Elizabeth Moss, who plays a melting-down Nineties grunge icon while Cara Delevingne, Agyness Deyn and Ashley Benson all slacker it up as band members.

In fashion, Marc Jacobs, the first master of grunge (which is slang for dirty and sums up the sound of the music as much as the aesthetic), has reissued his seminal 1993 grunge collection for Perry Ellis, while collections from Asai in London to Dior in Paris are brimming with plaid flannels, brown cardigans and Dr Martens-esque boots. Flick over to Instagram and you’ll notice a stream of influencers not old enough to remember the trend first time around who have binned hyper-edited selfies in place of candid Corinne Day-style snaps captured on film, complete with nonchalant posing and blinding flash.

But before you sharpen your kohl smudge stick, you should know that today’s grunge look comes with a point of difference. Cobain, Courtney Love and co’s dark-eyed and thrift-shop-bought style of the 1990s (which intended to be the opposite of a fashion or beauty statement) has, in industry speak, been ‘elevated’ (some might say hijacked) by an altogether more considered feel. Call it ‘fresh grunge’.

The beauty looks on autumn’s catwalks reflected the epoch’s bright-eyed new makeover. Case in point: at YSL, the brand’s global beauty director, Tom Pecheux (whose masterful work is seen on these pages), steered clear of the slept-in make-up look. Instead, he offered black liquid eyeliner flicks and skin with a healthy glow. It’s a look that speaks to a 2019 kind of band girl: she that bullet-journals (look it up), doesn’t drink on gig nights and gets up at 6am the next morning for spin class (it may be an awkward antithesis, but get used to it). Pecheux’s muse, Meghan Roche, photographed for us here, riffs off the same energy. Grunge for the wellness generation; rebellion but make it pretty, if you will.

‘She’s not about looking dark or dirty,’ Pecheux says. ‘Her grunge is about freedom. Fresh, transparent skin that you don’t see on YouTube tutorials and make-up that is quick to apply.’

As for the clothes, Olivia Singer, executive fashion news editor of British Vogue, notes that ‘today’s grunge is not dressing up as Kristen McMenamy circa 1994.’ Indeed, for every ripped cardigan at Versace there was a tailored blazer. Dior’s uptown rocker wore the subculture’s beloved plaid cloth cut into sharp bar suits and shift dresses fit for a corner office. Why grunge, why now? Fashion’s most va-va-voom designer, Donatella Versace, noted that today’s obsession with Instagram, and, consequently, out-of-reach perfectionism, led her to think about grunge’s unaffected spirit. Pecheux agrees. ‘Now with social media everything needs to reach perfection. The perfect holiday, the perfect make-up, the perfect healthy food, and all feels fake. Grunge didn’t question who you are. We are seeing it now because it’s a reaction.’

And for your wardrobe? ‘It’s about wearing your shiny new Bottega Veneta handbag or cashmere jumper from The Row with something a bit battered,’ says Singer. ‘Designers are beginning to understand that we can’t all be a picture of perfection. Now, having a hole in your jumper doesn’t show that you’re lazy, simply that you’re thoroughly on trend.’

As Donatella put it before her show: ‘A little bit of imperfection is the new perfection’. We’ll raise a guitar to that.