A Deep Dive into the Influence of Music in Fashion

“Oh now, Debra, don’t be bitter, surely with your ever-growing collection of flesh-mutilating silver appendages and your brand new neo-Nazi boot camp makeover, the boys will come a-runnin.’” Suppose you happen to share my interest in vaguely obscure nineties-adjacent indie-sleaze filmography. In that case, you might recognize this as Gina’s disapproving declaration of Debra’s death metal makeover from Empire Records.

If not, well, read on nevertheless.

You see, the nineties were a bizarre cultural moment of boundless possibilities, beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Kate Moss being dubbed by a Paris fashion photographer as “just another common bitch” and ending with the fall of the World Trade Center and Kelly Rowland texting her lover via an Excel spreadsheet.

But in those (slightly more than) ten eventful years, we saw the rise (and subsequent fall) of grunge; we saw Ms. Moss cross-armed and drop-dead cool in that Steven Meisel-lensed CK One commercial. We saw Chloë Sevigny in Sonic Youth’s cult-classic Sugar Kane MV filmed at the Perry Ellis showroom at Marc Jacobs’ behest, her $2 fishnet sandals and blurry tabloid blurbs replacing the heavily shoulder-padded and garishly lipsticked gloss and glamour of the eighties.

The running theme throughout? Music.

It’s why Lauryn Hill trotting down Manhattan with a Baguette in tow in Everything is Everything is still a powerful presence on our mood boards today. Or why Mia Wallace’s waltzing to Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon remains the paragon of power dressing. Heck, Joel Beckerman argues in The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms The Way We Think, Feel And Buy that music can make you spend more!

Therefore, it’s only fitting that we delve a little deeper into fashion’s love affair with all things mellifluous.

The Ravers of Rebellion

“Watching Chloë read a fashion magazine,” writes Jay McInerney in a 1994 New Yorker profile, “makes you think of Alexander Woollcott devouring a ten-pound lobster à l’américaine or Casanova undressing a servant girl.” Sevigny herself, however, is bemused: “I’m like a fashion-magazine junkie. I love them, but they’re usually pretty lame. By the time they print it, it’s already happened.”

They say every generation is shaped by its rebellion against the generation before it. We’ve seen it ad nauseam from way back when reading Nietzsche under the dinner table was the preferred form of protest to the Flappers of the 1920s flipping (or rather, flapping) off Victorian maxims of modesty, right down to brat summer’s sickly slimy shade of green wagging a giant finger in the face of quiet luxury today.

But Sevigny’s signature brand of grunge was more outré than your average Hailey Bieber “Nepo Baby” top or bratty baby tee – it was an all-out war cry of anarchy.

Whether it’s blowing off a Meisel gig for Italian Vogue (“When an appointment is made, it’s not always kept, particularly if it’s before afternoon,” quips McInerney), Kurt Cobain’s too-lazy-to-shampoo hair and moldy flannel (a look Mathieu Blazy revived on Kate Moss for Bottega Veneta SS23), or Vivienne Westwood’s eat-the-rich-style provocative imagery “that hopefully wouldn’t appear polite” – grunge, as James Truman, editor-in-chief of Details (RIP) claimed, isn’t “anti-fashion, it’s un-fashion.” It’s indifferent to the ebbs and flow of trends, “already for sale at Kmart, not to mention the Salvation Army,” not the other way around. 

And somehow, that made it fit for fashionable appropriation.

Brat Summers and Fall Femininomenons

But even then, the grunge scene was merely a Seattle subculture, a world “down low” – secretive, alternative, uncommercial. As Vogue’s Charles Gandee noted in March 1994, “It’s a long way from Tompkins Square to Paris.” Truman further states, “Buying grunge as a package from Seventh Avenue is ludicrous.” 

Yet, that’s precisely what Marc Jacobs managed to pull off, first at Perry Ellis, then at his namesake, bringing nonfashion staples – flannels, leatherettes, untied combat boots, and unkempt hair – to the world of high fashion and deeming it the defining aesthetic of the 90s. Additionally, much of the source material was thrifted (Seattle is dubiously claimed as the origin of the verb). Ellis’ flannel shirts, however? Made of sand-washed silk, “not a drop of polyester” in the whole collection.

(Naturally, Cobain and Courtney Love’s first impulse to being gifted the entire Perry Ellis lineup by Jacobs was to burn it!) 

Nevertheless, the culture of thrifting has since caught on (it’s fun to think Carrie Bradshaw’s decidedly high-end vintage obsession owes its origins to Seattle’s underground boy bands), and so has its angsty rejection of the mainstream. And nowhere was this more apparent than when John Galliano was roped in to head the creative at Dior (“You cannot imagine how shocking it was to appoint him—this was Dior, for heaven’s sake, Dior,” cries an incensed André Leon Talley).

In fact, Galliano’s allusions to Brit punk (his Winter of Discontent collection featuring Kirsten Dunst’s infamous Garbage Dress remains as scandalous as it is exciting), as do his homages to the soundtracks of the era, played out on and across the runways in the form of monogram denim, silk skirts, over-the-knee boots and Saddle Bags (the entirety of Dior’s S/S 2000 collection, for instance was said to be dedicated to Lauryn Hill). “Someone has to take Dior into the 21st century – even if it’s kicking and screaming,” he claims. This was certainly one way of doing it.

And when models walked down Ms. Maria Grazia’s SS25 runway with Galliano’s reanimated Columbus Bag in tow set to Charli XCX’s Guess, Y2K handbag lovers were kicking and screaming once again!

So, really, if you think about it, music is as definitive of an era as fashion is, from the adoption of heavy rubberized Doc Martens following the punk movement of the 1970s right through the eighties’ opulence (the NYT describes it as “the decade of fashion’s gluttonous downfall, gilt leading to guilt”) and ‘90s grunge to now when we’re expected to go to work in “crying girl makeup” and also spell Femininomenon. 

On Hot Girls, Handbags and Headphones

Today, however, we also crave more than the mere auditory appreciation of music. 

In the words of Virgil Abloh: “Fashion is one of the greatest vehicles to merge music, art, architecture, design, typography—it’s a wide enough canvas, or a big enough sandbox, to touch all the different things that I’m into.”

And as couture, culture, and commerce continue to coalesce, we feel the need to be attuned to every little detail in the lives of our favorites (cue: Doja Cat shaving off her eyebrows on Instagram live) to have The Dare DJ at Hedi Slimane’s Age of Indieness afterparty for Celine and have Pharrell head menswear at Louis Vuitton. 

Some say the celebrity is undermining the creative. Others say what a spectacle this has been! Pharrell’s cultural cache (“his debut show at Louis Vuitton fetched a record-breaking 775 million views on LV’s owned platforms and an additional 300 million views on press accounts,” notes Hypebeast) is simply unfathomable, and so is the discourse around his millionaire-style reimagination of the formerly entry-level Speedy the way “a Canal Street counterfeiter might” – quickly turning the flagrantly exotic piece, as well as its butter-soft leather counterparts in a sickening array of colors (also not for the faint of heart starting at $9,500) into the most talked-about accessory of the year, perfect for “post-modern, upwardly mobile braggadocio” rappers and not really much else. 

The celebrity singer co-sign further extends to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter number, LEVII’S JEANS, and the Eras Tour, which spawned the Friendship Bracelets and/or bag charms trend, not to mention a whole new frontier within the beauty world!

But perhaps the most material manifestation of music’s influence remains hot girls going on their hot girl walks in their hot girl headphones. From way back in 2018, when a certain Ms. Bella Hadid was spotted in Apple’s humble wired EarPods, to Lily-Rose Depp, Zoë Kravitz, the Olsen twins, and even Jake Gyllenhaal (who’s babygirl), those lo-fi earpieces (even better if they’re of the over-the-ear maxi variety) serve effortless chic with a side of mystery.

“Even if there’s nothing coming through the headphones, having them in indicates that you can’t be bothered — that’s true luxury,” says Shelby Hull of Wired It Girls.

Thus, committed to the wire – as the phrase goes – connotes an unbothered insouciance, the rhythm radiating from the lean of the listener’s body, the undivided attention to the music (and the music only!) translating into an act of living that only comes with the act of doing – or in this case, listening.

Eddie from Empire Records was far ahead of his time when he sagely stated, “This music is the glue of the world, Mark. It’s what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless.”