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Indie Sleaze Style Was Never Just an Aesthetic

Indie sleaze did not begin with somebody choosing a moodboard...

WENN Rights Ltd / ALAMY

WENN Rights Ltd / ALAMY

It came from gigs, clubs, bands, art schools, bad lighting, cigarettes, house parties, late nights and people getting dressed for whatever was actually happening next. The clothes looked lived in because the lives were lived in.

PA Images / ALAMY

Nobody called it indie sleaze at the time. It was indie, rock, grunge, hipster, whatever happened to be playing that night. The name arrived years later, when the internet did what it does best and turned an entire period of music, nightlife and bad flash photography into something that could fit neatly beneath a hashtag.

That distinction matters now, because the revival is often reduced to a shopping list: skinny jeans, leather jackets, smudged eyeliner, American Apparel, flash photography. All true, technically. But nobody in 2008 was standing in front of a mirror asking whether their outfit was sufficiently indie sleaze. They looked cool by default, no try-hard curation required.

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The original clothes were not intentionally scruffy either. People bought things because they loved them. A vintage dress, an expensive leather jacket, old boots, skinny denim, something sequinned, something stolen from a boyfriend, something found in a market. Alexa Chung could wear a Barbour over a tiny dress; Kate Moss could make skinny jeans, boots and a battered jacket look like an entire proposition. Agyness Deyn went shorter, sharper and stranger. There was no single uniform because the people wearing it were not dressing as characters in the same television show.

What looks messy now may simply look that way because the visual standard around us has become so polished. Social media, better cameras and constant documentation have made even ordinary moments look increasingly considered. Against that, old photographs look almost anarchic. Hair is doing whatever hair does after midnight. Makeup has moved. Clothes have creased. Nobody appears to have stopped the evening because the background was wrong.

PA Images / ALAMY

That is probably why the era still has such pull. It was sexy without being pristine, fashionable without looking professionally assembled and glamorous without pretending life was under control. The best outfits looked as though something had happened before the photograph and something considerably better might happen afterwards.

You can obviously borrow the clothes now. Skinny jeans are excellent. So are battered leather jackets, tiny dresses, enormous bags, boots and eyeliner that has survived several hours longer than intended. But recreating the checklist perfectly may be the least indie-sleaze thing you can do.

The clothes were only ever evidence of the life around them. Which is why the most authentic way to recreate indie sleaze may be to stop trying quite so hard.

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