Indie Sleaze

Characterised by an affordable, messy and lethargic take on vintage fashion styles, especially the 1970s, the style was particularly popular amongst the hipster subculture and indie rock bands.

GQ described Pete Doherty as "the original indie sleaze pin-up"

Originating in the late 1990s and early 2000s amongst New York City indie rock bands like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol, the style began as a way for bands to visually reference the 1960s and 1970s artists they were musically influenced by. In the following years, the style was adopted by English musicians, models and internet personalities including Pete Doherty, Alexa Chung, Kate Moss and Agyness Deyn, who brought the style into mainstream popularity while expanding it into a more maximalist style which also embraced elements of 1980s and 1990s fashion. Indie sleaze's embrace by the mainstream in the mid–2000s was an optimistic response to the Great Recession and led to a rise in amateur flash photography and hedonistic partying and drug use.

It experienced a resurgence in the early 2020s, when the style was first named and became popular on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

 

Indie sleaze fashion was characterized by traits of 1970s and 1980s fashion, in addition to grunge fashion, in a manner with Daniel Rodgers of Dazed descirbed as "grubby, maximalist, and performatively vintage" and by NME's El Hunt as being defined by a sense of "chaotic spontaneity", The style was particularly popular amongst the hipster subculture. Vice's Arielle Richards described indie sleaze as a combination of other trends and styles, such as twee, scene, and electropop; NME's El Hunt wrote that indie sleaze was defined by a sense of "chaotic spontaneity".

Clothes including metallic bodysuits, studded Lita boots manufactured by shoe company Jeffrey Campbell, lamé leggings, shutter shades, ballet flats, chunky gold jewelry, tight t-shirts with ironic slogans, cropped leather jackets, striped shirts, lensless glasses, sheer tops, big belts, plaid pants, tennis skirts, high-top Converse sneakers, multiple necklaces, fedoras, the Balenciaga Motorcycle Bag, stockings with shorts, wired headphones, band T-shirts, and skinny jeans, as well as other elements such as galaxy prints, "Aztec" prints, side-swept bangs, "waif-thin" bodies, grown out roots of bleached hair, smudged eyeliner, amateur flash photography, cigarettes, and drug use have all been listed as hallmarks of indie sleaze. Oftentimes, clothes were bought from American Apparel.

Around 2001, a wave of bands including the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol began gaining popularity performing a style of indie rock indebted to 1960s and 1970s groups like the Velvet Underground and Television. With these groups came a cultural nostalgia for analog technology and fashions of the past. To fit their music, the indie rock bands of the time began to wear clothes which too emulated the fashions of 1970s rock bands, particularly New York's early punk rock scene. El País credited this style as being revived through the influence of Hedi Slimane's late 1990s designs for Yves Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche line. In a 2009 interview with GQ, the Strokes' vocalist Julian Casablancas explained their clothing style by saying "When [the band] first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage, I don’t care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks." In the United Kingdom, this style was then adopted by indie rock musician Pete Doherty; models Kate Moss and Agyness Deyn; and fashion blogger Alexa Chung, who all combined it with elements of 1980s high fashion and 1990s grunge fashion. Doherty, in particularly, has been cited by publications including Vogue, El País and Highsnobiety as the person who largely popularised indie sleaze fashion.

 

Indie sleaze became embraced by the mainstream around 2006, which led to its adoption by electroclash and electronic music-influenced indie rock groups including Klaxons, Late of the Pier, MGMT, Peaches, LCD Soundsystem and Crystal Castles. As this took place, it was embraced by various celebrities and public figures, including singers M.I.A., Sky Ferreira, and Beth Ditto; photographers the Cobrasnake and Terry Richardson, actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; designers Henry Holland and Jeremy Scott; and models Cory Kennedy, Pixie Geldof L'Officiel USA named the character Effy Stonem from the British television series Skins "the perfect representative" for [indie sleaze]. This popularity was also notably tied to the popularity of MySpace and the early days of Tumblr, where many participants posted photographs of their outfits, generally at parties. Samantha Maxwell of Paste wrote that indie sleaze "feels like a reaction to the early years of Obama's presidency: The economy may have crashed, but there was still a sense of sparkling optimism in the air." Olivia V similarly stated that indie sleaze began before the Great Recession, allowing for a sense of optimism. Welsh singer Gwenno stated that the indie sleaze period was "very debauched, and probably the last moment where kids had been able to do whatever they want."

In the late 2000s, the soft grunge fashion style evolved directly from indie sleaze trend, once Tumblr users began to merge it with darker fashion elements like fishnets, chokers and combat boots.

The term "indie sleaze" was coined in 2021, the same year that the style became popular again through TikTok, by an Instagram account dedicated to the aesthetic, @indiesleaze, launched by a woman named Olivia V. The term was inspired by indie music, the 2000s magazine Sleaze, and the Uffie lyric "I'll make your sleazy dreams come true." Searches on Google for "indie sleaze" spiked in early 2022. This revived interested in indie sleaze in the early 2020s was attributed by publications including Dazed and Elle to the style's affordability, carefree nature and post-pandemic partying.

Arielle Richards of Vice criticized the alleged resurgence of indie sleaze as fake, writing that it was "created by a bunch of overworked millennials trawling Instagram, TikTok, and Google, in a bid to provide the winning take on something that isn't really happening." Stylist's Naomi May similarly wrote in 2022 that indie sleaze as a trend was a "myth", pointing to the retirement of key figures of indie sleaze, such as Deyn, Holland, Chung, and Doherty, and the body positivity movement as evidence. Daniel Dylan Wray of The Quietus wrote that indie sleaze itself was "contrived into existence as a genre/label" despite having "never existed to begin with", adding, "With indie sleaze, there appears to be little else going on other than some people wallowing in the past while trying to convince themselves that it, or maybe even them, possesses some sort of contemporary relevance."

• Scene (subculture)
• Hipster subculture