In what must be bumper news for Camden market traders, the early-2000s trend for ‘Indie Sleaze’ is making a comeback. More than just a simple aesthetic, it was a complete lifestyle, punctuated by skinny ties, Marlboro Lights, Red Stripe and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. You might have thought all that stuff had fizzled out long ago, but smoking is on the rise, little blazers are back on the catwalks and The Kooks are on tour.
Traditionally, it would be whole decades that made comebacks. Like, ‘The Seventies’: it was long enough ago that no one really remembers the specifics, so if ever there are flared trousers, fur coats, heeled boots etc, we just say “The Seventies are back!”. The same went for the Nineties resurgence – stonewash jeans, big puffer coats, wavy cardigans - which is ongoing, we think, but no longer the cutting edge.
Now, perhaps because of the speed in which previous eras boomerang back into relevance, we’ve had to break them down into sub-eras and sub-cultures to slow the churn. It is true that the Noughties are back, but it would be lazy for us to just stop there. Things were quite Y2K-ish for a while, with young people sporting frosted tips and Buffalo shoes, and even ‘Big Fashion’ took notice, as demonstrated by Ferragamo’s Winter ’21 collection. Set partly in space and partly in a shimmering utopian city of the future, the collection film could well have been a Linkin Park music video.
But that’s all finished now, you can hang up your Puma Mostros - we’ve moved on to Indie Sleaze. Or at least, so say the trend forecasters on TikTok. According to Mandy Lee’s now-viral insight, there is an “obscene” amount of evidence that the aesthetic is making a comeback. She says that key characteristics of the original movement included provocative advertisements, flash photography, “opulent displays of clubbing” and the popularity of outdated technology such as polaroid cameras and mash-up music. All of which are gradually re-emerging. “The pendulum will swing back to Indie Sleaze/Hipster in the next couple of years,” she says.
In preparation, we direct you to the other main buzz-driver, the Indie Sleaze Instagram account “documenting the decadence of mid-late aughts and the indie sleaze party scene that died in 2012”. It is a glorious, slightly cursed mood board of people and things that were once the zenith of cool, but now just look like everyone you met at Freshers’ week. It’s genuinely heart-warming to see that all you needed to join in was a pair of coloured wayfarers and a zip-down hoodie from Topman. Dev Hynes and Alexa Chung were the demigods of the scene, but everyone was welcome. And on reflection, it might be the last ever mass-appeal sub-culture to be based on a genre of music, but that’s open to discussion.
So, what does the return of the hipster mean for you? Well, like all trends you can just opt out and carry on living your life, but if it is going to be as pervasive as Mandy Lee says it is, then to some extent you won’t be able to resist.
Perhaps you’re already using wired headphones again? Perhaps you’ve got back into vinyl? The likes of Saint Laurent and Celine have managed to see out the streetwear years nobly, and now their cigarette jeans and leather jackets are once again registering a gentle beep on fashion’s radar. Maybe you should dig out the winkle pickers, dust off that studded belt you wore to every Horrors gig. Your old American Apparel clothing is now “vintage”, which is nice, and after the overwhelming advent of TikTok, you might once again have some cultural currency with the youth of today. “I was there first time around,” you can tell them, “this is just second-hand sleaze.”
