Indie sleaze is cool again

The term “indie sleaze”, coined by Mandy Lee a few months ago, takes us back to those episodes of Skins that depicted the life of a new generation. Between drugs, sex, alcohol and mental disorders, the portrait of the young people of an era that coincided with the irreverent aesthetics of 80s indie rock was fictionalised. Now, parties of personalities such as Julia Fox evoke precisely this imaginary of decadence photographed by dazzling flashes. 

We’re talking about a time when analogues portrayed those arrhythmic looks of T-shirts printed with ironic phrases + skinny jeans and Carrera sunglasses. Today, sites like @indiesleaze have arrived on the internet to take you back to the reign of the indie subculture that altered all kinds of uniforms to advocate chaos and tackiness.

Before it was a style, however, indie was a lifestyle; a state of mind towards life suspended in excess. Both Dior Homme and Slimane’s Saint Laurent explored precisely the imaginary of indie sleaze, launching their own version of pieces such as low-cut tops, colourful belts, bright flashes or transparencies.

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This version of decadent glamour was established as the antithesis to Jeremy Scott‘s hedonistic or sexual designs and was told through photographs by 2000’s icons such as Mark Hunter, charged with capturing the vibrant decadence of the night.

BACK TO THE DECONTROL

It was the ecosystem of blogs and networks that finally projected the indie scene into the mainstream, and all those photos at parties of debauchery amidst colour, ostentation and garments attached to the body.

In the end, the desire to relive all that has more to do with the current trend of evasion towards times gone by. The nostalgia that has been pulsating since the pandemic decided to stimulate precariousness in every sense.

The joy of being able to glimpse the future of that time is what has provoked the return of this movement that evokes less complicated times in socio-political terms, rejecting the metaverse and/or the fact of living the future through the screen.

This trend is making a comeback by resuscitating these visual and cultural trends. Whether through the flashed images of Kanye West and Julia Fox, the hedonistic representations of Skims with Megan Fox or the Loewe x Studio Ghibli campaign. All this is what is defining the year in which indie sleaze became cool again.