Anyone looking for signs of an economic downturn could consider stagnant property markets, unemployment, falling share prices and decreased gross domestic product. Alternatively, they could glance at the catwalk and the return of scruffy dressing. The anti-fashion icons Courtney Love and the late Kurt Cobain, the original grungers with their grown-out bleach jobs, numbed expressions and thrift-store threads have inspired a whole new band of imitators among the cool kids of Harajuku and Shoreditch and this dark, dysfunctional look from the Nineties was translated almost verbatim in the autumn/winter shows.
Generally a recession is bad news for fashion brands, of course. Even for those who can afford it, in times of hardship it can seem a touch crass to spend tens of thousands of dirhams on wear-only-once satin stilettos (though some may argue that it's your absolute duty to keep those Italian artisans in a job and the economy ticking over). But style doesn't stop in periods like these: it just thinks a bit harder, becomes a touch more political and expresses its disillusionment by puncturing symbols of wealth (diamonds, silk gowns, red lipsticks) with signs of poverty and misery (fraying charity-shop buys, hole-riddled jumpers, Dr Martens).
Dr Martens is one of the few brands that seems to sell better in a recession. After a period of near-bankruptcy while the rest of the fashion world was booming, this favourite of stroppy youths everywhere has started quietly gathering momentum again. The boots are being worn by the ubiquitous (but irritatingly on-trend) Agyness Deyn; they are being featured in fashion shoots by the world's most cutting-edge stylists; and they have been rediscovered by teenage dirtbags at music festivals. And when Dr Martens are on the move, scruffiness, bagginess, mismatching and anti-fashion statements almost always come along for the ride. "Consumers tend to revert back to brands that offer quality and reliability, brands they trust," says a Dr Martens spokesperson, somewhat ingenuously, but surely it's about more than that: it's about rebellion, and no one rebels when times are good. It happened in the early Eighties, when disaffected punks adopted the steel-toe-capped bovver boots as their kicking tool of choice; it happened in the early Nineties, when disaffected grungers shuffled around in baggy jumpers and acne-hiding fringes; and it's happening again right now.
What this means for fashion - and fashionistas in the Emirates of bling are not going to like this one bit - is that grunge is back. There's no mistaking it: lumberjack flannel shirtings at Dolce & Gabbana, of all labels; big heavy boots with floral dresses at the normally high-glamour Lacroix; Miss Haversham-style lace dresses with torn fishnets at Rodarte; veteran proto-grungers Sonic Youth playing live at Marc Jacobs' autumn/winter 2008/09 catwalk show... And while Jacobs, always several seasons ahead, has already moved his sartorial game on, it was his much-maligned autumn/winter 2006/07 collection, with its oversized silhouettes and drab colours, that precipitated the present movement in the rest of the fashion pack. (Jacobs was also responsible for taking grunge from the Seattle streets to the catwalk the first time round, with his infamous spring/summer 1993 collection for Perry Ellis, where he was head designer. While Jacobs, an early grunger himself, was simply designing the kind of clothes he and his friends all wore, the powers that be at the squeaky clean sports brand and the department store buyers were not amused at the idea of selling street styles for pret-a-porter prices. He was, inevitably, fired from the company.)
Now, while the fashion world may not be known for its serious study of Keynesian economics or its sensible adherence to commercially viable products (again, Marc Jacobs provided a shining example of this last season with his wonderfully mockable surreal reverse-heel shoes), it's still big business, and where large amounts of filthy lucre are involved you can be sure that some serious research will have been undertaken to make sure that the season's collections will catch the mood of the buying public. A couple of years ago, some trend forecasters in a bunker in London will have spotted that kids at Coachella or Glastonbury were wearing Dr Martens, Converse All-Stars and Nirvana T-shirts and had stopped washing their hair. They will then have put that knowledge together with a nagging feeling that maybe fashion lovers were using their credit cards to buy It-bags in Bond Street just a little more often than they could really afford, leading to - and this was just a shot in the dark - ashopper slowdown. And of course, a couple of anniversaries never go amiss when it comes to a revival, either: it's 20 years since the record label Sub Pop defined the grunge sound with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and 15 years since Jacobs' little rebellion at Perry Ellis.
The forecasters will have sold that selection of information on to fashion and textile designers, ready to be interpreted into stitched cloth, and the result is that what started out as a vague instinct in Camden has become a season of on-the-money collections that hold a mirror up to both the state of the global economy and the mood of the consumer. And all because some kids wore thrift-store togs at a music festival. Never mind the yield curve and property prices: anyone trying to predict the market's movements could do worse than to take a look at what Jacobs puts on his catwalk two years before the rest of the fashion world.
Still, as the rest of the world sinks into gloom, the UAE is still looking pretty perky, so it won't be a case of abandoning your glittery Gina shoes in favour of second-hand combat boots just yet. In fact, if judiciously adopted, the look has an enigmatic glamour and allure all of its own, as some of the world's most beautiful women have been proving recently. Kate Moss, for example, knows how to work the look thanks to long experience. She was a gauche, grubby waif in 1990, already inspiring both controversy and adoration in a series of photographs by the archetypal grunge photographer Corinne Day for The Face. These days, having been through phases of high glamour and low boho, she is rocking the festival look once more, with pictures at this year's Glastonbury showing her sporting some crucial crusty elements: mud, unbrushed hair, bits of "ethnic" embroidery, khaki green shorts and a faded black T-shirt.
A more recent convert is Kirsten Dunst, who since living in London and dating the Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell last year has been notably scruffy, playing up her free-spirited, gamine charm with baggy dresses, lumberjack checks, flat shoes and - most important of all - a pronounced slouch. Her near-contemporaries the Olsen twins have also been going for a bit of a bag-lady aesthetic this year, with Ashley taking the lead over the slightly neater Mary-Kate. Their bedraggled locks, smudged kohl, pale complexions and tortured expressions wouldn't have been out of place in Courtney Love's band Hole.
But the secret to grunge chic (as opposed to looking like you're sleeping in a sewer) is to balance out the proportions, the colours and the levels of polish. If, for example, you are going to try that Nineties classic the baggy, striped, mohair jumper, then go for the Sonia Rykiel-look of wearing it sexily off-the-shoulder with heels and opaque tights, creating a slender silhouette to balance out the baggy top. (And of course, both Rykiel and the original grunge rocker Courtney Love know that a tiara never goes amiss as an edgy contrast to unravelling knits or thrift-store gowns.) Meanwhile, a lumberjack shirt over a T-shirt might sound a little too Mike Delfino, but in the hands of Dolce & Gabbana it is sharp and sleek with a pair of Sta-Prest-style turned-up jeans and a neck scarf - a look for daytime that seems somehow right in the make-do-and-mend climate of a recession. And you could do worse than take a leaf out of Matthew Williamson's book by accenting the season's low-key greys and blues with touches of vibrant colour.
The grunge effect cuts both ways, too, because while, yes, a little polish and a few diamonds will do wonders for a shapeless shift, there's no denying that a pair of big, tough boots will also slice right through the cloying sweetness of a lace dress or brocade coat. Christian Lacroix understood this in his autumn/winter styling, pairing pretty embroidered, ruched and patterned silks and satins with thick black tights and heavy black boots to create the unhinged-but-beautiful look beloved of the female grungemeisters of yesteryear. Similarly, Burberry Prorsum's gorgeous raw silk tunics and trousers are taken down a notch, to a more wearable level of daytime glamour, with the addition of woolly hats and fingerless gloves.
Grunge is not just about a pair of customised Dr Martens or an oversized grey jumper: it's about an attitude of rebellion to the fashionable life that sees women spend two hours a day blow-drying their hair, matching their lipstick, nail polish, handbag and shoes, damaging their feet in 10cm heels, being plucked, primped and perfected into fabulous but vacant dolls. In the mid-Nineties, when grunge was just about to be overtaken by the Mod styles of Britpop, I adored clothes but would no more have worn a pair of stilettos than I would walk down the street in a bikini and Crocs, and I wasn't the only one. I wore my Dr Martens to work, college, nightclubs, even job interviews, with a grey knitted minidress, silver tights and slouch socks, and I simply could not conceive of a time when women, having discovered the air-cushioned delights of DMs, would voluntarily return to the crippling dysfunction of high heels. Nowadays, liberated from the manicured claws of mainstream style, you can easily apply the ideology while hanging on to those Louboutins by simply taking a less literal approach. Even the most beautiful, slinky, patterned dress by Gucci can channel grunge with the help of artfully mussed hair, heavily lined eyes and a sternly unapproachable expression.
@Email:gchamp@thenational.ae