In the nineties, if you were passionate about grunge and you were a woman, you had to meet Courtney Love.
The Hole singer taught by breaking the rules and codes of what the canon of the time considered good dressing.
With her little girl's dresses, her negligees, her grandmother's jackets, her Mary Janes, and her socks, it was unclassifiable.
Her behavior was also the opposite of that of a young lady: she was sprawled while she was banging the guitar on stage and showing her panties, climbing on top of the tables, screaming.
There is also the extensive list of her pranks in 1995: the punch she punched Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill at the Lollapalooza festival or the makeup compact she threw at Madonna in an interview on MTV.
Let us remember that her husband, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide the previous year and, as had already happened with other women in the industry (Yoko Ono effect), most blamed Love for the misfortune.
Courtney Love performing at the 1994 Reading Festival.Brian Rasic (Getty Images)
Even though the system ended up not only accepting her
looks
but also commodifying them, she was rejected as a fashion icon by the establishment.
CBS
, the
New
York Times
and other outlets not only disavowed her, but repeatedly included her on the worst dressed list.
There was no program or magazine that did not mock her aesthetic decisions.
Melissa Van Der Auf and Courtney Love at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards Show.Jeff Kravitz (FilmMagic, Inc)
The style of the singer Olivia Rodrigo (Murrieta, California, 2003), strongly influenced by that of Love, not only hits hard, but is applauded by the mainstream media: the Californian candidate for six Grammys for her latest album has been chosen best dressed by various media outlets.
The New York Times
has made her one of the most stylish people in 2023. The looks of the former Disney factory actress have a Courtney Love touch.
With a marked nineties trend, micro slip dresses, which sometimes reveal the bra, are one of Olivia Rodrigo's most common codes.
She also contrasts them with Mary Janes, strappy shoes or boots and socks.
Olivia Rodrigo's style is not only respected, but awarded in traditional media;
Courtney Love's in the nineties was vilified.
Since no brand wanted to dress her for the Oscars in 1995, the year in which Forrest Gump won the award for best picture, the soloist appeared at the Morton's hotel, where Vanity Fair magazine was celebrating its post-gala party, with a dress of 20 dollars, a tiara and her friend Amanda de Cadenet dressed in the same way on her arm.
Love unevenly powdered her face with makeup, painted her lips and added false eyelashes to the ensemble.
The reasonable similarity between the cover of a Hole album and one by Olivia Rodrigo.
When the journalist who was picking them up at the Chateau Marmont hotel at Love's request asked them if they planned to go to the party in their underwear, the singer responded that they were the cheapest wedding dresses they had found and that they were beautiful lesbians in dresses. of 20 dollars.
She then posed kissing with Amanda de Cadenet, then wife of Duran Duran's bassist, in front of the flashes.
Of course, the champagne-colored silk piece and the performance did not please the conventional media, which once again punished her with a place on the worst dressed lists.
Needless to say, her extravagance has been vindicated ad nauseum.
Refenery29
recently
included her in a report on
iconic red carpet
looks that had been misunderstood at the time.
Courtney Love's witty and stylish boutades have always been a few steps ahead.
Courtney Love and Amanda De Cadenet at the 1995 Oscars after party.Terry McGinnis (WireImage)
The photography sessions for her albums, all that
trash
feminist aesthetic displayed in her second album
Live through this
is a good example.
A raw album, with forceful guitars and direct and honest lyrics sung by a voice that swung between sweetness and violence.
Let's remember that some themes of the songs: feminism, postpartum depression, motherhood, self-esteem problems.
There it is nothing.
The idea behind the cover photo, by the great Ellen von Unwerth and with the model Leilani Bishop, is also by Courtney Love, a reinterpretation of the film
Carrie
(1976), that prom queen with smeared mascara and a big bouquet of flowers.
In 2021, Love accused Olivia Rodrigo of plagiarizing the cover for her tour without asking permission and without crediting anyone.
Controversies aside, the similarities are undeniable.
And the truth is that it is logical that someone who was not recognized on her day should claim to be.
Especially, for all those for whom he has paved the way.
We would be doing a disservice to fashion history if we talked about Courtney Love's style as an immovable label: the actress has also been evolving.
One of the substantial differences with Olivia Rodrigo are the brands.
At the beginning of her career, the Hole singer was, like other grunge stars, on the market.
But the industry ended up putting her vision on the catwalk: John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, Hedi Slimane... In 1997, two years after the performance at the Vanity Fair party, Love scored her first triumph: she went to the Oscars with a long white Versace dress that was highly applauded.
Shortly after, she was hired for an advertising campaign for that same brand.
And in 2000, she dared to attend the Golden Globes with Galliano's controversial collection for Dior, the one that was inspired by the
clochards
of Paris and grunge.
Frayed clothing and unstructured patterns.
“I remember thinking, she's a
lesbian.
very crazy, but I'll make it work," Courtney Love told Vanity Fair magazine a few years ago.
Hedi Slimane and Marc Jacobs (who also had her daughter Frances Bean Cobain as his model) crowned her their muse.
She then made her first steps as a designer with the capsule collection for Nasty Gal (2006).
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 01: Frances Bean Cobain, Courtney Love and Marc Jacobs at the MET Gala 2017.Kevin Mazur (WireImage)
More milestones: in the nineties she combined the children's Lolita style with punk, expanding the vocabulary of commentators with the term
kinderwhore.
“I'd like to think I'm changing some psychosexual aspects of rock music.
It's not that I'm desirable.
I didn't dress
kinderwhore
because I thought I was hot.
When I see a look whose purpose is to make us only more desirable, I get pissed.
When I started it was more like
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
My attitude was ironic.”
When did Courtney Love start to become an icon for traditional media?
If we trace her imprint online, we see that even in 2001, CBS described her as the tackiest
(
tacky, tacky) and
wackier
(extravagant), perhaps it was not until the middle of that decade that they left her alone with the advent of other empowered
trashy
like Cory Kennedy.
Courtney Love playing with Hole at Glastonbury Festival 1999.Fred Duval (FilmMagic)
It was also ahead of MeToo.
Courtney Love already reported Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse in 2005. And guess what?
No
one paid attention to her in this either... they took her accusation as an outburst, twelve years later they agreed with her.
And today, young stars like Troye Sivan (with a suit borrowed from Galliano's 2000 collection for Dioe) or Bella Hadid (who combines baggy jeans with Dr. Martens) decline grunge.
“It is important to keep actors alive so that they continue making movies, but in rock & roll when you reach the top, almost unconsciously, if you die it is more valuable,”
Courtney Love reflected in
El País
when she turned 50. years.
Let's hope she has a lot left on this planet.
Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.Jeff Kravitz (FilmMagic, Inc)
Courtney Love during a Hole.Kevin.Mazur concert (WireImage)