By the same logic, Mr. Truman of Details thinks that "buying grunge as a package from Seventh Avenue is ludicrous." When Marc Jacobs sent out a parade of the world's most beautiful women wearing wool ski caps, unlaced combat boots, clashing prints and dirty-looking hair (styled by Oribe) for his spring Perry Ellis collection, Women's Wear Daily dubbed him "the guru of grunge." Now, Frederic Fekkai, the Manhattan stylist, says all the young models are asking him to make their lovely locks "a little more greasy-looking."
"A hippied romantic version of punk" is how Mr. Jacobs described his collection. Another W.W.D. story said the unwashed Goodwill-garb look "bombed when it was too grungy," quoting buyers' complaints about the creations of Mr. Jacobs, Anna Sui and Christian Francis Roth, who dressed for his show in a wool cap and played an electric guitar.
Cliff Pershes, an assistant designer at Perry Ellis, admitted to being influenced by grunge rock's moldy chic but insisted that he "used it in a new way." The Perry Ellis "flannel" shirt that models tied around their waists was in fact sand-washed silk. Mr. Pershes swears there's "not a drop of polyester" in the whole collection. It just looks like polyester.
A DESIGNER can steal street style and put it on the runway in the space of just one season, noted Walter Thomas, the creative director at J. Crew. "By the time you see it in Kmart, which you will, it can be three years," he said. The difference with grunge is that it was already for sale at Kmart, not to mention the Salvation Army. Outdoorsy trading posts like L. L. Bean, Timberland and Lands' End have been flogging long johns and flannel forever. "I haven't heard it called the grunge look," said a baffled L. L. Bean spokeswoman. But notice that Timberland stock has doubled in the last year.
"The interval between something being dangerous and being normal is very short," said Mr. Reynolds, the author. And, in fact, the month that Rolling Stone put Nirvana on its cover, Weird Al Yankovic's "Smells Like Nirvana" parody video was already a hit on MTV.