How to dress for a Teenage Riot? Alternative Female 90s musicians, Fashion and the curse of Authenticity

This paper investigates why there appears to be a gap in the literature regarding the styling of 90s female alternative musicians. The investigation into why these women (for instance: Kim Gordon, Juliana Hatfield, Liz Phair, Kim Deal) are largely overlooked in terms of style will foreground issues of authenticity, gender and credibility.

It would appear their “authentic” identity versus that of the “artificial” or “fabricated” one of their colleagues the “pop princesses” has left them positioned as an alternative to the mainstream and thus above ‘frivolous’ concerns such fashion and appearance. Their talent and artistry are seen as so central to their identity, seemingly excluding an understanding of, an interest in, or concern with self-representation and style.

This credibility ascribed to them as musicians on the one hand has afforded them the enviable status of having been to a large extent excluded from scrutiny and assassination by the popular press, however it has also led to the invisibility in academic writing of their appearance. Academia (O’Brien 2002,Leonard 2007, Miller 2011) appears to have adopted the same stance as the press: credible female alternative artists have transcended the ‘trivial’ feminine concerns of appearance and hence in books on alternative female artists appearance is not covered, and in volumes on fashion and music, alternative female artists (with the banal exception of Courtney Love) are not studied.

This stance is very problematic in regard to its implicit view of gender stereotypes and how it keeps alive the idea that a woman can, and only will, be afforded credibility if she renounces an interest in fashion and style and by extension that ‘serious’ women in fact have renounced any such interest.

This paper aims to make a start at rectifying this current academic impasse by addressing these issues and arguing that credibility and fashion do not have to be, and indeed are not, mutually exclusive.