thumb|[[Kat Bjelland wearing a kinderwhore outfit in 1992|150px]]
Kinderwhore is a fashion style most notably worn by some female grunge and alternative rock musicians in the US during the early to mid-1990s. The style is characterized through the combination of cute, feminine fashion items like babydoll and Peter Pan collared dresses, with more adult aspects like smudged red lipstick and dark eye makeup. It has its origins in the mid-1980s band Pagan Babies, which featured future Babes in Toyland vocalist/guitarist Kat Bjelland and future Hole vocalist/guitarist Courtney Love, who lived together and shared clothes. Following the band's disbandment, the two's subsequent bands achieved significant mainstream success and led to the fashion being popularised amongst the general public and being referenced by high fashion designers including Marc Jacobs.
Fashion
Kinderwhore fashion is based around a childlike fashion silhouette and accessories in combination with punk fashion's "rips and tears". slip dresses, ripped tights, bleached hair, smudged red lipstick,
Mish Way described it as "intentionally taking the most constraining parts of the feminine, good-girl aesthetic, inflating them to a cartoon level, and subverting them to kill any ingrained insecurities." She further noted that although the look was very feminine, when its exponents performed onstage they "stood tall and confident, they threw their guitars around like weapons, and screamed out whip-smart feminist lyrics. These women were questioning the cultural importance of typical beauty through costume and the stage."
Interviewed in 1994, Love commented:
History
thumb|150px|[[Courtney Love helped to popularize the fashion style]]
In the mid–1980s, musicians Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love shared an apartment together while playing in the band Pagan Babies. Both are generally credited by publications including i-D, the Guardian and Rolling Stone as inventing the kinderwhore fashion style, however both dispute the other's involvement. In interviews, Love credited the inspiration for the style as coming from KatieJane Garside of Daisy Chainsaw and Christine Amphlett of Divinyls. Furthermore, during this period, many of the style's prominent characteristics such as vintage clothing, velvet and 1970s polyester were cheap and easily accessible. i-D observed that the name "kinderwhore" was coined by Melody Maker journalist Everett True, As early as 1992, the style was beginning to slip into mainstream and high fashion, with Perry Ellis' 1992 Grunge collection, by Marc Jacobs embracing elements of kinderwhore. Soon, major fashion magazines like Seventeen and Sassy featured editorials on how to achieve the look. In 2019, designer Batsheva Hay cited Courtney Love's "kinderwhore aesthetic" as inspiration. Hay said Love's look "was so of that time but she was also so ahead of her time".
The style received a minor revival in the early 2020s through videos posted on the video sharing application TikTok and mainstream musicians including Olivia Rodrigo taking influence from its aesthetics for her debut album Sour (2021). The 2020 novel Dead Rock Stars by the English author Guy Mankowski depicts a fictional Kinderwhore band called Cherub, whose lead singer Emma draws from the Kinderwhore aesthetic of "Hollywood glamour of tiaras and satin dresses... with a twisted, girlish sensibility." Mankowski added, "I was influenced by the urge that such artists had to use their body to offer a message, with them making the very most of the textual space that comes with being in a band."
See also
- Grunge fashion
- Heroin chic
- Soft grunge
- Lolita fashion