Music-Inspired Fashion Trends Through the Years

2024-09-04

Billie Eilish. Music has influenced fashion a great deal through the decades, from the flannel of Nirvana to the oversized clothing of pop artists like Billie Eilish.

Billie Eilish has created some music-inspired fashion trends. – Author: Anne Erickson, Photo via Kelia Anne MacCluskey

Music has had a major impact on fashion over the years. While that was likely never the intention, many bands have inspired clothing and even makeup trends that ruled during their eras and years to come. Let’s look at some of the greatest music-inspired fashion trends through the years.

Music-Inspired Fashion Over the Decades

1960s and 1970s: Hippie Fashion

So many great bands from the 1960s and 1970s inspired hippie fashion, such as bell-bottom jeans, love beads, straight hair, embroidered shirts, bright colors, flowers and paisley. Artists and bands such as Santana, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson and the Monkees donned all the popular hippie looks, and boy, did those styles take off. Many of these fashion trends have gone in and out of style over the years. For example, bell-bottom, or flare, pants were in during the late-1990s and early-2000s, and they’re coming back into style today. I personally love flare jeans, especially low-rise.

1980s: Teased Hair

Pegged pants, wild makeup and teased hair ruled the 1980s, and the music of that time followed suit. Hair metal, or glam metal, was all the rage, and bands such as Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, Ratt and more donned the wild, 1980s looks with lots of leather, makeup (yes, on guys) and big hair. Their music videos often showed beautiful women who also had super teased, crimped hair, blue eyeshadow and a generally larger-than-life look. Other music-inspired looks from that era included bananas, big boots and fashion gloves.

1990s: Flannel

Of course, the big fashion trend born in the 1990s was flannel, thanks to grunge bands. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and more sported flannel, and suddenly, everyone else did, too. The music quickly went from hair metal to grunge, and the fashion quickly went from flashy, overdone fashion to flannel, after Nirvana came on the scene. “Nevermind” changed music forever when it came out, and it could be argued that it also changed fashion.

2000s: A Little Bit of Everything

My grandma used to say that things would come into style, go out of style and then come back into style, and she’s right. A lot of the fashions that we saw emerge at the turn of the century were a fallback to fashion during an earlier time. Styles such as flare, or bell-bottom, jeans, low-rise jeans, capris, platforms and more came back into style during the turn of a century.

As for newer fashion, pop star Billie Eilish has inspired an oversized look, with huge pants and sweatshirts, which is very popular in 2024. “With her enviable eyebrows, button nose, and heavy-lidded eyes, she looks not unlike a fresh-faced Marilyn Monroe—albeit with a two-tone dye job, the raven black pushed out by neon-green roots,” Vanity Fair wrote in a feature on Eilish’s fashion and influence. “The singer describes her style as ‘different’ and ‘memorable’ – and that it certainly is, subverting what is usually expected of celebrities on the red carpet with her preference for loose-fitting clothes, bright colours, loud monograms and trainers,” adds Elle in a feature about Eilish’s popular looks.

Anne Erickson
Latest posts by Anne Erickson (see all)
Posted by Anne Erickson | Alternative, Grunge, Music, Rock, Rock News