It’s funny: When you go back to the now-legendary “grunge” runway show that got Marc Jacobs fired from Perry Ellis in the early ’90s, none of the clothes look much like grunge at all. Maybe the butterfly-printed blazers read as high-end thriftcore then, but through today’s lens, those beanies and Birkenstocks seem like catwalk cosplay.
Today’s luxury grunge takes things more literally. The clothes look like they’ve been worn for decades, trampled by wild hogs, and, for good measure, set on fire. They are beautiful in a way that recalls a rusted chain-link fence or an artists’ oil-stained palette: They look like they’ve seen some shit. But they’re also of a quality once reserved for luxury fashion proper. The shredded T-shirts are cut from bespoke cotton jersey sourced from Japan; the jeans are destroyed by hand. And that sun-faded hoodie? Painstakingly dyed and put through an updated version of the wringer to achieve ideal vintage softness.
No one can say exactly when the modern luxury-grunge look was born. But most agree that it started in Los Angeles, where Rick Owens launched his imprint about a year after Jacobs got the boot from Perry Ellis. Owens was a pioneer of the moody, baggy silhouettes that came to inform the grunge look. His clothes became a touchstone for locals such as Jerry Lorenzo, a Kanye West disciple who channeled Owens’ bomber jackets and drop-crotch-styling into Fear of God, an early street-luxury label made famous by Justin Bieber’s 2016 Purpose tour.
A few years later, the ouroboros of LA style kept twisting: Brands like Gallery Dept. and Amiri distilled Fear of God’s formula into ultra-pricey patched skinny jeans and faux worn-in tees, further erasing the line between luxury clothes and streetwear. Other influential labels were either founded in LA, like four-figure-hoodie trailblazer Chrome Hearts, or consistently pay tribute to the city. Balenciaga falls into the latter camp; even before its Fall 2024 runway dressed models in an actual Erewhon collab, then-creative director Demna so perfectly defined luxury grunge with threadbare flannels and giant hard-washed jeans that everything since feels imitative.
These are the outer gods of luxury grunge. The labels that codified this aesthetic as a movement, meanwhile, were mostly born around COVID-19 lockdown, in the wake of Virgil Abloh’s prescient prediction that streetwear would “die” and be replaced by vintage. He was mostly right — it’s just that these vintage-looking clothes are actually brand-new. And they’re the reason the luxury-grunge look has snowballed into an all-encompassing everything that has engulfed menswear.
Each brand fits into its own subcategory — some are more punk, some lean workwear, some reflect clear streetwear DNA — but each is immensely popular, doing business across the globe. Their buzz has inspired houses as disparate as Louis Vuitton and AURALEE to dabble in similarly worn-looking garments — not to mention a sea of TikTok upstarts devising their own thrashed hoodies in a bid to be the next big thing. The whole thing smells like teen spirit. Except most of the teens who can afford this stuff are nepo babies.
Enfants Riches Déprimés
Category: Rich-Kid Punk
Price range: $$$$$
Celebrity fans: Travis Scott, Gunna, Rihanna, Travis Barker
Born in Atlanta, Henry Levy (or, as he likes to call himself, Henri Alexander Levy) founded Enfants Riches Déprimés at, appropriately, UCLA in 2012. The brand’s target audience is reflected in its name, which translates as “Depressed Rich Kids.” And ERD, as it’s known, lives up to its moniker by selling absurdly expensive would-be punk wardrobe staples such as $3,250 work jackets, $4,160 blazers, and $1,850 leather loafers titled the “Young WASP Jacket,” “Mao’s Linen Blazer,” and the “Racist Uncle Loafer,” respectively. More than that, it regularly sells out of its intentionally provocative pieces. How’s that for irony?
Paly Hollywood
Category: Hollywood-Kid Punk
Price range: $$$$
Celebrity fans: Bad Bunny, Jacob Elordi, Stefon Diggs
Perhaps the best sign of ERD’s popularity is Paly Hollywood, a label founded by the erstwhile Fucking Awesome designer Kyle Lindgren and the actor James Franco. Paly’s shtick is clearly informed by its forebearer. Born in 2020, the brand came to prominence in 2024 as its collections solidified around a loose facsimile of ERD style: rock ’n’ roll ripped jeans, paint-splattered sweaters, raw-hemmed chore coats, and slim, faded T-shirts. There are a couple of key differences, however. For one, ERD apes a general "punk" influence while Paly is more specific, paying loose homage to the smokey Viper Room vibes of pre-millennium LA. More importantly, Paly’s prices are considerably lower. Even with $450 T-shirts, $900 sweatpants, and $1,500 jackets, Paly’s clothes cost half of ERD’s — and are just as likely to sell out.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Category: Skater Athleisure
Price range: $$$
Celebrity fans: Westside Gunn, Teyana Taylor, Jaylen Brown
George Robertson, an early lynchpin of post–Fear of God luxury-street label Rhude, launched Satoshi Nakamoto in the late days of COVID-19 lockdown and rode a wave of dingy streetwear hype to major fame by 2023. Demand crested around the time of the brand’s debut Vans collaboration in summer 2024, which condensed its aesthetic to flashy gems and faded soles. You might assume that a brand named for the mysterious Bitcoin founder would adopt a high-tech design lingo, but you would be wrong. Satoshi Nakamoto’s signature sweatsuits and tees are sun-faded and hole-riddled, with cracking graphic prints and heavy studs. And each item’s imperfections betray the human touch, a real-world retort to the label’s crypto namesake.
Hellstar
Category: Street Sportswear
Price range: $$
Celebrity fans: A$AP Rocky, Ken Carson, Kai Cenat, Young Thug
A product of the same Instagram-first design approach that informed early luxury-grunge youth-culture lines like Basketcase and Fugazi, Hellstar leans hard into streetwear tropes: limited volume, timed drops, affordable but aspirational prices, and recognizable graphic signatures that include a shooting-star logo and the silhouette of a woman’s head outlined by flames. Further distinguishing itself from the pack, Hellstar splits its oeuvre into three lines: a selection of upscale seasonal goods wholesaled to retailers; a series of smaller and less costly streetwear-style drops; and a sportswear line tied to its prescient Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) program that signs college and even high-school-aged football players, further ingratiating the brand with the young athletes who already covet it.
Saint Michael
Category: Thrift Luxury
Price range: $$$$
Celebrity fans: The Weeknd, Lil Uzi Vert, Future
If any one brand deserves credit for defining the modern luxury-grunge look, it must be Saint Michael. Cofounded by the designer Yuta Hosokawa, famous for upcycled-militaria luxury line READYMADE, and the artist Cali Thornhill DeWitt, most known for creating the famous Life of Pablo merch, Saint Michael is everything good about vintage clothing made new. Retro ringer T-shirts, hickory carpenter pants, shredded flannel work shirts, and waffle-lined hoodies are hand-treated to achieve a true secondhand look. Before finding a comfort zone with franchise merch — anime series such as Ghost in the Shell and Akira are frequent touchstones — Saint Michael carved out its visual language with parodic Peanuts designs and Christian motifs. All the while, it collaborated with peers such as BAPE and Denim Tears to prove its credentials — walking the walk, having talked the talk.
Maison MIHARA YASUHIRO
Category: Sun-faded Staples
Price range: $$$
Celebrity fans: Rosé, G-Dragon, Jung Kook
Mihara Yasuhiro’s eponymous clothing label has been around for 30 years, but it only notched mainstream success in 2019 with the “OG Sole” sneakers. Indicative of the designer’s look at large, the shoes look familiar but luxe’d-up and dressed down, anchored by warped rubber soles created from 3D-scanning forms that Yasuhiro himself hand-sculpted in clay. Seven years later, the sneakers are still the brand’s most in-demand product, but Yasuhiro’s clothes have become equally vital. His label’s enormous hoodies, football-field-sized T-shirts, and elastic-waisted jeans are all so faded and ripped that their faux distressing becomes obvious, placing them in an uncanny valley of lived-in finery. And although their fabrics and finishings do situate them on the “luxury” end of the spectrum, Yasuhiro’s goofier items, which include double-sided jackets and denim pants with built-in cargo short overlays, show he’s still having fun with it.
*Better With Age
Category: Upcycled Workwear
Price range: $$$
Celebrity fans: Central Cee, Toosii, Fenix Flexin
*Better With Age may share some DNA with the LA-based Gallery Dept., which evolved from a Los Angeles denim customization service into a full-fledged luxury label. But unlike Gallery Dept., which blends upcycled product with in-house ready-to-wear, *Better With Age exclusively uses repurposed goods, splicing old Carhartt jackets, Levi’s jeans, and faded flannels into one-of-one garments that are gone once they’re gone. Each piece is reworked by hand — patched, stitched, bleached, Frankenstein’d — and priced to reflect their exclusivity; caps start at $330 while hero items like carpenter pants, embellished denim jackets, and backpacks made of deadstock fabric scraps reach up to $2,000.
Willy Chavarria
Category: Grunge Luxury
Price range: $$$$
Celebrity fans: Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish
When Willy Chavarria cofounded Palmer Trading Company at the cusp of New York City’s menswear boom in 2010, he was a clean-cut 42-year-old occasionally dabbling in New York Willy, a line of utilitarian clothes. By 2026, Chavarria had become New York Willy, the huge-sunglass-wearing, elegantly mustachioed fashion superstar tapped for Zara collaborations and adidas World Cup collections. But between hosting blowout runway shows in Paris, Chavarria tends to his roots: Really good, really wearable workwear. His now-eponymous label is especially indulgent, its Italian- and American-made clothes revealing the hand of an industry lifer. His beautifully washed high-rise work pants reflect his tenure at Calvin Klein, while his wide ’n’ short T-shirts bear the grungy touch of YEEZY, where Chavarria helped shape and oversee YEEZY GAP. But nothing’s grungier than Chavarria’s underwear line, a combo of CK and YEEZY teachings that once yielded pre-stained (and sold-out) jockstraps.
RIVINGTON roi Rebis (RRR123)
Category: Sacred Streetwear
Price range: $$$
Celebrity fans: Chief Keef, JID, Odell Beckham Jr.
Formerly a singer in a rock band, Rivington Starchild established his clothing line as an outlet for heady philosophical and religious musings. The brand’s acronym, RRR123, refers to the three elements of the alchemical process — a high-brow concept for ultra-casual clothes. RRR123 prints terms such as “gnosticism” and “metanoia” on the front of boxy hoodies and T-shirts of their own unique make. Hemlines are short and raw, bodies are sculpted to curve around the torso, hoods are flattened to circumvent the dreaded hoodie poke, and giant denim jeans are ripped, flared, and sometimes smashed together, with a second waistline rising out of another like a soul ascending to heaven.
