The Nirvanafication of Oasis
The only thing bigger than an Oasis reunion tour is Oasis reunion clothing. Oasis merch is the Nirvana T-shirt of 2025, with the Britpop band’s branded tees becoming as ubiquitous (and context-free) as the grunge band's most-famous iconography.
While Nirvana’s smiley-face logo was once indicative of counterculture, it’s become the very picture of mass-market, printed on graphic T-shirts found at both cut-price retailers like Walmart and luxury labels like Saint Laurent (the latter charging $4,000 per T-shirt). This single T-shirt has become the band’s most instantly recognizable cultural export.
Nirvana, and all its rebellious teen spirit, has been repackaged and resold to people who’ve never listened to an entire Nirvana album.
On the other side of the pond, Oasis ‘90s heyday came only a few years after Nirvana’s, but a surprise comeback has fueled a cottage industry of merch. The real shift is in how Oasis merch, typically emblazoned with the band's recognizable "box logo" branding, almost immediately penetrated broader culture.
Oasis merch has always been a hot commodity in England, the band’s homeland and nucleus of Oasis-mania. Many Oasis devotees even cosplay as parka-loving lead singer Liam Gallagher, and have received a real boon in the light of everything that Liam and Noel Gallagher brothers have ever worn receiving a limited-edition re-release, from Berghaus parkas to Ten-C anoraks to French Connection knitwear to Levi’s jeans. But there’ve always been replicas of famous folks’ clothes for the true believers — just look at the reissues of Cobain’s signature designer sunglasses.
No, the Nirvanafication of Oasis was made most clear this past year, when band hosted sold-out merch pop-ups in cities from Toronto to Tokyo. The obsession with oasis merch is reflected in famous fans as disparate as Grian Chatten, lead singer of popular Irish indie outfit Fontaines D.C., and Kendrick Lamar, who recently blew the dust off an old Supersonic tee that's been in his wardrobe for almost a decade.
In America, the country Oasis famously couldn’t crack, tees printed with tour dates and Definitely Maybe art are impossible to avoid. Proof: there was a 527% increase in searches for “Oasis t-shirt” between May and July 2025, when Oasis’ world tour began.
Part of the hype is driven, presumably, by genuine enthusiasm for a reunited Oasis, one of the biggest rock bands of the modern era with its handful of hummable hits. But the hunger for and breadth of Oasis gear surely belies anyone’s expectations, bolstered by a handful of high-profile and far-flung collaborations.
The band’s expansive adidas collection remains in an endless loop of selling out and restocking since first releasing in mid-June. There are Oasis football shirts in Ireland, upscale merch-stand tees in Japan, and streetwear collections in Manchester. All the while, the Oasis web store is flogging everything from Oasis duffel bags to water bottles.
It’s not quite the Nirvana T-shirt, where one object comes to represent the entirety of a band’s existence, but it’s pretty close.
Plus, all this without any new music from a band that peaked decades ago — Nirvanafication in a nutshell.
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