"Sick! So punk!": Luxury fashion brand Saint Laurent is selling second-hand Nirvana T-shirts for thousands of pounds

Nirvana and Incesticide T-shirt — (Image credit: Nirvana - Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic | Incesticide T-shirt - Saint Laurent)

A luxury fashion house is cashing in on nostalgia for the 1990s by selling second-hand Nirvana T-shirts at prices that would have thrift-shop devotee Kurt Cobain turning in his grave.

As part of their The Vintage collection, Saint Laurent are offering bog-standard grunge merchandise items at what one might perhaps consider 'piss-take prices': having recently sold an Incesticide album cover design T-shirt for a staggering £3295 ($4200), the site is currently flogging the same design for $ 4,450 (£3,485) with complimentary shipping, an In Utero cover design shirt for $ 2,690 (£2106), and a classic 'Fudge Packin Crack Smokin Satan Worshippin Mother Fucker' shirt for the bargain price of $1,390 (£1,089).

Naturally, these prices have caused something of a stir. Former Sonic Youth bassist/vocalist Kim Gordon, longtime friends with Nirvana, posted a story about the collection on instagram with the caption, "Sick! So punk!". Referencing the 1991 Dave Markey-filmed documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, which featured a 1991 Sonic Youth/Nirvana tour of Europe, one clever comment below Gordon's Instagram post reads 'The year Punk made me Broke."

Speaking to The Guardian, Jacob McMurray, who curated 'Nirvana: Taking Punk To The Masses' an exhibition of grunge memorabilia at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture in 2018, says “[Grunge is] 30 years ago, so there’s this nostalgia around it. The kids that grew up listening to that music are now the people in power and have money to be able to afford this stuff."

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The Vintage collection also features T-shirts for fans of The Cranberries, Elvis Presley, and sci-fi TV show The Twilight Zone.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.