The first in a series, Ben Hoare acts as fashion medium, channeling Kurt Cobain's style outlook.

Looking back, it’s fair to say that I was blessed with a super fast metabolism, yet it seems my heroin habit will always be used to explain my skinny physique. I’ve been consistently cited in men’s fashion blogs as the wiry framed king of narcotic cool, the detached songsmith who brought a grubby and unbranded bagginess into the mainstream. Did they never even listen to my records? This is the last thing I wanted!

I don’t mean to write this article with too much teen angst; those days are behind me, but when I wore nerdy glasses and oversized cardigans it’s because I wanted to give the middle finger up to both '90s corporate America, and the big, tough, manufactured rock bands that it harboured, a retaliation to convention.

Grunge was first and foremost about the music, yet in the process of cultural subversion it ended up countering fashion too, grabbing the whole of pop culture by the scruff of its neck and giving it a damn good shake.

It wasn’t even all conscious choices. The shirts I wore were a staple item of Seattle. I’ve been billed as the father of flannel and the prince of plaid, but I wore them purely to survive the wind and snow of the Pacific North West. Likewise, the Converse chucks were as commonplace then as now, and I wore them for convenience. Admittedly mine were knackered through actual wear and tear – I find the pre-distressed pairs sold on the high street sickening. Being simultaneously shy and outspokenly self-destructive, I had a pretty misaligned look. Clashing checks and stripes and odd socks were just because I threw a lot of things on and looking polished was hardly at the forefront of my mind; there’s no point in being polished when you’re about to get all sweaty at a show.

If anything, I embodied inconsistency. My songs were seemingly illogical too, combining the dainty melodies of an impeccable three-minute pop wonder with the overdriven delivery of a wrecking ball. My stained t-shirts and torn jeans hid my scrawny form, but on occasions when I performed in wedding dresses and skirts my anaemic figure seemed swamped and ready to buckle under the weight of my own guitar. Cutting my bleach blonde hair into a bob made me look more sensitive I guess, the introspective thinker and poet; yet don’t forget those occasions that I dyed it with Kool-Aid and ketchup too. I had something naturally ‘pretty boy’ about me, something I was always trying to run away from.

I know I’ve been instrumental in the frayed slouchy chic favoured by every ‘alternative’ white male under the sun, yet it was this refined tweaking through fearless experimentation that allowed my minimal shapeless statements to work. The upshot of the popularity of these imitative production-lined pieces is a multitude of outfits that lack substance. The look, the music and the lifestyle were chaotic, yet this madness was harnessed and well honed. It could have all fallen apart at any time, as it eventually did.

The messy spirit of ‘Come As You Are’ can live on, yet is unlikely to do so in another glossy two-page spread on my love of cable knits and frayed jeans. Nor is there any chance of it thriving through the frumpy black hoodies adorned with Nirvana logo and boring badges worn by every twelve-year-old kid with a skateboard. My unwashed and untucked exterior found solace in a counter culture. Don’t be afraid to take risks.