THE JOURNAL
The Strokes (from left: Messrs Nikolai Fraiture, Albert Hammond Jr, Nick Valensi, Fabrizio Moretti, Julian Casablancas), New York City, May 2001. Photograph by Mr Cody Smyth
“A lot of people are excited when they hear something new,” Mr Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes, told MTV toward the end of 2001. “Everyone is just like, ‘We need something new or we’re gonna freak.’”
The year 2001 didn’t turn out as anyone predicted. “Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly,” as Mr Arthur C Clarke put it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, his novel devised concurrently with the 1968 film by Mr Stanley Kubrick. Their vision of alien monoliths seeding evolutionary epoch events proved wide of the mark. But, in its own way, 2001 was a watershed moment. Most obviously, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, which ripped apart the End of History narrative and continue to shape geopolitics. But even before that fateful day in September, the city had already shifted global 21st-century culture, leaving an imprint on what we listen to and the way we dress that still holds sway.
Formed in Manhattan in 1998, The Strokes wore their influences as a badge of honour. Not just in terms of their scuzzy, rock’n’roll sound, lifted from the punk and new-wave scenes of the crumbling city two decades before. The clothes that defined their look were inherited from their heroes, unearthed in Goodwill stores. “What they were doing was not new, but it felt new,” says Mr Greg Cochrane, digital director at Loud And Quiet magazine, who previously worked at NME.
“The hipster music of the time was speed garage and dance pop, and they sounded like The Velvet Underground. Even the idea of ‘an indie band’ seemed retro”
And as the music industry itself lurched into a new century, slowly coming to terms with mp3s and peer-to-peer filesharing tools such as Napster and LimeWire, the five-piece triggered perhaps the most outdated hang up from the days of record company excess: a bidding war.
As with Nirvana 10 years before, the UK was an early adopter when it came to The Strokes. Having sent a demo to Rough Trade Records in London, the resurrected independent label released the band’s three-track debut, The Modern Age EP, in January 2001, with its US release four months later. This, teamed with the giveaway of the track “Last Nite” as a cutting-edge mp3 through the music magazine NME, led to an old-fashioned industry pile on as bigger labels clambered to sign the band up.
“We [were] all very excited by The Strokes at The Face office,” confirms Mr Johnny Davis, then the fashion magazine’s editor (now deputy editor at Esquire). “The stereo would be on all the time, but when someone put on The Modern Age EP, it was a proper, ‘Who is this?’ moment. The hipster music of the time was speed garage and dance pop, and they sounded like The Velvet Underground. Even the idea of ‘an indie band’ seemed retro.”
Is This It by The Strokes. Image courtesy of Sony Music
“Just before the turn of the Millennium, nu-metal was reaching its peak,” says Cochrane. “The check shirts and shredded jeans that been the trademark of mid-1990s grunge had given way to a new, baggier trend. The nu-metal look was a hybrid of skate punk, metal and rap. That meant long T-shirts with an open shirt and massive, baggy jeans often hanging off your backside. Footwear was chunky – Etnies and Vans. I remember a lot of eyebrow piercings.”
The Strokes were a record-scratch moment. “It was suddenly – because it did seemingly take place over the course of one summer, 2001 – all slim jeans, skinny ties, leather jackets and Converse,” Cochrane says. “The band looked confident and effortlessly cool, and it mirrored their music: snappy, sophisticated and oozing style. It helped that their merch (logo) was also instantly iconic, too. The whole look also appealed to those who wanted to dig out second-hand bargains. Blazers were readily available in the local charity shops.”
The Face lays claim to the first magazine interview with the band. “The writer asked them if their names – Julian Casablancas, Fabrizio Moretti, etc – were real,” Davis says. “Then straight after, we did a big feature on them, and I went to New York to do it – totally as you’d imagine and hope, boozing in Lower East Side dive bars and dragging their own equipment from gig to gig in a crap van. Julian and Albert Hammond Jr shared a flat together, it was a dump.”
That thrift-store look, then, was in some ways born of necessity. But more so, it was part of a concerted campaign. “Julian had this idea that they should all ‘dress up every day as if we had a gig that evening, even if we didn’t’,” Davis says. “So, they really did walk around together in skinny ties, mismatched Converse and junk-shop sweaters, their ‘stage clothes’.” While standard-issue for guitar bands before and since, in 2001, he says, it really stood out.
“You can’t really go wrong with being ‘inspired by’ the look of Blondie, Lou Reed and Warhol’s Factory – it’s Year Zero for cool rock fashion”
“They had amazing hair, too,” Davis adds. “The thing I remember catching on immediately was wearing tailored jackets with jeans – a few of us at The Face copied that. My colleague Kevin Braddock said that they’d reclaimed the look from Rodney Trotter [the patsy younger brother in the classic BBC sitcom Only Fools And Horses].”
The EP was followed by a full-length album in the summer, Is This It. At once a question and a statement of intent, it was the answer to its own hype and everything The Stroke’s carefully managed image promised. The opening line – “Can’t you see I’m trying? I don’t even like it” – said it all: here was a band who had taken great pains to appear effortlessly cool. Although, in truth, “full-length” is a stretch. Clocking in at a lean 36 and a half minutes, the LP was as tight as the trousers the band ushered in.
Davis says that The Strokes’ impact chimed with what was happening within fashion at the time. “Their rise coincided with the rise of Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme, who had very similar retro rock’n’roll reference points, and made cropped jackets, tight jeans and high-stop sneakers cool again. You can’t really go wrong with being ‘inspired by’ the look of Blondie, Lou Reed and Warhol’s Factory – it’s Year Zero for cool rock fashion.”
If not as ubiquitous as it once was, that look, of New York at a particular moment – whether some fuzzy point between the late 1960s and early 1980s or, indeed, 2001 – is still part of the conversation. “Slimane is on his third fashion house with it,” Davis points out, although it’s telling that at CELINE HOMME, the architect of the rock’n’roll silhouette’s mood boards reflect a far broader cultural landscape. Streaming services have granted us access to music from Lagos to Seoul, while the album has lost ground to playlists, only making Is This It seem more vital in comparison.
The big question, then: was that it? Casablancas had an answer back in 2001. “I have faith in what we do,” he told that MTV journalist. “It’s good enough to beat a lot of the hype. In time, all that press stuff will just wash away, and the last thing standing will be the music. So, I’m not that worried.”