There is a black T-shirt dress in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s permanent collection, bearing the phrase “FLICK YER BEAN FOR AGYNESS DEYN” in plasticized, lime-green lettering across its front. Part of House of Holland’s fall 2007 collection, it is a true time capsule of a garment, symbolic of a moment in pop culture when young creatives tattooed cartoon mustaches onto their index fingers and wore gold lamé leggings and still listened to Crystal Castles.
Otherwise known as indie sleaze–a trend that TikTok forecasters have long insisted is making a post-pandemic comeback, despite it never quite catching on outside of Dimes Square–its proponents were people like Agyness Deyn and Alexa Chung, whose androgyne bone structure and rock and roll attitude were seen as the ultimate in aspirational living. The duo last night reunited at Bistrotheque’s 20th anniversary bash–alongside Holland himself—as a sort of nostalgic getting-the-band-back-together for the kind of people who once took style cues from Stabilo Boss and partied at BoomBox in Hoxton.
How satisfying it was, then, to see Deyn return to those aesthetic roots: posing with Chung in a fluorescent green Molly Goddard dress. It’s a sort of grown-up take on the Noughties look–constructed with a giant tulle underskirt and a pin-tucked bodice–befitting of this former indie sleaze poster girl-turned-country dwelling mum. The only thing missing was perhaps that infamous peroxide crop, a pair of scuffed Doc Martens boots, and the Stegosaurus-shaped Giles Deacon bag she last carried to Bistrotheque in 2011.
