Indie Pop Stars Are Suited Up
Image Courtesy of The Aces’ instagram.
“Dress code for tour: suits,” a fan commented under The Aces’ TikTok promoting their song “Always Get This Way.”
In it, the four women of the indie pop band wear matching gray suits, sitting cross-legged and bobbing to the upbeat rhythm. Their affirmative reply to the fan? “Exactly.”
With every public appearance since, The Aces have strapped on their most strapping suits, posing in menswear at the Billboard Women in Music Awards in March and on tour in promotion of their 2023 album, I’ve Loved You For So Long. A quick scroll through the band’s social accounts documents their dapper duds – a marker of The Aces’ new era.
Gone are the members’ feminine blouses and long tresses from their 2018 album When My Heart Felt Volcanic. Even their laidback band tees and ripped jeans from recent years are collecting dust in the closet. Now, like so many other indie bands, The Aces are all about sharp two-pieces and crisp linens.
From The 1975’s black and white ensembles to MUNA’s sexy mafia boss get-ups in their newest music video, suits are defining indie artists’ style. While the return of concerts post-pandemic inspired flamboyant costumes from pop stars like Harry Styles and Lizzo, the indie scene has fallen back on black tie. For a genre with origins in garages and basement parties, the sleek, sophisticated formalwear on indie pop musicians is a surprisingly well-suited match.
The Aces at The House of Blues Chicago in December 2021. Photo courtesy of Tori Wilkins (IG: @toriwilkinsdesign).
Historically, suits have been a performance staple. Black and Brown musicians of the 1930s and ‘40s jazz scene specifically chose them for “an extra sense of respectability when their music was being critiqued by the dominant culture as ‘immoral’ or ‘devil music,’” according to a TikTok made by TheCollective100, a group of producers.
Little Richard and Elvis emerged in the ‘50s rocking unconventionally androgynous suits, cloaked in bright colors and sequins. In the mid-1960s, The Beatles took to the stage in matching gray suits and shiny Chelsea boots to streamline their “squeaky clean image,” according to The Rake’s article. A decade later, David Bowie, as the “Thin White Duke,” traded in his Ziggy Stardust wardrobe for a smart vest and button-down. Then in the ‘80s, Prince popularized the purple velvet Edwardian jacket.
But instead of flashy costumes or perfectly coiffed hair, indie stars of the ‘90s preferred to keep their stage style chill. Ryan Yip, a fashion researcher on TikTok, says some indie musicians preferred this look because it’s more true to their roots. He describes the mindset of the time: “If I'm into fashion, I'm a sellout.”
The indie rockers from the grunge movement solidified what Yip calls “the indie rock uniform” as a badge of authenticity – of letting the music speak for itself. This nonchalance defined the genre for decades, spanning even into the 2010s. Indie and alternative rock groups like The Neighborhood, Vampire Weekend and HAIM preferred to dress down, appearing as if they stumbled into an open mic night instead of playing a sold-out show.
It’s cool not to care. Why bother with the glitz and glam if the audience bought the ticket for the tunes – not the theatrics? While fashion ambivalence has loomed in alternative spheres, Yip explains the transition to suits by indie and alt musicians as an extension of their artistry. “Artists either love fashion or they hate fashion, but they both accept or decline with the same motive: to stay authentic,” he says. Just as music bares a piece of the artist’s soul, so too do their clothes. Put simply: “Artistic expression bleeds into one another.”
The 1975 at The Eagles Ballroom Milwaukee in December 2022. Photo courtesy of Tori Wilkins (IG: @toriwilkinsdesign.
Plus, suits never go out of style, says Valley’s stylist, Katie Goodfellow. For the band’s Lost In Translation album cover photoshoot, Goodfellow says she forayed into formalwear to cement the band as a class act. “When it comes to album covers, [I keep] in mind what will look good and still feel timeless in months and years,” she says.
Suits also position themselves as a masculine social symbol – one that musicians like Little Richard, David Bowie and Prince reconstructed with feminine tailoring decades ago. Today female and nonbinary indie musicians perform in menswear to subvert the gendered expectations of dress and claim the respectability of formalwear for themselves. Katrin Schnabl, an artist, designer and professor of fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, calls this a “hybridization” of gender that is “pushing the boundary” of the “power and authority tied to a suit.”
Boygenius, who played at Coachella in sharp black blazers and ties, is the leading example. As 19-year-old fan Maggie Rosenberg explains, the inspiration behind their supergroup name was to “make fun of the fact that men can do whatever they want and they’re called incredible musicians.”
Their 2023 photoshoot with Rolling Stone replicated Nirvana’s cover for the same magazine nearly three decades prior, and the group of women all put on their spiffiest pin-stripe suits for the cover. Ruth Smart, a playwright and pop culture enthusiast, described the difference between how each of the groups are perceived. “When we look at a band like Nirvana, one that men drool over and gatekeep—like, ‘Name three Nirvana songs’—and then we have three women that are doing [what] the men in Nirvana did… Boygenius is continuing that legacy of breaking masculinity and asserting themselves in new ways with femininity,” Smart says. She compares Kurt Cobain’s choice to wear skirts on stage with Boygenius’ affinity for menswear.
For most cisgender male musicians, wearing a standard suit isn’t newsworthy. In comparison, the appearances of female-identifying performers regularly make headlines. “With women, I look to see what outfits they're wearing,” Smart says, referencing the costumes of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. “But when I saw The 1975 earlier this year, I wasn't like, ‘What's Matty Healy going to wear?’” Smart says.
The deliberate choice of female or genderqueer musicians in indie pop – a space dominated by pretentious white male opinions – to don menswear is thus as much of a political statement as it is debonair. Safety Scissors, a queer, women-led indie band in Chicago stitched the kids craft tool on suits they wore during a show in February. Bassist Hope McKnight comments on the look: “Because suits are something that are viewed as so masculine, wearing suits as female performers [is] like taking back the stage.”
Lead guitarist Judy Lawrence chimes in, “But it is just, like, cool.”
Whether to stay true to the image of a classic, respected rocker or to subvert gendered expectations, suits represent a rich intersection of music and fashion history. For current indie pop, the sophisticated suit is tailored to perfection.
On a February episode of The Aces’ podcast series, Aces Space, drummer Alisa Ramirez discussed her specific reasoning for selecting suits – which the band specially tailored in men’s sizing – to define their current era. “I think that us being women, us being queer women, us also being women of color, [and] wearing these suits and reinventing the boy band as a girl band or whatever the new version of that is in 2023 felt really magic to me,” she says. “I was seeing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in these amazing suits, and I was kind of like, ‘We’re the new generation of this.’”