Miranda Priestly Roasts My Nirvana T-Shirt
MIRANDA PRIESTLY: You go to your floor beside your bed, and select that Nirvana shirt because you’re trying to tell the world that you are a proud Gen-Xer so moved in middle school by Kurt Cobain’s deadpan honesty and self-loathing that Nirvana became your favorite band, and now that you’re almost fifty, the nostalgia is unbearable… but what you don’t know is that Target licensed the “anti-corporate” band’s logo from massive global licensing hubs Live Nation Merchandise and Universal Music Group, off of which the band’s estate earns a significant portion of its revenue today.
You’re also blithely unaware of the massive legal battle over the iconic smiley face logo that Nirvana LLC claimed Cobain drew in 1991, and then I think it was Marc Jacobs who got sued by your favorite nonconformist punk alternative band for merely using a similar smiley face in one of his collections, sparking a lengthy legal war that only ended when former Geffen Records art director was able to prove he actually designed it. I think you need some pants now.
ME: I just—
MIRANDA PRIESTLY: You just might feel a tinge of betrayal to know that Nirvana LLC is complicit in the mass marketing of the band’s logo and media assets, giving Target remarkable autonomy over the band’s posteriority through approved streamlined style guides adaptable to fluctuating market trends for future generations to wear iterations of the shirt without having to listen to their music, either that or a shallow cursory awareness of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with no context of the song’s cultural significance at a time when the band’s ostensible anti-corporate stance was sorely needed.
So your Nirvana shirt represents millions of dollars of corporate interests—not to mention comfortable residuals for the surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and Courtney Love, who legally owns her late husband’s estate—and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that signals to society that you are still a cool, alternative middle-aged guy with edgy musical taste when, in fact, you’re wearing a mass-produced shirt whose distressed look imposters as boutique tour merchandise you were too young and uncool to have actually purchased, now all carefully licensed, mass produced, and made conveniently available to you at Target, where you buy toilet paper and search for your youth.