Digital Detox Fashion: Why Gen Z is Obsessed with ‘Indie Sleaze’

A new wave of fashion nostalgia is sweeping over Gen Z, pulling them back to the grainy, messy, and decidedly unpolished aesthetic of the late 2000s and early 2010s—a look now widely known as “indie sleaze.” This revival marks a craving for the pre-social-media-filter era of raw, chaotic glamour, and at the heart of this cultural moment is French designer Isabel Marant.

The term, popularized by a 2022 TikTok video from trend forecaster Mandy Lee, captures the spirit of a decadent party scene that featured hole-filled T-shirts, ripped tights, and super-skinny jeans worn by figures like UK model Alexa Chung and US singer Sky Ferreira. The energy was documented by emerging photographers like Mark Hunter (“The Cobrasnake”) on novel digital cameras.

The strongest symbol of this comeback is the re-release of Marant’s most iconic design: the Bekett wedge sneaker.

Back in 2011, the suede lace-up high-top, named after a friend of the designer, became an instant staple after Kate Moss wore it in an ad campaign. The shoe’s appeal quickly crossed into pop culture, famously appearing on Beyoncé in her Love on Top music video and on Eva Mendes in Hollywood.

Fast forward 14 years, and the Bekett is back through a collaboration with Converse. The new campaign stars Lila Moss, Kate Moss’s daughter, who channels her mother’s original rock ‘n’ roll essence, pairing the trainers with loose hair and shredded denim.

“People kept asking over and over for us to bring the shoes back,” Marant told the BBC. “And why not? When something is well-achieved and good, it remains good forever. Kate, she is also forever.”

The designer believes the sales frenzy around her original and re-released designs is fueled by a dual nostalgia: that of millennials who lived through the era, and the “stronger form” of nostalgia felt by Gen Z for a time they missed entirely.

“On the one hand, you’re nostalgic for a time you lived in – but really, the stronger form of that feeling is being nostalgic for a time you didn’t live in,” Marant mused.

For young people today, the 2010s represent the “last gasp of freedom” before the current era of “constant digital surveillance and poreless AI filters,” Marant argues. The messy, gritty style is a rejection of modern digital perfection.

“Today everything is so polished, so fake. That is not rock ‘n’ roll,” she states. “It gives me hope to see that young people are also getting fed up, and saying, ‘These fillers and this fake French style, like Emily in Paris, is not very cool’.”

The Underground Look Goes Mainstream (Again)
College students are actively embracing this look. Chloe Plasse, a 21-year-old design student in Manhattan, frequently wears Marant designs hoping to capture the brand’s “glamorous but cool” essence, wearing it to university lectures instead of just music festivals. In Paris and London, luxury retail correspondents have already noted an uptick in Marant’s logo merchandise among affluent Gen Z shoppers.

Nineteen-year-old New York City student Nikki Ball Kumar calls Marant’s 2010 collection her “dream wardrobe” and has saved searches for the designer’s archive pieces—from skinny jeans embroidered with studs to shrunken tweed jackets—on resale platforms like eBay and Vestiaire Collective.

It is worth noting that at the time, the look wasn’t called “indie sleaze” at all, but rather “hipster style” or “Tumblr style.” However, its appeal to a generation craving a visceral, pre-filtered aesthetic is clear. As Marant advises her customers: “you should still wear them with a skinny jean. Or skinny black leather pants, you know? In Paris, all the women who grew up partying with Kate Moss, we have all stopped smoking. But we will never stop that. It is forever the cool French way.”