Lily Allen, Jenna Ortega… Indie sleaze was everywhere in 2025

by Violaine Schütz. Violaine Schütz.

Published on 4 July 2025. Updated on 1 April 2026.

While Y2K is still very much present, with the latest Louis Vuitton x Murakami campaign, the music videos of singers Tate McRae and the return of Paris Hilton, the aesthetics of the late 2000s and 2010s are gradually overshadowing it.

Coined “indie sleaze“, the trend refers to the looks and lifestyle spotted in England and the United States during the previous decade. The word first emerged in 2021, spearheaded by Brooklyn-based content creator Mandy Lee . And its use has increased from 2022 and on.

The indie sleaze trend, ancestor of the brat aesthetic

Ancestor of the hot trend “brat” launched by Charli xcx, the indie sleaze style borrows from punk, rock, clubbing culture and new wave. It is meant to be messy, shameless and untidy and has been popping up everywhere in pop culture and on the streets these past few months.

The main represent today is singer Addison Rae, wearing wireless earbuds and a purple American Apparel hoodie – the brand is the topic of a Netflix documentary – in her hit video for Headphones On. Other celebrities are also donning wellington boots at the latest Glastonbury Festival, such as Daisy Edgar-Jones, or the provocative Charli xcx, who sported the iconic skull scarf designed by Alexander McQueen at that same festival. Jenna Ortega wore a military-style jacket too.

Back in the days, social networks like Myspace, Tumblr and the party photo blog Cobrasnake were everywhere and people would wear T-shirts with holes, spun tights, dirty ballet flats, leopard prints, skinny jeans, thin scarves and tiny tank tops. But also pointed boots and thin scarves.

The idea was to look like you came out of a concert or an after-party, wearing make-up that was often dripping and the attitude of the rock stars of the 1970s and 1980s. A climax of the style of that era? The Dior menswear shows by Hedi Slimane and the collections of American Apparel – a brand that has become very problematic due to the inappropriate behaviour of its founder – April 77, The Kooples and Cheap Monday.

Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, Amy Winehouse… The icons of indie sleaze

The sexy, cheeky and festive trend was started by rock and electro bands (The Libertines, The Strokes, Justice, Klaxons, Arctic Monkeys) and their male and female groupies.

The great icons of this outrageous style were Kate Moss – who frequented the bad boy Pete Doherty – in black skinny jeans and leopard fur coat, Sienna Miller and her boho look, Alexa Chung, Keira Knightley in low-rise jeans and studded belt, Amy Winehouse and her threadbare ballet flats, Sky Ferreira and her leather jacket, Lily Allen and her pronounced eyeliner or M.I.A. in colorful vintage clothes.

To these mostly badass girls must also be added the it Girl Cory Kennedy, the model Agyness Deyn, the actress Mischa Barton (Newport Beach), the singer Alison Mosshart (The Kills), the singer Alice Glass (Crystal Castles), Pixie Geldolf, Irina Lazareanu, Alice Dellal, or the singer and actress Taylor Momsen. Series like Gossip Girl and Skins also made their mark on pop culture at that time.

The return of the 2010s as an alternative to the clean girl

We started to see the aesthetics of these stars and the music of that time emerge at the time of Covid, in 2020. As the clubs were closed, the world became nostalgic for a time when the party was in full swing and no quality cell phone could capture the moments of debauchery. The 2010s were also the years of the beginnings of social networks, which did not have the same magnitude as today. To make contacts, we had to go out.

The indie sleaze revival, synonymous with fun and letting go, also looks like a reaction to a certain hygienism: the look and lifestyle of the clean girl. With the advent of Instagram, we have seen the emergence of an archetype of the healthy girl with a minimalist style that has become a cliché.

In the expression indie, there is the word indie, and in the 2010s, we wanted to stand out, with an emphasis on the search for rare pieces in thrift stores and DIY.

A revival sometimes too polished

Today, an Instagram page called indie sleaze gathers inspirational images. Figures of the time such as Uffie, Justice and MGMT made a comeback. Kavinsky’s Nightcall, which was the soundtrack of this era, has returned to the forefront thanks to its version of the 2024 Paris Olympics, revamped with Angèle. Wireless headphones, turntables and film cameras are back in popularity.

But the idea of a counterculture, trashy, spontaneous and hedonistic, has somewhat dissolved. The producer The Dare copies, for example, recycles all the aesthetics of this era, but he doesn’t have the charm and authenticity. His persona is more of a pose than a relevant creative gesture. The same goes for the band The Hellp and the photographer Maya alias Stolenbesos : everything is very pretty at home, almost too polite. Whereas in the 2010s, we looked at ourselves less and enjoyed more, far from the ultra-documentation of our current lives.

Artists who lived through this era are rather skeptical about his comeback. Kavinsky recently told us: “It’s a bit beyond me all that, the revival stories. And I don’t feel nostalgia. Nowadays, it would not be possible at all to party so much. We are no longer in a good condition. We’re too old to be as stupid as we were back then. The body and the brain have aged. We have much less desire to be stupid. And then I still see the same people as back then, we’ve remained friends. So we evolved together .”

“People went out all night as if there was no tomorrow. It’s fun to look at the old images from that time. ” Uffie

Uffie explained to us that she was amused by this return: “I was talking about it recently with my friends from the Klaxons group. This comeback made us hallucinate. Seeing vintage photos of us in the evening, lying in a bathtub in colorful clothes, posted on Instagram makes me laugh a lot, but I think it’s quite nice. It was a fun time, with a great feeling of freedom, a naivety, even if the looks weren’t always great. People went out all night as if there was no tomorrow. “

The singer adds, almost with nostalgia: “It’s fun to look at the old images from that time. We all love to go back in time and fashion works in cycles. We had the nineties revival, then the 2000s. So it’s quite logical that we are interested in the Myspace years today. And then, I have to admit, I’m the first fan of revivals .”

Singer James Righton, ex-member of the Klaxons , admits to being flattered in the columns of Number : “I’m happy if it makes people happy! By that I mean that it was fun at the time and if people enjoy looking back, that’s not a bad thing .”