How Nirvana merchandise became this season’s must-have piece .

The old band T-shirt. Until recently worn by speaker-lugging roadies, Beavis and Butthead and north London hipster dads under a tweed blazer – and, yes, gig-attending punters declaring their loyal support to the artist, obviously. But, as with chunky running shoes, football scarves and the uniform of DHL delivery personnel before it, the gaze of high-end fashion has fallen on this humble item of everyday clothing.

These days, everyone is with the band. It started, as these things tend to, with Vetements, which last year plastered artwork from the 1997 album Sehnsucht by Mr Demna Gvasalia’s beloved Rammstein across its tees and hoodies. This year, Mr Raf Simons returned to a very different industrial band, Joy Division. The iconic cover from the Manchester band’s 1979 debut Unknown Pleasures (based on an image of radio waves from a pulsar star, taken from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy) found its way into a capsule collection, along with New Order’s 1989 Balearic-inspired album, Technique. (Mr Simons has previous here: he also referenced both bands in a 2003 collection.) Supreme has just announced a collaboration with Public Enemy, and [LA](http://www.mrporter.com /mens/alyx/reversible-printed-cotton-blend-jersey-t-shirt/1010131?ppv=2) label ALYX offers a sly reference to Mr Neil Young in its latest batch of tees. Our money’s on Sonic Youth’s 1990 album Goo for the next reworking…

Where there isn’t an artist that fits the bill, some brands have gone as far as creating one. Neil Barrett has a fake tour T-shirt for one Mr Neil Barrett, while McQ Alexander McQueen’s collection includes merchandise for Poison Youth, a band that doesn’t seem to exist.

It’s also worth noting Off-White’s current selection. The brand’s founder, Mr Virgil Abloh, made a name for himself designing the artwork for Jay-Z and Mr Kanye West’s Watch The Throne record, and much of his output looks like it should be on the cover of an LP.

One band that keeps being referenced is Nirvana. Almost 24 years after the death of its lead singer, Mr Kurt Cobain, the band is everywhere. TAKAHIROMIYASHITA TheSoloist., which recently produced a capsule dedicated to The Beatles, is now offering its own take on Nirvana’s classic yellow-on-black smiley tee, along with sunglasses that ape the oval vintage women’s frames Mr Cobain often wore. Swedish brand Our Legacy, too, has its version of the smiley tee, although neither includes the refrain featured on the reverse of the original: “Flower sniffin, kitty pettin, baby kissin, corporate rock whores”.

Gucci, which recently worked with Aussie rockers AC/DC, has made what must be its own subtle nod to the Seattle grunge legends. Browse the latest collection on MR PORTER and you might spot the odd T-shirt or sweater with a familiar typeface. Under the aegis of creative director Mr Alessandro Michele, the brand has increasingly played with its signature serif font. But this is a step towards Bodoni Extra Bold Condensed, a cruder version of which, Onyx, you might know as “the Nirvana font”.

Gucci does nothing by accident. Mr Michele’s reworking of the almost-century-old Italian house has at times seemed gloriously haphazard, but every detail – down to the last abstract apothegm, patchwork comic-strip character or gilded flying tiger – is there for a reason. And given that the 45-year-old designer came of age in the early 1990s, there’s every chance he scrawled something in similar blocky glyphs across his sixth-form pencil case.

And here is the interesting twist with the current band-tee trend – it’s not really about the bands themselves. Mr Cobain certainly furthered the cause of the oversized thrift-shop cardigan (also very SS18) and the aforementioned gender-fluid eyewear, but he wasn’t known for wearing T-shirts emblazoned with his own band’s logo – although other artists, such as outsider musician Mr Daniel Johnston, profited from him donning theirs. Instead, the focus is on the people who turned these musicians into idols and wore their names proudly on their chests – ordinary gig-attending folk like, very probably at one time or another, you.

As for the Nirvana logo, it was first used for the band’s 1989 debut, Bleach. The album is famous for having been made on the cheap. It was recorded in a whirlwind 30 hours at a cost of just $606.17. The artwork was no different. As noted in the book Taking Punk To The Masses, Mr Jacob McMurray’s account of the birth of the Seattle grunge scene, the sleeve was created by graphic designer and musician (now tattoo artist) Ms Lisa Orth, who worked at the biweekly Pacific Northwest newspaper The Rocket. Having created the cover – a photograph of the band reversed out to create a film-negative effect – she got the paper’s typesetter to print out the band’s name and album title in whatever was already installed on the machine, to avoid spending time and money resetting it. That happened to be Onyx. “And thus Nirvana’s logo was born, mostly by accident,” says Mr McMurray.

So while nothing Gucci does is by accident, the same cannot be said of the brand’s reference points.