indie sleaze

Indie sleaze is the messy, flash-photographed party style of roughly 2006 to 2012: skinny jeans, American Apparel, band T-shirts, smudged eyeliner and shutter shades. Picture a sweaty indie club, a point-and-shoot camera and a blog post of last night’s photos.

What indie sleaze looks like

• Skinny jeans
• American Apparel basics and band T-shirts
• Messy hair and smudged eyeliner
• Shutter shades
• Harsh, flash-heavy party photos posted to MySpace and blogs

The music matters as much as the clothes. Indie sleaze is tied to the indie rock and electro scenes of the time, the bands people found on music blogs, and the club nights where those photos were taken.

Examples

• “Low-rise skinny jeans and a vintage band tee? Indie sleaze is back.”
• “My 2009 Facebook albums are basically an indie sleaze archive.”
• “The flash, the eyeliner, the cigarette nobody should’ve been smoking. Indie sleaze.”

Where the name came from

The name was popularized by the Instagram account @indiesleaze, started in January 2021 by a Toronto-based creator who goes by her first name, Olivia. She told SPIN she considered words like “trash” and “hipster” before settling on “indie sleaze.” The account’s bio says the era “died in 2012.”

Trend forecaster Mandy Lee made the idea widely known with a TikTok in October 2021 predicting an indie sleaze revival. Not everyone bought it: Vice argued in 2022 that the “revival” was mostly an online echo chamber. Some critics later saw its influence in the messy party aesthetic around Charli XCX’s Brat in 2024.

Indie sleaze vs. hipster

There’s a lot of overlap, and “hipster” was the word people used at the time. Indie sleaze is the name given in hindsight to the party side of it: the nightlife, the flash photos and the mess.

Related terms

• mall goth: Hot Topic–era goth style
• alt: alternative, outside the mainstream
• e-girl: internet-native alt style
• gorpcore: hiking gear as everyday wear

See more terms like this in our internet aesthetics guide.