Grunge

Flannel shirts, ripped jeans, band T-shirts, oversized knitwear with holes in the elbows and a slip dress over a long-sleeved top. Colours are black, oxblood, bottle green, faded check and grey that used to be black.

Battered boots are non-negotiable. Silver jewellery, chipped nail varnish, eyeliner that was applied yesterday and still works. Hair is messy on purpose, or on accident, and it looks great either way. You shop at charity shops and inherit clothes from friends. Your jacket has a patch on it from a band nobody else has heard of. You look like you just walked out of a sweaty basement gig, and honestly you probably did.

Records, gig posters, a battered sofa covered in a blanket and a guitar leaning against the wall. Walls are dark or covered in flyers and photos.

You love secondhand furniture with scratches, fairy lights strung across a bookshelf and a lamp draped with a scarf. There is a stack of zines and a pile of notebooks full of lyrics and drawings. Candles are stuck in old wine bottles. The kitchen has mismatched mugs and a kettle that has seen things. Plants are a bit wild. Your home is a place where people crash after gigs, play records until three and talk about everything. It is not tidy. It is alive.

90s guitar bands, punk, garage rock, lo-fi indie and whatever your friend's band recorded last month. Music is loud, raw and felt in the chest.

Weekends mean a gig in a sweaty basement, a record shop in the afternoon, a pint in a pub with a jukebox. You go to open mics and art shows in squats and spaces that only exist for a month. You play in a band or you wish you did. Sundays are hungover and slow: chips, a long walk, a film in a cinema with sticky floors. You know the smaller venues in your city better than anyone, and you are always the one telling people about a band six months before they get big.

Shiny new trainers. A perfectly ironed shirt. Anything with a slogan that you did not write yourself.

You would never be caught in an outfit that is all one shop or a home that looks like a catalogue. Pastel colours and polished minimalism make you uneasy. You avoid anything that looks too expensive, too clean or too try-hard. You would never be caught pretending to like a band because it is popular. You would also never be caught wearing a band T-shirt for a band you have not listened to. That is a rule, and you will explain it to anyone who breaks it.

Go to more gigs, especially the small ones. Grunge is a music culture first, and your best nights and best friends are in those rooms.

Learn an instrument, or pick the one you abandoned back up. Start a zine, a playlist or a radio show. Make things. Invest in boots that will last and a leather jacket that will outlive you. Then look after them: polish, mend, resole. Grunge at its best is honest, creative and loyal, and it is about not pretending to be anyone else. Bring a friend to the next small gig, the one who has never been. You already have the attitude. Let it make something.