How Courtney Love made Romantic Ethereal fashion cool

"courtney love" by whittlz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Courtney Love’s ‘90s aesthetic reads as the ultimate contradiction—simultaneously more glamorous and grungy than almost anyone else’s personal style.

Courtney regularly wore glam elements—long gowns, silky fabrics, bling, and even tiaras.

But there’s always a twist that renders her looks not only luxurious but also casual and cool.

Often the twist is unstyled—or maybe styled to look unstyled—hair. Sometimes it’s rips in fishnet tights or the fact that her glamorous clothes are oversized or layered, like a slip dress over long pants.

Her style is the antithesis of boring, and in describing it, it doesn’t seem like it should work—but it does.

Vogue references her carefree attitude as her secret to pulling it off, and that’s part of it. So is her style’s sheer creativity, which suggests her authentic, individualistic voice.

But there’s also a key unacknowledged reason why Courtney’s aesthetic is so impactful.

Courtney Love dresses for her face

Courtney is a dominant Ethereal, with notable Romantic and Natural as her other style essences. Her soulful, alluring eyes and strong, blunt bone structure harmonize well with the faces of other Romantic Ethereal Natural celebrities.

But the best evidence that Courtney’s a Romantic Ethereal Natural is how harmonious she looks in her signature combination of glamorous, mystical, and carefree fashion, hair, and makeup.

Courtney’s ‘90s aesthetic is Romantically glam and conventionally sexy, with plunging necklines and lingerie-inspired pieces—and a lot of actual lingerie—appearing on regular rotation.

Lingerie also often incorporates gauzy Ethereal fabrics—she wears so many sheer Ethereal and shimmery elements that perfectly embody her face’s mystical vibe.

"Courtney Love at Carnegie Hall" by aphrodite-in-nyc is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The genius of Courtney’s style is that these glam and dreamy pieces only embody part of her beauty. For her fashion to be consistent with her face, she also needs to incorporate Natural casualness.

She demonstrates this in most of her outfits, including here where she pairs a sexy Romantic lace top with a much more casual dress and her signature undone, Natural hair.

"Courtney Love / Hole" by Stephen Eckert is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Courtney’s style creates gorgeous visual harmony by infusing Romantic glamour and dreamy Ethereality with Natural grunge.

Courtney makes Romantic Ethereal fashion cool

Maybe it sounds insulting to Naturals to say that Natural is the grungy counterpart to Romantic glamour. But Natural has a highly admired role in Courtney’s wardrobe—it makes it cooler. Long, flowy gowns don’t in themselves have much of an edge. They aren’t the clothes we today think of as cool.

Courtney makes Romantic and Ethereal fashion edgier by adding in Natural’s relaxed, carefree aesthetic—ripped fishnets, oversized silhouettes, wild hair.

Another way she makes Romantic fashion edgy is by wearing Romantic elements like lingerie as actual clothes. But the injection of Natural carefreeness into what would otherwise be an incredibly high-maintenance style is a critical part of what makes her vibe so intoxicatingly cool.

"Courtney Love" by tom_edwards is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

She makes a strong case for the beauty of messy hair.

Courtney’s style preserves the glamour and dreaminess of Romantic Ethereal fashion

One thing I like about dressing by your style essences is that if you’re a Romantic Natural, you don’t want to “average” the vibes of your essences, such as by wearing clothes that are somewhat but not very glamorous/Romantic or somewhat but not very casual/Natural.

Instead, you want to incorporate some elements that are highly glam and Romantic, and some that are highly casual and Natural.

So Courtney offers great style inspiration really for anyone, with her creativity and daring, and especially for people who have Romantic, Ethereal, or Natural. Even if you only have Romantic or Ethereal and no Natural, you can be inspired in your own personal style by the dreamy, glamorous dresses she so frequently wears.

Romantic Ethereal clothes are like visual poetry—passionate, luxurious, gorgeous. There’s beauty in the Romantic Ethereal aesthetic even when it’s not combined with Natural to make it conventionally cooler. In Courtney’s style, we get to see the Romantic Ethereal luxury preserved amidst the Natural grunge.

Courtney’s style is simultaneously contradictory and coherent

And to me that’s the secret of her iconic aesthetic—it combines glamour with utterly casual elements, and in that sense it’s a huge contradiction. But her style doesn’t contradict the vibes of her face at all. So it’s paradoxically a contradiction and totally harmonious, a contradiction and totally not a contradiction. And as decades pass, this visual paradox still captivates.