The Strokes
New York post-punk revival band whose early 2000s aesthetic became the template for indie sleaze fashion. Vintage tees, leather jackets, studied dishevelment. Channeling the Velvet Underground and early Television. The look traveled alongside bloghouse's sound, crossing the Atlantic and back again. By the time Justice and Crystal Castles were dominating blogs, The Strokes had already established the visual vocabulary: cigarettes, skinny jeans, leather, a studied casualness that suggested you'd just rolled out of a downtown loft. Mark Hunter's thecobrasnake.com documented this aesthetic in flash photography—the same leather jackets, the same vintage tees, now worn by people dancing to Justice and Uffie. The Strokes proved that nostalgia for New York's late-'70s punk and new wave scenes could be commercially viable, aesthetically coherent. When indie sleaze revived on TikTok in 2021, The Strokes' visual template was still the reference point—proof the aesthetic had staying power beyond its original moment.