Creator of grunge, my ass

I recently had the misfortune of reading an article by Leah McLaren while I was browsing the newspaper online. My hatred for her is simple. Part of it is jealousy that she has managed to con a national paper into paying her for what is essentially her blog about her priviledged and boring life. The rest is that she isn't really a writer, and she sure isn't a journalist. My father thinks she's great and initially suggested I read her column because maybe I could, I dunno, relate. I guess as long as the old white dudes keep eating her shit up, she'll be okay. (In other news, I just googled her to find the correct spelling of her name and have found an entire community of people who also hate her "self-indulgent drivel". Woo hoo! And, before it is pointed out to me, I happen to know that my blog is exactly that. I just don't pretend that it's anything else.)
In this fluff piece of hers, cleverly disguised as a style article (no WAY would I have ever laid eyeballs on it otherwise), she referred to Marc Jacobs as "the creator of grunge." Then, not two days later, I heard the same claim on Fashion Television.
Um.
Okay. Now this is weird, and I know I'm not alone here, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Marc Jacobs. Don't get me wrong, I dig the guy and happily buy my Jacobs-inspired knockoffs at Club Monaco, but I think they're mistaken.
Sure, I was only a teenybopper, but I remember scouring Kensington Market for my perfect plaid flannel shirt (varying shades of blue check, and oh so soft), scrubbing the knees of my Gap jeans with sandpaper to help along the holes, and dragging my mother to every single shoe store in the Eaton Centre (not an exaggeration) in order to find a pair of boots that were like Docs or combat boots, but not quite (when you're a teen, it's the little things that distinguish you from your peers. My lace-up, nine-hole boots had green stitching and a 1.5 inch heel. They were just that bit sexier than Docs and I wore them to pieces. Heel replaced three times, ankles re-stitched, and the inside had molded to the shape of my foot.). I did all this long before the issue of Vogue that had some heroin-chic model draped in a knit, striped, floor-length gown with a matching scarf and toque, draping herself over the enormous tree trunk of some west-coast backdrop. I remember because I felt outrage. How dare the fashion industry appropriate angry street fashion!? How dare they take the one style I'd actually managed to nail down and make my own on my measly allowance and turn it into something exclusive and unaffordable. A few years later I would stop buying Vogue and Bazaar, publications I had been reading since the time I could only understand to look at the pictures, in a fit of poor-student fury at the fact that the dress the stylists had given to cover-model Gwyneth Paltrow cost as much as my four years of tuition.
What I'm saying is that it isn't fair to call Marc Jacobs the creator of grunge. Maybe as a reimagininig for high-fashion consumption, but it's hardly the same as Dior's New Look. After all, did Marc cry when his best friend called him to tell him that Kurt Cobain was dead? Did he paint his nails black in mourning? Maybe... But just because he's now again showing messy layers and plaid doesn't mean he gets to exploit the whole scene forever.
I will recant if Mr. Jacobs sends me clothing.