Vintage Nirvana T-shirt

Vintage Nirvana T-shirt, Smile Logo 1992 Copyright.

The design was inspired partly by the smiley badge that took hold in the US during the early 1970s, the provenance of which is disputed. Various designers, including one in Nirvana’s hometown of Seattle, claim to have first drawn this beaming yellow logo. Wherever it came from, not long before Nirvana rose to prominence, it was adopted by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in their comic-book opus Watchmen and then by the acid house scene, which gave it an ironic sheen and parked it firmly in the counter-cultural sphere.

Legend has it that Nirvana’s more bacchanalian take on the smiley was in turn lifted from the signage of a now defunct Seattle strip bar called The Lusty Lady (tag line “Have an erotic day!”). Another theory suggests it’s a doodle of Mr Axl Rose, sketched by Mr Cobain, which would make sense since Mr Cobain was fond of trolling the Guns N’ Roses frontman. The slogan on the back of the T-shirt, yellow on black in a bold Onyx font – “Flower sniffin, kitty pettin, baby kissin corporate rock whores” – could also be seen as a jibe at Mr Rose’s expense, although it may well have been the band taking ownership of their place on the roster at Geffen Records. Back then, signing to a major label would have you tarnished as a sell-out, especially in notoriously snobbish alternative-music circles.