There’s a pivotal moment from the 1996 Brit Awards, where Jarvis Cocker, having just crashed Michael Jackson’s performance, in the most British act of cultural rebellion imaginable, straightens his vintage blazer, shakes his touseled mop of hair, pushes his NHS specs up his nose, and shakes his bum defiantly in the King of Pop’s direction. It’s peak Cocker—part art school intellectual, part working-class provocateur, entirely singular. And somehow, nearly thirty years later, that look feels more relevant than ever.

I’ve been thinking about Cocker lately, because his band, Pulp, just released More its first album in 24 years! Remarkably, for a band that was one of the standard bearers for Britpop in the 90s, it is only their eighth album. Prolific Pulp is not.

Cocker’s signature look however has aged well along with the man himself. In our current landscape of TikTok trends, there’s something refreshingly authentic about his style.

Accidental Style Icon

Cocker didn’t set out to become a style icon. Growing up in Sheffield, an industrial town in England, in the ’80s, during a time of economic uncertainty, his inimitable look was born out of necessity: charity shops, hand-me-downs, boot sales, and the kind of creative magpie spirit that turned thrift into art. The result was a uniform that spoke to a generation of British youth who couldn’t afford designer clothes but had impeccable taste and bags of attitude.

The formula was deceptively simple: ill-fitting vintage blazers, flared trousers, sometimes a suit and a tie, and those iconic thick-rimmed glasses. Whatever he was wearing, Cocker served up a studied dishevelment that looked effortless but was anything but. What made it work wasn’t just the individual pieces—it was the way Cocker wore them. There was an inherent contradiction in his style: formal pieces worn casually, casual pieces elevated by context. A tweedy collegiate jacket becomes subversive when paired with flared trousers and worn by someone who moves like he is conducting an invisible orchestra. Unlike other Britpop bands, like Oasis, though Cocker wouldn’t be caught dead on a football pitch, so anoraks and jerseys were out of bounds for the singer.

The genius of the Cocker aesthetic isn’t just in what he wears, but in what he represents. This is anti-fashion as fashion statement, a rejection of both the ostentatious excess of ’80s power dressing (think the movie Wall Street) and the grunge uniform that was dominating youth culture across the Atlantic when he first came on the scene. While American alternative bands were perfecting the art of looking like they didn’t care about their image, Cocker and his Britpop contemporaries were proving you could be both intellectual and stylish, both working-class and aspirational.

The look captured something essentially British: that particular brand of self-deprecating confidence that could make charity shop finds feel more exclusive than designer pieces (as of course they are). It’s Michael Caine by way of the dole queue, Virginia Woolf filtered through the NME, and it is the unofficial uniform of art students, music journalists, and anyone who has ever felt too clever for their own good.

The Modern Cocker

So how do you channel Cocker in 2025 without looking like you’re heading to a ’90s theme party? The key is understanding that his style isn’t about specific brands or trends—it is about attitude and proportion. The contemporary equivalent isn’t about replicating his exact look, but capturing its spirit: the mix of high and low, the unexpected combinations, the way he makes vintage feel futuristic.

Look for fabrics that defined the 70s such as velvet, corduroy, or even polyester. Start with the blazer. You want something with character, not the sharp-shouldered power suit variety, but something with history. YMC’s vintage-inspired tailoring captures that slightly rumpled academic look perfectly, while Universal Works offers boxy, unstructured blazers that echo Jarvis’s preference for clothes that look like they’d been borrowed from an older, taller relative. Other labels to consider include Diesel, Dsquared, or Husbands, all of which serve a particularly louche version of 70s rockstar. Consider going the full English with a double breasted suit. The choice of blazer is up to you but the way Cocker wears it is often ironic, rather than literal. The key is that worn-in quality that speaks to genuine passion rather than purchased cool. The trousers are crucial. Before skinny pants became ubiquitous, Cocker championed an almost uncomfortably slim silhouette that, perhaps because of how it looks on his lanky frame, is both androgynous and distinctly masculine.No Cocker-inspired look is complete without the glasses. Even if your vision is 20/20, a pair of vintage-style frames can transform your entire fit. Think chunky acetate f rames—the kind that suggest you’ve read more books than is probably healthy for you. If it worked for Cocker, Elvis Costello, and Buddy Holly, it can work for you. Don’t forget the accessories that make Cocker’s look sing: a vintage watch, a wide tie, maybe a worn leather satchel that looks like it carries first editions of obscure poetry collections. These aren’t flashy statement pieces—they’re the signals that you understand the difference between style and fashion.

In an era of fast fashion and Instagram influencers, there’s something deeply appealing about Cocker’s approach to style. It was sustainable before sustainability was trendy, individual before individualism became a marketing strategy, and authentic in a way that feels increasingly rare.More importantly, it proves that great style doesn’t require a trust fund or a personal shopper. It rewards curiosity, creativity, and the confidence to wear what speaks to you rather than what you think you should wear. In that sense, Cocker isn’t just the frontman of Pulp—he is the patron saint of everyone who ever believed that how you dress should reflect how you think. After all, as the man himself once sang, “This is hardcore”—and in 2025, authenticity is about as hardcore as it gets.