
Before doing so, she consulted with Frances Bean and Love, who, she says, gave her their blessing and assured her that Cobain himself would have understood. Farry had always assumed she would keep the sweater for her entire life and later leave it to Frances Bean in her will, but after battling cancer for more than 11 years, without adequate medical insurance, Farry saw no option but to sell her most valuable possession.


He used it as a sort of security blanket. In addition to the MTV concert, Cobain had worn it often during the final months of his life.

Amid the confusion, the Hole singer removed objects from wardrobes to gift keepsakes to friends. Farry had been the nanny of Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, and in the days after the Nirvana singer’s suicide she was one of the many people who passed through the house to console his wife, Courtney Love. It ended up at auction because its previous owner, Jackie Farry, put it up for sale when she needed money. He used the proceeds to buy one of Cobain’s guitars during the same auction. At the time, he said that he had bought it not as an investment, but out of genuine devotion, and that the garment had “a special place in heart.” After a few years of storing it in a safe in his Pennsylvania home, and likely after taking note of the growing market for rock memorabilia, he decided to put it up for sale. The catalog described it as “a blend of acrylic, mohair and Lycra with five-button closure (one button absent), with two exterior pockets, a burn hole and discoloration near left pocket and discoloration on right pocket, size medium.” The seller, a Nirvana fan and the owner of a team of race cars, had acquired it four years earlier, also from Julien’s. It was the second time that the sweater had been sold. It is now the property of an anonymous buyer who picked it up for $334,000 in a 2019 auction at the New York auction house Julien’s. It would also feature Jennifer Aniston’s wedding dress from the Friends pilot, Aaliyah’s Tommy Hilfiger underwear and the modest pastel-colored cardigans that actresses wore over their spaghetti-strap dresses on the red carpet.Īmong all those garments would also be the weathered cardigan that Kurt Cobain wore when he recorded MTV Unplugged with Nirvana. It would include the Virgin Airlines sweatshirt that Lady Diana Spencer wore one day while leaving the gym, the checked miniskirt suit that Alicia Silverstone donned in Clueless and the combo metallic skirt and baby-sized Angora jersey that all the supermodels wore in the golden age of Versace. The 1990s, or what we understand as the 1990s, have been resurrected so many times that almost every teenager with a Vinted or Depop account and Instagram access can make a list of the decade’s most iconic garments.
