Fashioning Fur: the vintage-obsessed indie band that went viral aping Wes Anderson – here’s how the UK hipsters crafted that 60s aesthetic and why they’re splitting after this 2023 Asia tour

Oct 8 , 2023

UK indie band Fur are known as 60s fashion revivalists and will be in Hong Kong in October. Photos: @furbabyfur/Instagram

Brighton-based UK indie band Fur enjoyed overnight success in Southeast Asia and South America after breakout single ‘If You Know That I’m Lonely’ went viral, thanks in part to its retro music video

After debut album When You Walk Away failed to live up to the hype, the band decided to call it quits after a final Asian tour that stops in Hong Kong on October 10

It’s no secret that half of fame in any pursuit is image – and in no art form is that more true than music. From glammed-up divas to strung-out grunge chic, style is everything. Even not having an image, is an image.

That’s sure the case for Fur, the earnest 60s-obsessed rock ‘n’ roll revivalists that were catapulted to internet fame after their throwback fashion went viral courtesy of an artfully retro music video. Yes, even the bots aren’t immune to a well-dressed group of young men.

YouTube video player

“It was all to do with YouTube algorithms,” admits frontman Will Murray, discussing the inexplicable overnight success of “If You Know That I’m Lonely”, which clocked 38 million views when the then-unknown Brighton band dropped it on YouTube in late 2017. “It’s the first time I noticed that a music video would go viral purely because of the music video. I think at that point we had like 1,500 subscribers on YouTube – it was all based on location-based algorithms.”

The appeal, even they admit, was the video’s dreamy aesthetic – shot in a nostalgic, sepia-tinged 16mm film, the band carefully dressed in vintage shirts, slacks and boots, strumming guitars in a pastoral, autumnal glow. It was so pitch-perfect in its execution, many suspected its success could not be a fluke. “We’ve been accused of a lot of things, that it’s all like planned, and there’s a major label behind it all,” adds bassist Will Tavener, aka “Tav”. “But honestly we’ve been an indie band since the beginning really.”

UK indie band Fur are known as 60s fashion revivalists

“The ‘If You Know that I’m Lonely’ video was the first time that we’d thought, like, let’s try and take the look a bit more seriously,” adds Murray, “and when we decided on committing to a look, that definitely helped. That was just a point in our band where things sort of clicked into place. We started slightly getting into wearing that [vintage] stuff around that time anyway – the decision to then put that into the video lent into the director’s decision to shoot it all on 16mm and that old sort of … he doesn’t like to hear it, but it’s kind of Wes Anderson.”

Did they shop especially for the video? “A bit of both,” he admits. “Some clothes we bought for it, but all tried to go with the same sort of palette.” Their shop of choice? Brighton’s Beyond Retro.

UK indie band Fur are playing Hong Kong on October 10

“It’s a nod to the 60s, but it’s not overtly 60s,” adds Murray. “Something I noticed is that people who want to dress 60s quite often massively overdo it, overcompensate. If you actually look back at what people were wearing day to day in the 60s, they weren’t all in crazy bright colours, wild things. A lot of the standard fashion wouldn’t look so out of place now. It was very understated – we weren’t trying to do Jimi Hendrix in a feather boa.”

Perhaps, but they were wilfully aware of the golden oldies they were mining for sonic treasure. Murray grew up listening to The Kinks and The Doors, and channelled all that youthful sense of romance into the music he wrote as much as the clothes he wears. “I think we can blame our dads for all this, really,” adds Tav. “Just glad we didn’t pick up the influence from hearing Queen or the Scissor Sisters in the car,” retorts Murray.

It’s perhaps too easy to point to their origins: four students who met at performing arts university Bimm in Brighton, a southern UK town renowned for its retro-leanings, as a hub for mod culture, and as the setting of The Who’s monolithic rock opera/movie Quadrophenia.