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"Twenty years ago, Kathleen Hanna wore a little red dress emblazoned with the words &amp;quot;Kill Me&amp;quot; while performing at a Rock for Choice benefit concert. The phrase was a reference to her band Bikini Kill, as well as a defiant message to those who weren&amp;#39;t cool with a &amp;quot;militant feminist punk band.&amp;quot; In the spirit of all things &amp;#39;90s once again stealing the spotlight, you too can sport some Hanna-esque sass\u2014in a recreation of the infamous frock, no less\u2014thanks to Bikini Kill&amp;#39;s new capsule collection for VFiles.\n\n We chatted with the seminal Riot Grrrl and her Bikini Kill bandmate Kathi Wilcox (who&amp;#39;s also in Hanna&amp;#39;s current band, The Julie Ruin) at the launch party, which coincides with the release of The Riot Grrrl Collection book. Read on to find out about the pair&amp;#39;s coolest concert getups and why, as a Hanna-designed poster in the capsule reads, punk rock feminism rules.\n\n How did this Bikini Kill collection come about?\n\n Kathleen Hanna: Kathi and I have slowly but surely started working on our own fashion stuff! We&amp;#39;ve made a bunch of shirts, and we want to start designing. We got the email from VFiles, and were like, &amp;quot;Oh! They do fashion, and they want to do something with us that sounds cool.&amp;quot;\n\n What&amp;#39;s the plan for the line?\n\n KH: We&amp;#39;re in this band called The Julie Ruin, and we&amp;#39;re putting out our record in September and then we&amp;#39;re going on tour, so it&amp;#39;s kind of hard to think about right now. It&amp;#39;s on the back burner, but I&amp;#39;d love to do something with Opening Ceremony. That&amp;#39;s like a fantasy! I&amp;#39;ve always loved how Kathi dressed, so I was like, &amp;quot;We have to make clothes together!&amp;quot; For my body type, since I&amp;#39;m shorter and a little bit curvier, it&amp;#39;s fun to design clothes that look good on me. Kathi does all the sewing! I need shorter shirts and stuff like that, so she made me a bunch of short ones!\n\n There&amp;#39;s obviously been this huge &amp;#39;90s revival lately. What do you think about all the nostalgia?\n\n KH: I don&amp;#39;t like the actual nostalgia part of it, but I do think nostalgia can lead to something interesting. Hopefully younger girls and women are getting interested in Bikini Kill because we&amp;#39;re very associated with the &amp;#39;90s and are like, &amp;quot;This speaks to me. I want to learn more about feminism, I want to read feminist books.&amp;quot; That&amp;#39;s what the revival could bring, and for me it&amp;#39;s been awesome because when we were in Bikini Kill, we had a lot of controversy surrounding us. I guess you can tell...we helped design a dress that says &amp;quot;Kill Me&amp;quot; on it! I actually wore a dress like that that was red with cutouts because as women in a militant feminist punk band, we got a lot of crap. A lot of people hated us. Men and women thought we were too strident. Now it&amp;#39;s nice because people are appreciating us! I go to lectures and girls are finding out about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre for the first time and are like, &amp;quot;This is my jam!&amp;quot; It still feel fresh to them. I mean, we&amp;#39;re over it, we&amp;#39;re in a new band\u2014we&amp;#39;ve moved on! But that&amp;#39;s the great thing about music. You can find some &amp;#39;60s pop record and feel completely invigorated by it, even though it&amp;#39;s so old.\n\n What was your uniform in the Bikini Kill days?\n\n KH: Kathi remembers all of it!\n\n Kathi Wilcox: For you, in the very beginning, it was these really short cutoff jeans and a striped tank top.\n\n KH: And black tights!\n\n KW: And combat boots, of course.\n\n KH: I had a T-shirt that said &amp;quot;girl&amp;quot; on it with a barcode. It played into the &amp;quot;generic girl&amp;quot; idea. Kathi wore little dresses with big coats over them so it looked just like coat and legs.\n\n KW: I would get these dresses, and to shorten them, I wouldn&amp;#39;t sew them. I&amp;#39;d just cut them! They were always too big, so I would cut the bottom and the sleeves off.\n\n KH: Kathi wore a lot of velvet!\n\n KW: Yeah, in the early years. It&amp;#39;s not good on stage! It&amp;#39;s really hot and it doesn&amp;#39;t wear well.\n\n KH: I wore a lot of Girl Scout uniforms. I also had a waitress apron, and clothes that referenced different female jobs and imagery about women. My most famous dress that I wore over and over had a muscled guy on it. It&amp;#39;s like a nightgown. You know those ones that have a girl in a bikini on them? I thought of it as the man inside of me. I thought of it as the man inside of me.\u00A0A lot of what we were trying to do was play with gender roles, so I tried to get pieces that expressed that.\u00A0And one of my favorite things was when I splurged and got myself a Betsey Johnson stretch plaid suit. It was pink and blue and green. We all wore it!\n\n KW: I borrowed that a lot on tour!\n\n KH: We switched clothes a lot.\n\n Do you still share clothes?\n\n KH: She&amp;#39;s wearing my tights right now!\n\n The DIY ethos was a big part of the Riot Grrrl movement. Do you have any favorite DIY tricks?\n\n KW: I always did the thing of taking a T-shirt and turning it into whatever\u2014a skirt, a headband. If you go to a thrift store and get a big T-shirt, you can really turn it into anything! You can even buy a really big muumuu and cut it up and sew it back together.\n\n KH: My big thing is finding handmade clothes at thrift stores. I look for stuff without tags. When I first came to New York, I got this gray dress that has a beige cummerbund built into it. It&amp;#39;s clearly someone from FIT&amp;#39;s failed project, but it became my favorite dress! It looks really expensive, and it cost like $10.\n\n KW: And it&amp;#39;s awesome!\n\n What music are you into now?\n\n KH: I like Grimes. I was just watching a bunch of videos of her, and I think it&amp;#39;s so cool she produces her own music. I really like this band called The Younger Lovers. They&amp;#39;re incredible! It&amp;#39;s this guy Brontez Purnell. He plays guitar, and he&amp;#39;s a dancer. I like Hunx and His Punx a lot. I was a big Gravy Train fan, and both those guys were in Gravy Train and split up. That&amp;#39;s always an exciting thing! I remember when Bikini Kill broke up, and we were like, &amp;quot;Why are people bummed?&amp;quot; The exciting thing is that when you split up, all these new bands start.\n\n What&amp;#39;s your advice to teen feminists?\n\n KH: Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about. That&amp;#39;s why I&amp;#39;ve had such longevity as an artist. I really, really care about ending violence against women, and I really, really love playing music. It&amp;#39;s super enjoyable! We actually just came from a practice that was really fun. Because I enjoy doing it and because I care so deeply, I&amp;#39;ll keep doing what I&amp;#39;m doing.\n\n Click through to see the Bikini Kill for VFiles collection!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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