The Best Style to Pair With Every Iconic Fender Guitar

For better or worse, part of being a musician today is the optics—the right guitar and fit combo can sharpen your stage presence and become as recognizable as the music itself. Luckily, Fender has spent more than 70 years accompanying some of the world’s most iconic musicians, from established legends to trendsetters and disruptors, with guitars that have become inseparable from their sound and style. Each model has its own history, purpose, and musical movement, along with fashion moments that have become forever attached to the axes and the people who wield them.

So, if you’re looking to take your own touring style to the next level, we’ve paired some of Fender’s most iconic American guitars with the looks that complement them best.

The Stratocaster: Converse Chuck Taylors

Ask anyone to imagine an electric guitar, and regardless of their musical prowess, they would almost always think of the Stratocaster.

Introduced in 1954, its ergonomic design, from the contoured body to the C-shaped neck, and versatile features like its five-way pickup switch and tone knobs remain largely unchanged today. That’s why decades of legends, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to John Mayer, all fell in love with playing it, and why it’s still the default recommendation for beginner guitarists.

In much the same way that every musician has a trusty black-and-white Strat ready, everyone has a pair of black-and-white Converse Chuck Taylors, shoes that predate the guitar by decades. Originally conceived for the booming basketball court, this iconic century-old sneaker was so reliable that it branched out and became a symbol of counterculture.

And what better way to connect the two than with the architects of the punk genre, the Ramones, who used both a Stratocaster and Chuck Taylors to bring the house down during their worldwide dominance in the late 1970s.

The Telecaster: Levi’s 501

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the ideology of Americana, and its most iconic image lies in the next combination of style and strings. Compare the history of Levi’s jeans and the Telecaster, and you’ll find two pure utilitarian workhorses built for the backbone of industrial society.

Blue-collar workers needed pants that could flex and lift without tearing, and touring musicians needed a simple, solid-body guitar that could survive the road yet still hold it down without fuss when it came time to play. Each company manufactured these two products with purpose over aesthetics.

These similar items, made in two different industries, both converged when Mr. Born In The U.S.A. himself, Bruce Springsteen, entered the picture. 

In his now-legendary album cover, the rear of the Levi’s 501 against the US flag immediately evokes a distinctly American sound at first glance. On stage, he rocks out with his twangy custom butterscotch Telecaster, whose neck is switched with that of its predecessor, the Fender Esquire. Neither was ever the same, nor apart, ever again.

The best part? If you do end up purchasing these pieces, they’ll last you a lifetime, both in terms of fashion and durability. And if you’re buff enough, why not put on his vest for the complete denim-on-denim look?

The Jazzmaster: JCRT Loveless Plaid Shirt

The Jazzmaster, along with most of Fender’s offset offerings, built its cult following by appealing to artists in the “alternative” category. Ironically, many of its now iconic players didn’t specifically go out and look for weird guitars. The reality of buying an axe during the 1980s and 1990s is that flagship models were just too expensive, and these lesser-known offsets were a steal, often going for discounted clearance prices. 

The story always goes something like this: the alternative legend finds a cheap Jazzmaster collecting dust at the guitar store, pays half of what a Strat would go for, then plays it and falls in love with its quirks. That accessibility helped the guitar lead the charge in genres like shoegaze, pop punk, grunge, and indie–and their sound became all the more unique for it.

Alongside that, most of these genres wanted to be anti-fashion, and what better way to stick it to the stylish tendencies of the hair metal era than to put on a baggy, rugged red plaid shirt? 

If you’re a fan of shoegaze, get the JCRT Loveless Plaid Shirt, a homage to the pink and purple colorways of My Bloody Valentine’s album. Their guitarist, Kevin Shields, supposedly owns a dozen Jazzmasters, some for certain songs and others simply because he loves the guitar so much.

The True Rockstar Way

Leo Fender innovated his way into becoming a pillar of the industry, and countless guitarists broke through the status quo to carve their own path. Following in their footsteps, you can experiment and build a style that is uniquely yours as a performer. Just because aesthetics make a star today doesn’t mean you have to go with what everyone is doing.

So try on a few pieces and see how they pair with your guitar; see what connects not only with the audience, but also with who you are. And then from there, keep rocking on. The music will always rise above.