If we're talking guitars, my impression is that the Strat era had reached its zenith by the time Nirvana arrived. With Indie bands today, I can't see a Strat (and Strat-influenced guitars) dominance like what existed in the 70ies and 80ies when you hardly ever saw anyone with a Les Paul or an SG (and then they were likely to be either Al Di Meola or Frank Zappa diehards!), at least in Germany.
The Les Paul shape still cries "rock!" to me. And everyone knows what music you'll be playing if you strap on a Flying V or an Explorer - the harder kind. Just like I have never met a young musician playing a Fender Jaguar (or something similar) that did not have an affinity for Grunge or Indie - Kurt Cobain is their Jimi Hendrix (and that's ok).
But I don't really see a faith schism going on, more a matter of availability and price, any guitarist who can afford it will likely have a Fender
and a Gibson. There is the old adage that you can get a Strat to sound like a Les Paul but not the other way around, but then even a Les Paul-like sounding Strat
is not gonna look or feel like a Les Paul.
For some reason, Firebirds have never been really popular (especially in Germany) even though it is both visually and soundwise my favorite Gibson guitar model. And for all the tongue-in-cheek phony disdain I show for Fender basses here, as regards guitars my heart really lies with Fender Strats and Teles - being surrounded in my youth by Blackmore
and Status Quo
posters and pictures has no doubt done undeniable damage to my impressionable mind, but I also believe that I have a preference for the longer scale induced general snappiness and clarity of those two Fender models. And to this day, I automatically assume that if someone plays a Strat, then he is most likely a better-than-standard soloist - call it the "Strat guitar hero"-thing ingrained with me.