by “I’m a fake foodie,” admits Isaiah Lat, a 20-year-old student, DJ and stylist from Chicago, “I used to take out dyes but now I don’t mind a little oil or a little spaghetti on mine. broken short. I think it’s chic.”
He does not believe that a term has yet been coined for the way he likes to dress. “There’s probably this dystopian, Mad Max, pirate, Steam Punk, mythological vibe,” he says, very much on thrift and DIY; He likes skinny jeans, Capri pants and visor-like sunglasses. He doesn’t pile on the pasta sauce before he leaves the house but says he likes his clothes to be “a bit coloured”.
There’s a new mood in fashion: aesthetic diversity, but its disparate elements – camouflage, combat shorts and grungey plaid; goth-inspired make-up and stomper boots; silhouettes and garments inspired by 2010s indie sleaze; T-shirts emblazoned with slogans inspired by nihilistic internet humor – to express a common mood. Daniel Rodgers, digital fashion writer at British Vogue, says a lot of it stems from the rebellious energy of the kids “born in 2000 trying to reclaim the things that millennials wiped out like witches”. It’s often a little grotty, a little greasy and crumpled and raw.
It’s a big step away from the homogenous looks that have dominated visual culture for the past decade, including sleek, mass-produced athleticism and the ubiquitous “clean girl” trend, which problematically targets influencers who are – or look – Hailey Bieber, with white skin, gently blushing and huge fluffy eyebrows.
“The style of young people has changed significantly in the last four years,” says Sean Monahan, the trend forecaster who predicted all this in his 2021 article warning of a “vibe change” coming. Monahan noted in particular “a big move away from streetwear”, and blames the “crypto bros” and the “hype dads” who spend too much money on limited edition branded clothing. He said he heard the death in a shopping mall in 2019, when he saw a dad wearing streetwear-inspired Balenciaga while sitting next to his mortified teenage son. “I thought: this will not last as a youth movement!”
Lat, the 20-year-old man in colored pants, says he gets his fashion inspiration from people he sees at raves, many of whom, he noticed, have started dressing in a way that might to be “indecent and inappropriate” to outsiders. He thinks the look goes hand-in-hand with the “synth, techno” music scene with artists including Charli XCX, Snow Strippers (a band whose grim aesthetic could be straight from Harmony Korine’s 2012 film Spring Breakers), Shygirl and AG Cook. The mainstream is deliberate denial. “We are sick of late capitalist fashion,” he says. “After the Trump presidency, with the conservative supreme court and our rights being destroyed, we want to dance and look hot – and this is our way of showing the government and corporations that we don’t need them.”
Agus Panzoni, a trends spokesperson for Depop, says that we have “an increase in reference fashion”, where there are “specific references that can be put into a personal style depending on your own sensibility”.
It was this approach to dressing that inspired Charli XCX’s viral hit 360, (“I’m your favorite reference, baby,” go the lyrics.) In the song’s video Charli gathers a coterie of “hot internet girls” as They are jokingly called – yet accurately – code what it means to be an internet guide now. They all wear unusual, unique looks, from Gabbriette Bechtel’s goth-white foundation to Julia Fox’s talon-like nails.
Even their eyes are rebellious, at least compared to the trend of decades for huge HD eyebrows: Bechtel has a thin pencil; at least three of the others are predicted to invisibility.
The video’s aesthetic is about a return to “street style”, says Monahan, which doesn’t feel “driven by a brand or a product”. That’s something that Johnny Cirillo, one of New York’s most famous street style photographers, also noticed; he had not seen such a variety of looks on the street as in the past year. “There is so much going on; so much goth. Lots of face jewelery – big metal pieces, almost Mad Max. More robotic things – like metal sleeves. You can tell people’s minds are constantly changing, they’re up at night scrolling and shopping on eBay, Grailed and Depop.”
Panzoni also notes a rise in what she calls “IRL-ness” in fashion: young people focusing on, say, faux fur coats, after decades of puffer jackets, cropped wool sweaters and bright colors usually associated with them online. shopping.
One of the main proponents of this look is Julia Fox, who is famous for going viral for her wild, imaginative and often barely there outfits (“I’m Julia,” sings Charli XCX in 360; Lat tells me she is: “our fashion messiah!”) Briana Andalore’s stylist and friend grew up rocking clothes and hanging out with drag queens in midtown Manhattan, and he wears those influences proudly. Even though she has access to all the designer brands, Andalore tells me she still makes outfits out of other people’s discarded items when the mood strikes her. In OMG Fashion, the TV show she’s currently working on with Fox, she says: “We show how to make garments out of shower curtains. You don’t have to have a lot of money. That was always part of the fantasy.”
Youth rebellion through DIY fashion is not a new idea, of course: it was the punks in the 1970s. To some extent millennials have done the same thing themselves, points out Monahan, who sees a “cultural divide” in the way that many millennials, who grew up in the twee marketing era of Abercrombie and Fitch’s peak, have found. vintage clothes and an indie aesthetic when they went to college.
Still, there’s something particularly nihilistic about what’s happening now, Rodgers says. The way people are “dipping into the look of the last 15 years of mainstream culture and putting it all together in a wild bonfire” and sampling from subculture without the “lifestyle obligations” that used to be part of the clothes to wear that. He says that once micro-trends come into style, they stay: “So everything is trending right away. Everything is porous and fuzzy; it’s kind of a free for all.”
Panzoni says many young people are buying into ideas about “creating yourself without caring about the rules; think you’ll look hot as long as you’re alone”.
Very specific, internet-based humor is also a big part of the new mood. Sabina Meschke’s wardrobe is a case in point. The 27-year-old comedian and coffee shop worker who lives in Bed Stuy says she’s referencing her own childhood in Florida when she dresses. Among her most admired pieces are a “baby doll dress with giant puff sleeves and little bows all over the world in hunting camo” by Florida-based independent designer Taylor Dorry and a shirt that combines the slogan “Hooked on Jesus” with printed ruffled sleeves. with pictures of clowns.
She loves slogans; She likes to wear a hat that says “I don’t work here”, when she is working.
Angela Qian, a 22-year-old who just graduated from Berkeley with an economics degree, shares photos of her outfits online. She says her look is rooted in the “post-ironic” communities online. (The post-irony is hard to explain, she says, but a lot of it has to do with surrealism, and things that don’t really make sense). to block those who are not chronically online. Sample clothing includes a backless hoodie with a picture of Oprah printed on it next to the text: CUM and sneakers decorated with a picture of SpongeBob SquarePants next to the phrase “Live Laugh Love”.
Post-irony comes up a lot among the designers of cult brands aimed at young people who were raised on memes. The brand Uncle Inc, for example, makes a pair of bright pink, Juicy Couture-inspired hot pants with the word Rancid written across the stream in horror-movie-style bleeding font. The idea, says co-founder Alex Holmes, was to juxtapose a “hot girl” aesthetic and admit “I’m gross too.” Other hits include shirts with phrases such as “Ketamine Tuesday” and, in collaboration with actress Rachel Sennott, “So Exhausted As Carrying Around My Big Heaving Tits All Day”.
Fortunately, it seems unlikely that the hype dads will adopt such slogans anytime soon – although some elements of this style are already showing signs of percolating into the mainstream. Even Hailey Bieber, the ultimate icon of the “clean girl” look, is dressing a little more modestly, Rodgers points out, and “somehow reflecting what’s happening on the street. She’ll wear a football shirt with some tailored trousers and cowboy boots or a polo shirt with Fila shorts and Mary Jane, like someone sifted through a box of lost property on sports day.”
For now, though, Rodgers says, the look is “yet to crystallize into a marketable aesthetic” and, with its edgy edge, its stains and sometimes quirky humor, its DIY nature and its wild variety, it’s understandably tribal. and spent by those in the know. It may resist adoption for a while, according to Monaghan, because it is a “youth-optimized strategy” for grooming. There is nothing forgiving, or dull, about a chaotic, unstructured outfit. He puts it simply: not everyone can wear ugly fashion. It doesn’t matter “you can’t really pull it off unless you’re very attractive. It’s a bit ironic, but it’s also a bit of flex to be able to pull off some of the looks I see”.
The outfits may seem strange, even “ugly” to the rest of us. Or perhaps, in response to a decade of Facetuned influencers, fast fashion, digitized social lives and the monotony of wild, screen-driven commercialism, it’s this new youth mindset – not brand-led, creativity-driven and second-hand clothes – not beautiful enough.
Johnny Cirillo’s Watching New York: Street Style A to Z available now
