“I’m a messy eater,” admits Isaiah Lat, a 20-year-old student, DJ, and stylist from Chicago. “I used to wipe stains, but now I don’t mind putting a little oil or some spaghetti on my shorts. I think it’s very chic.”
He doesn’t believe a term has yet been coined for his favorite style of dressing. “It’s probably the dystopian, Mad Max, pirate, Steam Punk, mythological vibe,” he says, passionate about thrifting and DIY; She loves skinny jeans, capri pants, and visor-like sunglasses. He doesn’t spill pasta sauce on himself before leaving the house, but he says he likes his clothes to be “a little bit stained.”
There’s a new mood in fashion: Aesthetically diverse but distinct elements: camouflage, combat shorts and grunge plaid; goth-inspired makeup and boots; Silhouettes and garments inspired by 2010s indie misery; T-shirts decorated with slogans inspired by nihilistic internet humor reflect a common mood. Daniel Rodgers, British Vogue’s digital fashion writer, says much of this comes from the rebellious energy of kids “born in 2000 trying to reclaim what millennials have written off as pathetic.” It’s usually a little gross, a little oily, wrinkled and raw.
It’s a major departure from the homogeneous look that dominated visual culture for a decade, including the sleek, mass-produced athleisure wear and the ubiquitous “clean girl” trend that problematically centers on influencers who are or look like Hailey Bieber. white, slightly flushed skin and huge fluffy eyebrows.
“Young people’s style has changed pretty dramatically in the last four years,” says trend forecaster Sean Monahan, who predicted all of this in his 2021 article warning of an impending “change of weather.” Monahan specifically noticed a “huge shift away from streetwear,” which he blamed on “crypto bros” and “cheat dads” who spend too much money on limited-edition branded clothing. He said he heard the death knell at a mall in 2019 when he saw a father wearing head-to-toe streetwear-inspired Balenciaga sitting next to his embarrassed-looking teenage son. “I thought: This will not last long as a youth movement!”
Stained-pants-wearing 20-year-old Lat says he draws fashion inspiration from people he sees at parties, noticing many of them begin to dress in a way that might seem “vulgar and inappropriate” to outsiders. He thinks the look goes hand-in-hand with the “synth, techno” music scene of artists like Charli This is a deliberate rejection of the mainstream. “We are tired of late-stage capitalist fashion,” he says. “In the wake of Trump’s presidency, the conservative supreme court, and the stripping away of our rights, we want to dance and look hot — and this is our way of showing the government and corporations that we don’t need them.”
Depop’s trend spokesperson Agus Panzoni says we’re in the midst of “the rise of reference fashion”, where there are “specific references that can be brought into your personal style depending on your own sensibilities”.
This approach to dressing inspired Charli – yet accurately code now what it means to be an Internet trendsetter. From Gabbriette Bechtel’s gothic white foundation to Julia Fox’s claw-like nails, they all sport interesting, unique looks.
Even her eyebrows are unruly, at least compared to the decades-old giant HD brow trend: Bechtel’s are pencil-thin; At least three of the others have been bleached to make them invisible.
Monahan says the video’s aesthetic marks a return to “street style” that doesn’t feel “brand or product-focused.” This is something Johnny Cirillo, one of New York City’s best-known street style photographers, also noticed; He had never seen such a variety of looks on the street as last year. “There is so much going on; too much gothic. Lots of face jewelry; big, huge metal pieces, almost Mad Max. More robotic things – like metal arms. “We can say that people’s minds are constantly changing, they are awake at night and shopping on eBay, Grailed and Depop.”
Panzoni is also noticing a rise in what she calls “IRL-ness” in fashion: young people turning to faux fur coats after decades of dominance by puffer jackets, ripped wool sweaters and bright hues typically associated with online fashion. shopping.
One of the key proponents of this look is Julia Fox, known for going viral with her crazy, creative, and often barely-there outfits (sings Charli XCX on 360 (“I’m so Julia”); Lat tells me so) Fox’s stylist and friend, Briana Andalore, grew up thrifting clothes and hanging out with drag queens in midtown Manhattan, and she wears those influences with pride. Even though she now has access to all the designer brands, Andalore tells me that when she feels like it, she makes clothes out of things other people throw away as trash. “We show you how to make clothes out of shower curtains,” She says on the TV show OMG Fashion, which she is currently working on with Fox. You don’t need to have a lot of money. “That was always part of the fantasy.”
Youth rebellion through DIY fashion isn’t a new idea, of course: punks were into it in the 1970s. Monahan, who sees a “cultural rhyme” in many generations of millennials who grew up during the height of Abercrombie and Fitch’s twee marketing, notes that to some extent, millennials are doing the same thing. They went to university.
Still, there’s something particularly nihilistic about what’s going on right now, Rodgers says. The way people “dive into the looks of the past 15 years of mainstream culture and throw it all together in a wild bonfire pile” and sample subcultures without the “lifestyle obligations” that used to be part of wearing these clothes. He says that when microtrends suddenly become fashionable, they stay there: “So everything becomes a trend at once. Everything is porous and blurry; “It’s kind of a free for everyone.”
Panzoni explains that many young people “do not create themselves without caring about the rules; the idea that as long as you are yourself you will look hot”.
Very specific, internet-based humor is also a big part of the new mood. Sabina Meschke’s wardrobe is an example of this. The 27-year-old comedian and cafe worker, who lives in Bed Stuy, says he talks about his own childhood in Florida as he gets dressed. Her top pieces include a “doll dress with huge puffy sleeves and little hunter camouflage bows all over” by Florida-based indie designer Taylor Dorry, and a shirt that combines the slogan “Hooked on Jesus” with ruffled sleeves. with clown pictures.
He loves slogans; He likes to wear a hat that says “I don’t work here” when he’s at work.
Angela Qian, a 22-year-old recent economics graduate from Berkeley, shares photos of her outfits online. She says her look is based on “post-ironic” online communities. (Post-irony, he says, “is hard to explain, but a lot of it is based on surrealism and things that don’t actually make any sense.”) Haunted has a strong connection with cult brands like Starbucks that seem precisely designed. to surprise those who are chronically offline. Sample clothing includes a backless hoodie with an image of Oprah next to the words “FRI” and sneakers with an image of SpongeBob SquarePants next to the words “Live Laugh Love.”
Post-irony appears frequently among cult brand designers targeting young people raised on memes. The brand Uncle Inc, for example, produces bright pink, Juicy Couture-inspired hot pants with the word Rancid written on the butt in a horror-movie-style blood-dripping font. Co-founder Alex Holmes says the idea was to combine the “hot girl” aesthetic with the “I’m gross, too” confession. Other hits include shirts emblazoned with phrases like “Ketamine Tuesday” and “So Tired of Carrying My Big, Heavy Boobs All Day” performed with actor Rachel Sennott.
Fortunately, such slogans are unlikely to be adopted by over-the-top dads any time soon – although some elements of the style are already showing signs of infiltrating the mainstream. Rodgers notes that even Hailey Bieber, the ultimate icon of the “clean girl” look, dresses a little more sporadically and “somehow reflects what’s going on on the street.” “He’ll wear a football jersey with tailored pants and cowboy boots, or Fila shorts and a poet-sleeve shirt with Mary Jane, like someone’s going through the lost-and-found box on sports day.”
But for now, Rodgers says, the look “hasn’t yet evolved into a marketable aesthetic,” and with its blemishes and sometimes outrageous humor, its do-it-yourself nature and wild diversity, it’s an understood and accepted look that’s tribal at its zenith. It is worn by those who know. Monahan argues that this may resist adoption for a while because it’s a “teen-optimized strategy” for dressing. There is nothing forgiving or flattering about chaotic, unstructured outfits. Put simply: Not everyone can wear ugly fashion. It’s the “you can really only pull this off if you’re super attractive” look. “It’s a bit ironic, but it also requires some flexibility to reflect some of the looks I’m seeing.”
Clothes can look weird, even “ugly” to the rest of us. Or perhaps, as a reaction to a decade of Facetuned influencers, ultra-fast fashion, digitized social lives and wildly commercialized, screen-driven homogeneity, this new youthful mood, centered on creativity and second-hand clothes, not driven by brands, is quite beautiful.
Johnny Cirillo’s Watching New York: Street Style from A to Z is out now