Redefining cyberpunk: The brands making clothes for a revolution
OMG. Okay, so these are my OBSESSION CONFESSIONS. I know, maybe it’s a little embarrassing, but come on… Surely I can’t be the only one? This series is about all the things that we can’t take our eyes off, the latest viral TikTok trends, the secret infatuations with certain former boyband members…okay I’m only going to say this one more time, surely I can’t be the only one?
It should come as no surprise that a global pandemic would change the way we dress. After all, fashion is an expression of our identities and the society that created them. It’s what makes it so powerful, so political. As Diana Vreeland once said: "You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes.” Even before Covid - the most disruptive event our generation has seen - the fashion industry was undergoing major shifts: high street to online, exclusive to inclusive, exploitative to ethical, new to pre-loved. Yes, 2020 might have seen loungewear sales rise by 1030%, but when we’re finally sick at the sight of our trackies (right about now), we’ll be left with the reality that Covid has turbo charged this zoom towards fashion’s new future.
Scrolling down our Instagram feeds, it seems that this future might already be here. Whilst the past couple of years has seen thrifting become the mainstream and enterprising Depop-ers turn to up-cycling and reworking to prolong the lifespans of our clothes further still, the last year has given rise to a new cohort of young fashion-entrepreneurs selling their designs online. Whilst coronavirus locked us in our bedrooms, robbing the arts industries of business and many young people of opportunities the internet has blown open the doors to access for these creatives, throwing in a load of fashion-hungry, screen-glued customers for good measure. Add a crippled job market and endless spare time into the mix, and you have the almost-perfect conditions for this new wave of budding fashion entrepreneurs to set up shop in a notoriously exclusive industry.
Is this a moment for independent brands? Are we seeing a shift in the structure of the UK fashion industry? The clothes say it all. We’re seeing mismatched hardware from the likes of CLUNKY GEMS and PLANET B. Graphic printed fabrics with retro designs from brands like MAE MORRIS and GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS, and futuristic ones from the likes of AMELIA MT and RUBY JUNE. There are new kinds of upcycling and reworking from AI MEI LI, 1XBLUE and SIO, and patchworked knitwear in streamlined shapes from ÀRÁMÌDÉ and LIKY FLORENCE. Through these clothes run common threads: Futuristic aesthetics - referencing both the y2k renaissance and accelerating technological innovation - fused with a DIY attitude that is a product of both the sustainable fashion boom and the need to make do in the midst of Covid the best we can. It’s all of the fantasy, resourcefulness and nostalgic futurism of a kind of new-generation cyberpunk. A reflection both of the weird, semi-dystopian future we’ve found ourselves in, and an electric hopefulness for better days.
‘Cyberpunk’ really does feel like an apt descriptor; a retrofuturist genre, an imagining of what the future could have looked like, that was born out of early Western sci-fi and Japanese manga and later popularised by anime and films like Blade Runner and The Matrix. The aesthetic is defined by the concept of ‘low life and high tech’. That is, the combination of futurism and anti-establishment counter-culture. If the features that typify cyberpunk style are patchworks of dark colours, layers of mesh, metal and leather, and nods to subcultures like rave, punk and goth, the clothes this new cohort of designers are making would be the younger sibling: the same silhouettes and clashing textures, but this time more colourful, more ornate. Even beyond the clothes, there is undoubtedly both something very ‘cyber’ in the way these brands popped up online in the year the real world imploded, and very ‘punk’ in the f*ck-capitalism craftsmanship of the clothes they’re making.
Take Amelia MT, who started making her printed tops during lockdown. ‘I was so bored’, she said, and was ‘constantly looking through my 35mm film photographs from being out and at raves’. From that, she had the idea to ‘print them onto fabric and turn them into clothes’ before setting up an Instagram to sell her work from home in Southampton. Her designs embody a DIY spirit, both in the way she started her business and in the tradition of the underground music scene that her designs pay homage to.
Kim, 15, from London, also started making her products whilst she was ‘bored in lockdown’. The name of her jewellery brand, clunkygems, hints at the duality that exists in her pieces, which combine both ‘repurposed and new elements’. They are at once shiny and other-wordly; mismatched and homespun. As such, Kim’s jewellery feels like a true product of the moment - the thriftiness of them speaks to the sustainable fashion revolution and Covid-enforced attitude of making the most, whilst the mess of wires and silver have a high-tech quality. At first glance, many of her pieces look as though they could be repurposed machines, albeit very beautiful ones.
There’s also a fantasy element present in Kim’s pieces. She describes how making them helps distract her from stress: a desire, or need, to escape that so many of us have felt in recent months. Via references to the otherworldly, like butterflies to hop onto the wings of or keys to unlock doors to another universe, Kim makes jewellery that helps transport their wearer to ‘a different place’. She’s not the only one. The cyberpunk genre is based on an alternate reality, almost-but-not-quite our own, and sits hand-in-hand with other retrofuturist and fantasy aesthetics like steampunk.
It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing the historical and fantastical (pirates and regencycore, fairies and witches) crop up in more ways than one. Take the upcycled regency-style corsets from ELLIE MISNER and slow-fashion fairy-wear from RHEABFUNKY. These are two other young British designers who have seen their sustainable businesses take off during lockdown, and it’s easy to see why. The sense of escapism their clothes provide is everything we need right now. If you can’t leave your house, why not let your clothes transport you to another world?
But back down to earth for a moment. We couldn’t document the resurgence of the cyberpunk aesthetic without giving the Y2K renaissance its credit. Remember TLC’s 1999 video for No Scrubs? Destiny’s Child x Charlie’s Angels? Even good old Kylie Minogue? They all took cyberpunk style for a spin back in the early 00s, helping solidify the trends we’re seeing today. Chelsea, who hand-makes ‘Slow Fashion for the Bad Bs’ under her brand Sio, describes how noughties pop culture icons like these have been the main source of inspiration behind her neon-splashed corsets and rave-worthy patchworked pieces. Chelsea’s work and the broader noughties bug speaks to a nostalgia for the clothes we grew up watching, at a time when we ourselves were coming of age. But maybe it goes beyond that, too. Perhaps it is a nostalgia for those clothes at a very specific time, a time when we feel like we’re on the brink of something new. Back in the year 2000, the millennium saw ‘hopeful plans for the future and technological paranoia’ collide into a collective hysteria, with forward-looking clothes to match. Fast-forward 20 years and 2021 feels similar: the optimism of seeing the status quo challenged, combined with a communal anxiety at the pace of change. Y2K clothes reflected that mood, and our clothes today seem to regurgitate it.
Like many of these other new brands, the pieces Chelsea is designsing channels all the rave, fantasy and futurism of the cyberpunk spirit, both original and noughties. Except this time it’s different again. These clothes are reimagined for a new generation. They’re being made by the hands of young people, and in a way that doesn’t destroy our planet further. As these businesses continue to flourish, and summer comes around, here’s a bet that we’ll be seeing flocks of young people decked out in these independent brands, wearing outfits that reflect all the madness of this strange time we’re living through. Maybe it is then we’ll see these clothes for what they really are: clothes for a revolution.