Trend Watch: Rave Trash By Becky Lyon
18-06-2007
(From top left to right across; work by Beverly Fishman; Casette Playa; Pop Magazine, Gareth Pugh in House of Holland, Manish Arora, work by Pedro Barbeito, styling from Super Super magazine, Club kids at Anti-Social, Klaxons Myths of the Near Future album cover, Christopher Kane s/s 2007.)
Rave trash defines the most prominent subculture of the moment; Nu-Rave Club kids. Drawing from a plethora of late eighties/ early nineties pop culture references, this subversive tribe is putting the fun back into fashion. The look itself is a Timmy Mallet meets Leigh Bowery kinda mix-mash comprising of brightly coloured hooded tops, vibrant joggers and leggings, pac-man print tees and jewellery created from pocket-money tat.
It’s a trashy nod to the age of dress-up with frequenters of hot joints, Boombox at the Hoxton Bar and Grill and Electrowerkz adopting an anything-goes nonchalance with anything from thrift-shop chic to all-out drag. On the commercial side protagonists such as Klaxons, CSS and New Young Pony Club have led the assault on the mainstream aided by honorary ‘sponsor’ mag, Super Super and tribute issues such as Pop (Feb 2007).
On the ‘high-culture’ side of things two retrospectives on old-school rave have honoured London in The Last Days of the British Underground 1978 – 1988 at the ICA and Pills Stills and Bellyaches: 20 years of Rave at the PYMCA.
Meanwhile, the British fashion scene continues to show a nod to youth style with the likes of Gareth Pugh’s Bodymap tribute, Christopher Kane’s neon-romance, House of Hollands’ cheeky slogan tees and Mannish Arora computer graphics. Not to mention, Nu-Rave leader, Cassette Playa by Carrie Mundane. Glo, glo, glo.
Fashion Tips:
· Tees with over sized slogans- think ‘Drop beats not bombs’ or ‘Save the Rave’
· Lashings of neon- pink, yellow, green, orange
· Computer graphic tees- checkerboard, retro graphics (pac-man et al) and block-coloured geometrics in general
· Bric-a-Brac necklaces; plastic charms and mix-matched beads
· Mr-Motivator style tracksuits- the more garish the print the better
· Plastic-fantastic sunglasses
· Total abandonment of any conformity to colour co-ordination
