2014 the year of...internet fashion subcultures
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
1/13
2014 the year of... internet fashion subcultures
From Normcore to Health Goth, 2014 was the year that fashions subcultures started taking theircues from the net instead of the street.
(mailto:?body=2014 the year of... internet fashion subcultures https://i-
d.vice.com/en_gb/article/2014-the-year-of-internet-fashion-subcultures)
"I think if anything, instead of being all about teenage angst, we are trying to exude a feeling of
being suspended in an ever changing internet environment, just trying to remain chill and comfortable
at a time when a lot of horrible shit is happening on and offline." Health Goth founders Chris Cantin
Mike Grabarek and Jeremy Scott said in an interview with Complexearlier this year, as their
(https://i-
d.vice.com/en_gb)
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gbmailto:?body=2014%20the%20year%20of...%20internet%20fashion%20subcultures%20https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/2014-the-year-of-internet-fashion-subcultures -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
2/13
Facebook page dedicated to images of hyper-real monochrome sportswear went viral. Health Goth
was being picked up as an underground fashion trend in the The New York Times,Marie Claire and
The Guardian, places usually not so concerned with fashion's underground trends.Like Normcore,
Street Goth, Sea Punk and Vaporwave before it, Health Goth was going mainstream and was bein
met with broadsheet derision and delusion.
Sure this has all happened before though; from the Teddy Boys, Skinheads, Mods and Hippies, the
Punks and New Romantics that i-D began documenting straight up in the early 80s, the youth have
always used fashion as a way of creating a new culture and differentiating themselves from their
parent's generation and the history of youth culture is equally the history of the adult world's ridicule,
fear and misunderstanding of it. Youth fashion subcultures are naturally tribal, and this tribalism lends
itself to media scare mongering.
It's not a British phenomenon either; writing in the 50s about the Mexican-American Pachuco youth
cult, the poet Octavio Paz wrote of a subculture of second generation immigrants who, feeling dista
from their parents' Mexican heritage, and sharing nothing in common with the America they found
themselves in, expressed themselves with clothes and a lifestyle that rejected both. They were a
generation who existed in the hyphen between Mexican and American. But Paz's description of the
Pachuco could apply to any number of fashion's subcultures; "Since the Pachuco cannot adapt
himself to a civilization which, for its part rejects him, he finds no answer to the hostility surrounding h
except this angry affirmation of his personality."
This angry affirmation feels like it could be the root of much of Britain's post-war youth identity, there'
nothing, of course, more satisfying to a teenager, than a parent's cry of you aren't going out dressed
like that as they leave the house, or a look that mixes fear and disgust on the street. And it's this
rebellion that lies at the heart of the moments when we've pushed things forward by transgressing
upon an adult world of appropriate taste and attire with a youthful desire to test the limits; whether its
copying Boy George's make-up or Sid Vicious' swastika t-shirt, it's not simply out to shock but also
differentiate between us and them.
-
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
3/13
But the most sticking of youth fashion trends this year, Normcore, is about exactly the opposite. It's no
about a shocking differentiation from the past, it's about fitting in and assimilating, a fashion statemen
against flamboyance whilst rejecting the sleekness of minimalism. It's appropriation instead of
innovation, integration instead of opposition, and instead of howls of how awful they look, parents
were glibly commenting below the line that they'd been Normcore all along and had never even
known it.
K Hole, the group who coined the term, put it thus; "The most different thing to do is to reject being
different all together Having mastered difference, the truly cool attempt to master sameness."
Normcore hit the nail on the head of a social moment, not just in fashion, but a wider reaction again
the neoliberal mantra of choice that's dominated Western politics for the past 35 years. K Hole
described it as Acting Basic;"Normcore doesn't want the freedom to become someone."
What seems most interesting, in this new wave of fashion subcultures to proliferate from the image-
sharing world of the internet, is that they are met with derision and humour instead of fear. On the
surface you could read Normcore and Health Goth as resolutely apolitical, which may seem strang
as its not like there isn't anything for our generation rail against. But maybe we are looking for politic
in the wrong places and trying to see in them an old style of fashion politics that isn't relevant any
more.
But it does begs the question then whether we should even consider Normcore or Health Goth as
subcultures if they no longer seek to exist outside of the larger culture and instead are trying to
replicate and assimilate into it. Like much of our current cultural landscape it's been totally
recalibrated by the internet.
"More of the same, forever", is how the music writer and cultural theorist Mark Fisher described ourcurrent cultural climate in a piece for E-Flux earlier this year. Our internet generation has had a
lingering fascination with dredging up and revisiting the past because it's suddenly become so easily
available to us.
-
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
4/13
Think of all the youth cultures and movements to come about recently and they've all been prefixed
with nu- andpost-;in the last 15 years we've had nu-rave, nu-metal,new lad, the new rock revolution,
post-punk revival, post-internet. The last 15 years of mainstream and underground culture has been
defined by its relationship to something else that happened before.
Mark Fisher writes of "music culture's role as one of the engines of cultural acceleration," that
subcultures are intimately mixed in their relationships between music and fashion. "From the late 50s
onward," he writes, "music culture became the zone where drugs, new technologies, (science)
fictions, and social movements could combine to produce dreamings suggestive glimmers of world
radically different from the actually existing social order." It isn't a problem, he explains, that these
dreamings were co-opted by the mainstream, it was that pushed things forward and imagined a new
world. It's not a problem that Punk became a cartoon, because by then it's already changed the
world.
It's a point that the founders of Health Goth brought up in an interview with i-D earlier this year.
"Accelerationist aesthetics," they explained "are really about how subcultures can develop in our
'capitalist' society while acting destructively towards it by appropriating the visual elements used to
perpetuate it." They are suggesting that the transgressions Mark Fisher speaks of have run their
course, and subcultures now have to find a new way to exist in the age of the internet, and to exist
within a new kind of political spectrum. Interestingly both Health Goth and Normcore seem to
definitively reference the here and now, are not harking back to an old vision of Britain or America's
subcultural past.
K Hole say as much in their trend report. "It used to be possible to be special to sustain unique
differences through time As long as you were different from the people around you, you were safe
But the Internet and globalisation fucked this up for everyone The assertion of individuality is a rite o
passage, but
generational branding strips youth of this agency. The anxiety that there is no new terrain is always a
catalyst for change."
-
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
5/13
Connect to i-Ds world! Like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/iDmagazineofficial), follow u
on Twitter (https://twitter.com/i_D) and Instagram (http://instagram.com/id_magazine).
Topics: think pieces (/en_gb/topic/think-pieces), felix petty (/en_gb/topic/felix-petty), 2014 the year of(/en_gb/topic/2014-the-year-of), the year of (/en_gb/topic/the-year-of), normcore (/en_gb/topic/normcore),health goth (/en_gb/topic/health-goth), k hole (/en_gb/topic/k-hole), internet (/en_gb/topic/internet), fashion(/en_gb/topic/fashion), subculture (/en_gb/topic/subculture), mark fisher (/en_gb/topic/mark-fisher),accelerationism (/en_gb/topic/accelerationism), review (/en_gb/topic/review)
They seem to say that our subcultural fashion past can no longer transgress or shock the mainstream
when these elements they pushed have been so completely co-opted by the mainstream. In the face
of this, when transgression can no longer transgress, and the shocking can no longer shock, 2014 fe
ripe for a world that pushed intergrational aesthetics of Normcore and futurist sportswear of Health
Goth, as K Hole said, "the most different thing to do is to reject being different all together." And it's
this that provided a more honest and plausible attempt to push culture forward in 2014.
Credits
Text Felix Petty
(mailto:?body=2014 the year of... internet fashion subcultures https://i-
d.vice.com/en_gb/article/2014-the-year-of-internet-fashion-subcultures)
recommended
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/mark-fisherhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/accelerationismhttp://instagram.com/id_magazinehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/internethttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/health-gothhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/normcorehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/the-year-ofhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/think-pieceshttps://twitter.com/i_Dhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/felix-pettyhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/k-holemailto:?body=2014%20the%20year%20of...%20internet%20fashion%20subcultures%20https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/2014-the-year-of-internet-fashion-subcultureshttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/fashionhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/reviewhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/subculturehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/2014-the-year-ofhttps://www.facebook.com/iDmagazineofficial -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
6/13
from drones to bio-hacking, are we ready for a tech takeover? (/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio
hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeover)
autumn/winter 15 loves a man in uniform (/en_gb/article/autumnwinter-15-loves-a-man-in-uniform
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/autumnwinter-15-loves-a-man-in-uniformhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeoverhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeoverhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/autumnwinter-15-loves-a-man-in-uniform -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
7/13
why blow up is still the ultimate fashion film (/en_gb/article/why-blow-up-is-still-the-ultimate-fashion
film)
connect with i-D
(https://www.facebook.com/iDmagazineofficial) (https://twitter.com/i_D) (i-donline) (https://www.youtube.com/user/idmagazineonline?sub_confirmation=1)
(http://instagram.com/id_magazine) (https://plus.google.com/109551069660866502666/posts)
(https://soundcloud.com/i-d-online-1)
email go
newsletter
most popular
http://instagram.com/id_magazinehttps://twitter.com/i_Dhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/why-blow-up-is-still-the-ultimate-fashion-filmhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/why-blow-up-is-still-the-ultimate-fashion-filmhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/i-donlinehttps://www.youtube.com/user/idmagazineonline?sub_confirmation=1https://soundcloud.com/i-d-online-1https://plus.google.com/109551069660866502666/postshttps://www.facebook.com/iDmagazineofficial -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
8/13
golf channel b2b gala drop: music to... glide to.
(/en_gb/article/golf-channel-b2b-gala-drop-
music-to-glide-to)
spring/summer 15 ad campaigns part four
(/en_gb/article/springsummer-15-ad-campaign
part-four)
balmain autumn/winter 15
(/en_gb/article/balmain-autumnwinter-15)
new thriller, catch me daddy, spreads awarenes
of honour killing (/en_gb/article/new-thriller-catch-me-daddy-spreads-awareness-of-honour-
killing)
busted: willow smith and the shirt that broke the
internet (/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-
the-shirt-that-broke-the-internet)
jeremy scott wins big at first annual fashion LA
awards (/en_gb/article/jeremy-scott-wins-big-a
first-annual-fashion-la-awards)
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/new-thriller-catch-me-daddy-spreads-awareness-of-honour-killinghttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/springsummer-15-ad-campaigns-part-fourhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/balmain-autumnwinter-15https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/new-thriller-catch-me-daddy-spreads-awareness-of-honour-killinghttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/jeremy-scott-wins-big-at-first-annual-fashion-la-awardshttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/balmain-autumnwinter-15https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internethttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/jeremy-scott-wins-big-at-first-annual-fashion-la-awardshttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/golf-channel-b2b-gala-drop-music-to-glide-tohttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/golf-channel-b2b-gala-drop-music-to-glide-tohttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/springsummer-15-ad-campaigns-part-fourhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internet -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
9/13
i-dj: breakage (/en_gb/article/i-dj-breakage) rick owens on his runway dick tricks
(/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-
tricks)
emma watson takes #heforshe campaign to the
next level (/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-level)
3.1 phillip lim autumn/winter 15
(/en_gb/article/31-phillip-lim-autumnwinter-15
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-trickshttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/31-phillip-lim-autumnwinter-15https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/i-dj-breakagehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-levelhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/i-dj-breakagehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-levelhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/31-phillip-lim-autumnwinter-15https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-tricks -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
10/13
0 Comments
today on i-D
emma watson takes #heforshe campaign to the
next level (/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-
heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-level)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/EMMA-WATSON-TAKES-HEFORSHE-
CAMPAIGN-TO-THE-NEXT-LEVEL)
from drones to bio-hacking, are we ready for
tech takeover? (/en_gb/article/from-drones-to
bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeover)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/FROM-DRONES-TO-BIO-HACKING-ARE-WE-
READY-FOR-A-TECH-TAKEOVER)
NEWS THINK PIECES
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeoverhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeoverhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/from-drones-to-bio-hacking-are-we-ready-for-a-tech-takeoverhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-levelhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-levelhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/emma-watson-takes-heforshe-campaign-to-the-next-level -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
11/13
busted: willow smith and the shirt that broke the
internet (/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-
and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internet)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/BUSTED-WILLOW-SMITH-AND-THE-SHIRT-
THAT-BROKE-THE-INTERNET)
watch givenchy's autumn/winter 15 menswea
show (/en_gb/article/watch-givenchys-
autumnwinter-15-menswear-show)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/WATCH-GIVENCHYS-AUTUMNWINTER-15-
MENSWEAR-SHOW)
goodbye to oh dearism: a guide to the work of
adam curtis (/en_gb/article/goodbye-to-oh-
dearism-a-guide-to-the-work-of-adam-curtis)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/GOODBYE-TO-OH-DEARISM-A-GUIDE-TO-THE-
WORK-OF-ADAM-CURTIS)
the beautiful issue (/en_gb/article/the-
beautiful-issue)
READ MORE (/EN_GB/ARTICLE/THE-BEAUTIFUL-ISSUE)
load more
FASHION FASHION
FILM FASHION
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/watch-givenchys-autumnwinter-15-menswear-showhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/the-beautiful-issuehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/watch-givenchys-autumnwinter-15-menswear-showhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/goodbye-to-oh-dearism-a-guide-to-the-work-of-adam-curtishttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/goodbye-to-oh-dearism-a-guide-to-the-work-of-adam-curtishttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/the-beautiful-issuehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/topic/https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/watch-givenchys-autumnwinter-15-menswear-showhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internethttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internethttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/the-beautiful-issuehttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/busted-willow-smith-and-the-shirt-that-broke-the-internethttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/goodbye-to-oh-dearism-a-guide-to-the-work-of-adam-curtis -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
12/13
featured on i-D
rick owens on his runway dick tricks
"You know I love a simply tiny, little gesture
that packs the wallop."
(/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-tricks)
read
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-trickshttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/rick-owens-on-his-runway-dick-tricks -
8/9/2019 2014 the Year of...Internet Fashion Subcultures
13/13
rint
even more mcqueen as the V&A announces additional tickets forsavage beauty
Alexander McQueens Savage Beauty is
guaranteed to be one of the biggest fashion
exhibitions to ever hit UK shores and with
just over two months to go, excitement has
hit fever pitch.
(/en_gb/article/even-more-mcqueen-as-the-va-announces-additional-tickets-for-savage-beauty)
read
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/even-more-mcqueen-as-the-va-announces-additional-tickets-for-savage-beautyhttps://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/even-more-mcqueen-as-the-va-announces-additional-tickets-for-savage-beauty