The raves, the fashion, the counterculture How wild clubbing made designers fall in love

Fashion is running out of subcultures to draw inspiration from. Having drained grunge, punk, skate and surf, mod culture, Regency outfits, minimalism, and now Y2K, the aesthetic vocabularies of the past can be declared exhausted. Only the present remains, with its e-boys, the programmed basicness of tiktokers, and its complete absence of authentic youth subcultures-with one notable exception: clubbing. If there is one activity or scene that polarizes interests and discussions, that highlights the rifts between one generation and another, that attracts the attention of the younger generation, it is clubbing in all its forms - from the controversial raves that attract oceanic masses of young people, arousing scandal and disapproval, and inspire the imagery of countless brands, from Diesel, to Prada, to Balenciaga, to the techno scenes that become synonymous with community, liberation and inclusion, as well as hedonism.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, after the fall of the Wall, young people from the East side of the city began organizing illegal parties in the abandoned power plants, warehouses, underground stations, and bunkers with which the city was teeming, playing aggressive music, with bass even harder than the techno coming from the underbelly of Detroit. In 1990 American Frankie Bones along with Adam X brought rave culture to Brooklyn, to a divided, segregated city terrorized by AIDS and sky-high homicide rates, whose youth sought a sense of community and an outlet, under the banner of the motto PLUM (The Peace, Love & Unity Movement) creating a safe and discrimination-free space. Later on Peace, Love and Unity were also joined by Respect, giving birth to the PLUR slogan that still represents the philosophical basis of early rave culture but which, today, has been lost submerged by tragic incidents, cases of sexual harassment and the commodification of rave flattened in drug abuse or fashion superficiality.

Creating a utopian world for countless young people, where the unhealed traumas of the 1980s and the spectres of the 1990s disappeared under waves of bass and MDMA, rave culture was now rampant everywhere in Europe, reaching its peak just as raver outfits began to evolve into a new dimension. With cyberpunk suggestions and futuristic anxieties inspired by the birth of the Web, the looming 2000s, and the legend of the Millennium Bug, raver outfits began to reflect a utopian, hyperchromatic future. Visors and famous wrap-around glasses appeared, technology became an accessory, neon colors moved from clothing to hair styles that were decorated with spikes, alien cuts, mixed with adidas jumpsuits, cartoon characters, colorful plush, tie-dye graphics, glitter. The lure of a childhood filtered through the lens of ecstasy was mixed with a sense of freedom and hedonism that flowed into the bizarre kandi culture, enamored with the colors and values of pacifism and universal love: fluorescent bikinis mixed with tall furry boots, glowing pacifiers, telephone wires used as necklaces and plastic jewelry, Barbarella-style jumpsuits, make-up and wigs were everywhere.

The huge watershed came, however, with Raf Simons' FW18, the one of Christiane F. prints and Drugs graphics to be clear, in which the Belgian designer transformed the raver's outfit into a sort of meta-reflection on himself, sublimating it into an avant-garde design in which the iconography of rave culture became explicit and artistic decoration of clothes. Also that season Christopher Bailey paid homage to British raves in his last Burberry collection while Prada seemed to take inspiration from that world in its use of colors in womanswear and its overabundance of nylon jackets and bucket hats in menswear. The second and new watershed came at the hands of two Georgian brothers who had turned the heads of half of Paris with their irreverent irony: they were Guram and Demna Gvasalia, and Vetements' SS19 collection brought the vibe of Eastern European raves into the language of Parisian fashion. Other raves that season also cited that club outfit: Palm Angels, Matty Bovan, Martine Rose, and even Emporio Armani button-downs. From there on, that kind of aesthetic simply did not go away: designers such as Virgil Abloh, Matthew Williams, Daniel Lee, Martine Rose, Demna, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Jonathan Anderson, Kim Jones, and Francesco Risso have all evoked it in the last three or four years. The rave world then also arrived at Milan Fashion Week through DJ Max Kobosil and with his 44 Label Group, which is basically a luxury version of the classic rave look.

Making a real workhorse of it, however, is Glenn Martens' Diesel, which has not only reclaimed the lysergic sci-fi aesthetic of raves for its Diesel shows, with its symphonies of twisted denim, exposed pelvises, and acid visual overload of color and distressing, but has even organized a real 17-hour rave in London. An initiative consistent with the imagery conceived by Martens for the brand but one that will necessarily have to confront the kind of transgression that a rave implies-but to succeed requires taking risks.