Alternative Fashion and Music Has Never Died and Here's Why!
By: Deasy and Milan
January 24th, 2024
Fashion has been an integral part of human history since our dawn, from animal skin loin cloths to fast fashion websites, people have loved fashion. Fashion trends come and go, but after some die they revive years later, one "trend" that has seldom died out though, it is a rebellion and going against the grain.
Alternative music and fashion came up as an archetype of teenage rebellion, some of the first punk rock bands such as Death, Pure Hell, The Stooges and Sex Pistols being created in the 70s, punk rock became "mainstream" to an anti-mainstream audience, punk fashion coming into the mainstream could be credited to Vivienne Westwood and her work with the Sex Pistols.
"The start of alternative music dates back to the 1960s, with groups like The Silver Apples, Iggy and the Stooges, and The Velvet Underground." Said Nicole McCray, a Journalist that writes about alt music.
"These groups instilled a strong influence on what we label as “Punk Rock” today," McCray said.
With changing times come new and different artists who are inspired by the past, some artists that are popular today are Deftones, Pierce the Veil, Mother Mother, TV Girl, even though there are so many different genres and styles, apps like TikTok all tend to shove this music and style into the “alt” category, as alternative fashion is and always has been mainstream in a niche way, with the 2010s Tumblr soft grunge and 2000s emo kids, music and the style has always came and went, but a certain style in music has always been popular and modernized, whether we can put our finger on it or not, black pants and smudged black eyeshadow, MCR and all.
“Deftones, Pierce the Veil, alternative music in general has definitely influenced my music taste.“ said Brandon Brown, a fashion business owner.
There is one person who has changed alternative fashion and music for a modern and mainstream audience and they are Playboy Carti.
“Carti has a really big influence on how I dress. Especially when he first started.” said Jo-el Roberts, a fashion connoisseur. "He did Rick Owens collabs and collabs with high fashion brands, that inspires my style.”
In this day and age, in the 2020s and even late 2010s, alternative culture has been shrouded in consumerism, with the popularization of TikTok, microtrends, and mass purchasing of fast fashion such as the “Shein hauls” the original point of anti-consumerism and being against excess has been lost, and with fast fashion like Dolls Kill, basically it became so mainstream it became what it sought to fight against.
“If you can afford clothes that aren’t made with child labor and fast fashion then do that,” said Lael Dwyer a fashion connoisseur. “Shein’s not a place where you do a $500 haul.”
Tiktok also had a big influence on fashion and music.
“TikTok had a big influence on my style as well as music" said Lael.“ But fashion and like with myself that changed a lot because I feel like I had to like fit in like, sort of like with what everybody looked like. So I felt like I had to like live up to that role, instead of just literally existing in how I look."
“Alt” fashion had a huge spike in 2020. People were "discovering" themselves but in reality, they were following the crowd trying to be cool. They don't dress like that anymore because they just hopped on to the next trend.
“I feel like the history, what it looked like before, it looks a lot different from what it looks like now. It's like evolved but I feel like the bases are still the same even like alt as in TikTok alt,” Lael said.
“When you look at people's outfits they look like they found it off of TikTok, but there's nothing wrong with that.” said Jo-el “They’re people who usually can’t dress，taking advice from other people who can’t dress.”
We always list different styles in life as “phases” rather then a form of self-expression in the modern age “emo phase” “teen stage” “aesthetic mania”
You never really grow out of it, do you?