dazed and confused

Trends are dead! Long live trends! People don’t know what to wear! But wear this! TikTok trends are fake! But not Indie Sleaze! Blokecore! Barbiecore! Namecore! [email protected]!!!

This is what happens when you spend too much time on websites, where the language of trend reporting has completely buckled in on itself. In April, fashion critic Rachel Tashijan described the whole thing as a “mass psychosis”, citing the internet’s feverish attempt to funnel algorithmic junk into deep and meaningful categories. This isn’t a particularly new phenomenon – magazines have always made outsized statements about fashion fads – it’s just that they are now competing with thinkfluencers, TikTok essayists, and Substackers to coin phrases like “Vibe Shift” in order to cash-out on clicks and send 30-something Twitter into a meltdown. Trend, and fashion more generally, is about so much more than being the first to identify the next big thing – which is almost always a mirage, fading as quickly as it’s labelled.

The real issue is that people seem to have forgotten what the word “trend” actually means, how it moves with and against culture, creating networks of taste and ideology. This can be hard to distinguish when there’s just so much culture happening at once, but in London, young people are beginning to clamber out of the chaotic consumer landscape: grubby scene kids and ragtag meme-merchants living on a diet of Elf bars, Monster, and SoundCloud rap. Musicians like Luke Blovad, designers like James Wallace who treat Minions as muses, tacking their turgid little bodies onto all-swamping hoodies. Teens adorned with Eurotrash truckers, wraparound sunnies, anthropomorphic plushie-hats, airbrushed sweaters, camouflage mini skirts, sharpied jeans, and Spongebob tees. They are the feral love children of Chief Keef and Trisha Paytas, destined for greatness but slumped into a barbiturate haze in front of South Park. 

“My style is meta-ironic, ketamine chic, Pinterest vibes,” says @oatmilkandcodeine. “Truthfully, I don’t think about it that much but I feel like it’s about making what is traditionally seen as ugly appealing”. A stew of early web references, thrifted grunge, lowbrow cartoon characters, and “anything obnoxious or fake is always good,” @babydoublecup says. “I’ll find…

It’s 9am on a Tuesday morning and JJ Hudson has been talking about the apocalypse for the best part of ten minutes. “I’ve been preparing for it for years,” he says. “Actually, I used to describe what I do as ‘Bunker Love’ because if we all end up in a bunker the one thing I will enjoy myself doing is custom building stuff to wear while we’re stuck down there. That’s if we even make the bunker.” Otherwise known as NOKI, the king of Shoreditch, or the father of mash-up, Hudson has cut a strange figure within fashion ever since he arrived in London in the late 90s, his face completely obscured by a rotation of poke-hole masks.

Sitting front row at shows, he almost looks as though someone has cast a spell on a clothing bank, granting a jumble of secondhand fashion the ability to move and emote. His own creations, forged from scraps, rags, and bits of old clothes are inspired by the anarchism of hardcore, and present a challenge to form that continues to inspire designers today. Conner Ives, BUZIGAHILL, and Balenciaga are all indebted to Hudson’s violent twisting of consumerism, where sustainability and bootleg collaborations have been central to his practice. “I suppose it has just validated this crazy thing that happened in the 90s,” he says. And yet despite his impact on fashion, he is loath to call himself a designer, asking to be referred to, exclusively, as a textile artist. 

Having come up alongside Judy Blame, Lulu Kennedy, and the YBAs back when Shoreditch was little more than a barren wasteland, Hudson played a foundational role in transforming east London into a creative honeypot, before working as a…

Whitearmor – real name Ludwig Rosenberg – has shaped the sound of an entire online generation. The 29-year-old is the producer behind Swedish collective Drain Gang, a group of friends – consisting of artists Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital and Bladee – who formed in 2013, gaining prominence in the cloud-rap scene alongside friend and collaborator Yung Lean. As the group’s master beatmaker, Rosenberg is responsible for their mercurial and terminally online sound, which has garnered a prolific reputation among countless baby-faced Soundcloud producers who aspire to follow in his footsteps.

Perhaps the most elusive member of the group, the Stockholm-based producer has managed to keep a mysterious online presence, despite the collective’s deeply obsessive fanbase, which has spawned countless fan accounts, meme pages and a highly active subreddit. “I’m probably the least famous out of all of us,” he says, with a grin. He’s notoriously silent on social media (“I never understood Instagram”) except to post the occasional Drain promo or reshare – and rarely takes photographs with fans. This is one of the first interviews he’s agreed to in the decade since the group’s formation.

“I’m probably the one that says no to most things. It’s not that I mind it, I just don’t really enjoy it – and fans know that. Our fans are very respectful in general,” he tells me over Zoom. He’s calling in from Barcelona, where Drain Gang have just performed as part of a Year0001 showcase at the city’s Razzmatazz. Camera on, a rarity among reclusive…