When indie style threatened to return (did anyone actually buy skinnies?), there was a collective sense of scepticism among the original Koko club goers. “What is indie sleaze?” asked key progenitor Agyness Deyn, seemingly baffled by fashion trying to shoehorn the grit, cigs and spray-on denim of the 2010s into a nostalgic “comeback” trend. Despite a brief wistful flirtation with the Camden-girl aesthetic—all white tanks and exposed bra tops, Stam bags, ballet flats and rosary beads—it never really took off again. How could it when vaping is now part of culture and UPFs have become pub chat?
But what the reemergence of Sky Ferreira, Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss pap pics on designers’ moodboards (looking at you Seán McGirr and Aaron Esh!) did show is that, during an era of fleeting -girl and -core TikTok trends, there’s an appetite for authentic subcultures rooted in world-building, rather than social-media moments. And so, dear reader, we bring you the emo style movement which, for some, never even went away.
“Gender blurring, somewhat chaotic and chronically online, in many ways, emo and scene kids were ahead of our time,” says Marc Jacobs brand and creative lead, Emma Hope Allwood, who wore a My Chemical Romance tee just last week sourced from IYKYK dealer Jerks and swapped the studded belts of her youth for studded Prada bag straps long ago. “It was never a phase, mum! I’m not surprised to see the comeback has begun, and just in time for the newly announced MCR tour.”
“Young people want to start feeling like there’s a sense of community in how we dress and how we present ourselves,” asserts London PR Antonio Pignone. “For a while, there’s been a sense that you should just look “cool” or “fashionable” or “chic”—I think people actually want to say something.” Like Allwood, Pignone has been wearing the same band tees, check shirts, zip-up hoodies, love-worn jeans and battered Converse for the best part of two decades (he received an emo starter pack on his 13th birthday containing Green Day’s American Idiot, a MCR hoodie and a pair of Cons), because, he explains, “it’s like dressing by numbers, you can’t go wrong.”
While indie Cindys baulked at the idea of anyone pulling off the smudgy, smeary Hawley Arms aesthetic in a phone-first society, there’s a real affection and camaraderie around the uptick of emo outfits in London. “It’s ironically quite cheering to see that millennials are pioneering the crying-into-my-diary looks of my late teenagehood, which required trips to goth and emo mecca Oasis Market in Birmingham, for clip-in hair extensions, kohl eyeliner and after-school nose piercings,” shares fashion features editor Laura Hawkins. “I won’t be clipping the former back in any time soon, but I do love the look of a layered T-shirt and long-sleeved jersey, a Vans slip-on and anything carabiner clipped by Chopova Lowena.”
Hawkins could well be describing a recent Alexa Chung look screenshotted by more Vogue staffers than just this editor. Wearing a classic baggy black logo tee over a striped base layer, a pleated school-girl grey skirt and knee-high patent boots, Alexa’s polished take on grunger chic provoked fellow scenesters, like the model Devon Ross, to declare it a “real slay”. There was not even a hint of irony in the comment section.
“The emo style resurgence reminds me of some of the best days of my life—once an emo, always an emo,” chimes in Vogue beauty and wellness editor Hannah Coates, who once wore studded belts so heavy they pulled her signature drainpipes down and a lyric-scribbled rucksack so high it perched on her shoulders—“It was the trend!” While Pignone says he might well bring back the original studded hip-hugging accessory, there are brands putting a fashion-forward spin on the Funeral for a Friend look.
Chopova Lowena has cultivated a gang of loyalists who lap up every skater-adjacent product in their “niche, cool, weird” universe embellished with spoons, plastic baby toys and garden centre ornaments. Originally inspired by Emma Chopova’s outdoor sports enthusiasm and Laura Lowena-Irons’s Bulgarian heritage, their fusion of rock-climbing and folkloric fashion tropes manifested in a pleated, checked, carabiner-suspended skirt design that’s worn as a badge of honour across the capital. Now modelled, as per their newer gothic, cartoony pieces, by friends of all genders, ages, ethnicities and sizes in their electric runway shows, the brand makes a strong case for marching to the beat of your own drum—as the crux of any emo tune will tell you. To wear Chopova is to telegraph that you’re part of their team—and that matters. “I don’t think that youth culture works like that anymore,” explains Pignone. “It’s broader for people, there’s not so much identity in a certain way of dressing. I love [the emo resurgence], because it means that I have been right this entire time.”
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
