HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DRESS FOR A HYPER-POP PARTY?
WINTER ‘24
On Friday, I attended the INTERNET KIDS HYPER-POP DANCE PARTY at the Fineline, “Now with way more TV’s!” In the hours preceding the event, I remember staring at my closet at a complete and utter loss. How the fuck am I supposed to dress for a hyper-pop party?
Needless to say, I got enough style inspiration there to be well-prepared for the next time I find myself there. Covered in sweat, my breath staggered from dancing so hard, and propelled by a certain rush one can only assume to find at such an event, I approached a well-dressed attendee standing near one of the walls. She was wearing a black cow print tank-top, with matching knee-high socks. A hot-pink skater skirt, and a black crossbody bag. On their feet, black sneakers, that looked very comfortable, and a pink cow-print cowboy hat to tie everything together. Her hair was streaked silver/blonde and black, and she wore a black and pink choker.
@junjigreedo: I love this look! When you put this ensemble together, what were you thinking?
ANON: “I was thinking… I’m going to go wild tonight. And I’m going to let tonight happen to me. No expectations just… let the night happen to me. Just let it all happen!
What were you focusing on when you selected these pieces?
I wanted to focus on the synergy. Of the colors. I love color, and I wanted the colors to have synergy. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be too perfect.
So perfect it looks fake?
Exactly, yeah. I don’t want that. I like to wear something I can wear to multiple places. Something with versatility.
What does versatility mean to you?
Hmm… well… Versatility means everything is modular. You can change anything in and change anything out and it still looks good. I don’t want to be committed to a certain look. But there is a bit of commitment as well.
What's something that's ‘out’ in 2024?
What do you mean?
Like, trend-wise. What’s something that's out, that's over, in 2024? Out of style.
Oh… those crop tops that go down. I forget the term…
Deep V’s?
No.
Bodysuits?
Something that's like a body suit and a corset. You just can’t combine the two. Pick one.
I’m not too sure I follow. What’s something that’s ‘in’ in 2024?
Venture capital. VC’s.
What?
Venture capitalists, that’s in. That’s my goal one day. To be that. I like technology.
What do you like about technology?
The constant newness… I am being bombarded with constant newness. It’s all random.
And unpredictable. Are hyper-pop and technology connected?
Oh, 100%! If I were to go into the past… you know… because I can’t go into the future… I’d tell the people of the past this is the sound of the future. People with a hard style always say, they always say this is the sound of the future. And hard style fell off for me.
**Readers note: Due to both the loud music and the shots of rail tequila I had ingested a mere 20 minutes previous, my notes from this interview make little to no sense. I have tried my best to keep ANON’s words true to form, whilst attempting to make it a bit more understandable and easy to follow.
Everyone seemed to be dressed to the nines, and I wouldn’t say there was a consistent overarching aesthetic at the event, but a few threads of influence ran through. I didn’t stand out per se, nor did I necessarily fit in. My outfit, consisting of a pink bedazzled For Love and Lemons Bralette, baggy REVICE jeans, and a golden medallion chain belt, displayed the impact of the sorority girl aesthetic I had confidently rocked nearly 4 years ago. I felt like a ‘normie’. There were a lot of EDM raver-looking type chicks, sporting tie-dye shawls and butterfly-inspired makeup. Lots of mesh, lots of skin, lots of lingerie, and fetish gear. I saw a surprising amount of coquette-lolita style outfits, adorned with lace slip dresses, and baby-pink thigh highs (complete the look by adding two black Xs to the back of your hand!). T-shirts with Katakana and Ahegao faces reflect the cute breed of techno-orientalism that seems to be endemically tied to hyper-pop. There was even the first fur suit I had ever seen in the flesh! The headliner, SYM1, was sporting a dark robot-pop-star outfit that’s best comparable to a Hastune Miku Project Diva Mega Mix outfit module—and I mean that in the highest regards. Their backup dancers were dressed in a Brittany-Spears-style y2k, but the crowd was much more….y2k8?
Hyper-pop had proven itself to be the unexpected aesthetic successor of the scene movement of the early 2000s, Hot Topic is back and better than ever baby! I saw plenty of outfits Luke Blovad would wear. There were Invader Zim t-shirts at the function! Those chunky checkerboard rainbow studded rivet belts MySpace Scene Queens would wear. I think I even saw an “I Heart Boobies” bracelet, an artifact that I thought went near extinct after the recession. An ultra-consumerist costume that amalgamates a variety of slightly out-of-trend IPs; consisting of a My Little Pony Backpack, a SpongeBob tube top, and lace bloomers. Cultural signifiers that evoke a purely consumerist nostalgia. A simultaneously corny but cute, self-referential excess. I think some people call that ‘camp.’ The style is definitely outdated but hardly so. A call back to a trend that isn’t even a decade old.
It seems like this is fashion at the end of history, and this is where I begin to conflate the hyper in hyper-pop with Baudrillard’s hyperreal; rather than the perhaps intended connotation of hyperspace. Hyper-pop—and the fashion subculture that surrounds it—is inherently defined by the artifice and replication within pop music and our postmodern consumerist culture. This artifice and replication eventually produce media (to use a more topical term: content) of its own. Media whose messaging, ideals, and intents are entirely separate from the original text it is trying to ironically and/or genuinely simulate. This is hyperreal when the artifice becomes a more realized and separate thing from the ‘mother text.’ Replication, and therefore simulacrum, becomes infinitely easier with the aid of modern technology—even without opening the can of worms that is AI. Perhaps hyper-pop music is the ultimate auditory simulacrum, samples, and songs distorted and warped into something that becomes its own. Hyper-pop becomes the hyperreal version of pop. Mimicking the conventions of the genre until entirely new conventions are built within. The overwhelming and undeniable presence of techno-space in our lives is both reductive and transformative in this sense. Creation is done within and often in spite of the techno-consumerist systems that dictate modern life. In an era where ideology is defined by consumptive choice, what does it mean when consumption becomes ideology? What does that sound like?