Punks were recognised on the street because of their leather jackets, safety pinned T-shirts and spikey hair. The 1990s grunge subculture saw teens dressing up in plaid shirts, ripped jeans and Converse. You wouldn’t wear Vans unless you skated, and you wouldn’t typically wear baggy sweats, Timberlands and gold chains unless you listened to Wu-Tang.

Even more recently, in the 2010s, if you had facial hair, dark-rimmed glasses and a beanie, you’d be a hipster. If you wore a striped T-shirt with skinny jeans, you were deemed as indie. A decade ago, it was easier to be pigeonholed, and if you didn’t identify with the subculture attire you were sporting, you’d be considered a poser.

With subculture fashion as we knew it, the subculture’s style would be gate-kept within the community. However, now, as we’re constantly on social media, we experience a melting pot of fashion subcultures and aesthetics that are ripe for imitation. This has been enabled and influenced by an always online Gen Z, who are consistently presented with new trends, new brands, new looks by a variety of celebrities and influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Ms Yomi Adegoke wrote in a 2021 British Vogue article: “If video killed the radio star, then it was the internet that killed subcultures.”

There are now so many aesthetics, or “cores”, to pick from – cores feel like they have filled the space where subcultures once were. Think normcore, Gorpcore, cottagecore, mushroomcore, more recently blokecore – you can cosplay as a different character every single day, style-hopping around different aesthetics. You can, one day, be the dad in the mall, the next day, the bloke in the pub, then the next be a skater. Irony mixes with nostalgia as we embody different characters and sides of ourselves through what we wear.

See Mr Pete Davidson, for example. In his daily street style, you can observe him incorporating a mix of dopamine dressing and kidcore in his blending of bold colours with logos and shouty prints. But his clothes also have elements of grunge by pairing flannels with black jeans and a hypebeast aesthetic seen in his sneaker and Supreme collections. However, he can wear a Thom Browne skirt with a blazer at the Met Gala and a Men In Black-esque suit on the red carpet, and it still feels authentic to his style.

Or take fashion influencers such as Messrs Bretman Rock or Wisdom Kaye, whose Instagram and TikTok profiles give a diverse range of looks that take from multiple aesthetics and don’t conform to a specific style. “It’s good to experiment with different styles,” says stylist Mr Scott Cruft. “The TikTok generation are still young and still finding their feet, so the way different styles pop up lets them dabble into different aesthetics and gives them more options to find what works for them in the long run.”

One reason for this excess attitude to style is that maximalism is making a comeback in the 2020s, after 10 years of minimalist culture. And this pendulum has been swinging every decade – in the 1980s maximalist fashion was king, in the 1990s minimalism took over, then the 2000s brought maximalism back.

What’s more, many of us have embodied a somewhat nihilistic approach to life after two years in a pandemic followed by an economic recession and being dumped with global conflict and climate change issues. We have ended up with an escapist mentality and an anything-goes, let’s-dress-up-for-the-end-of-the-world approach to individual style.

As a result, today, we buy more clothing than we did in the recent past. We are currently purchasing five times more clothing than we did in the 1980s, and 60 per cent more than we did 15 years ago. We also keep these items for half as long. Fashion houses and fast-fashion brands are producing billions of garments per year to meet demand.

We’re also consuming content faster and are constantly trying to keep up with that level of production, with TikTok and YouTube content creators making videos, predicting the next big trend, and jumping on the new aesthetic wagon. And because of this high consumption and information overload, the trend turnover is speeding up.

Earlier this year, we saw a rise of indie sleaze and the Tumblr era aesthetic of the early 2010s having a comeback on TikTok, and Mr Hedi Slimane’s CELINE HOMME grunge-inspired looks with skinny jeans and leather jackets, accelerating the traditionally accepted 20-year trend turnover cycle. Plus, the rise of vintage and second-hand clothing – with Depop sales doubling from 2019 to 2020 – is increasing the range of older fashion trends available to consumers and therefore being revived. This along with Gen Z’s aesthetic fluidity is creating a sense of a fashion buffet where you can pick and choose from different styles, available for you to purchase within seconds.

Being exposed to so many different styles, our aesthetic palates have become so diverse, that subculture fashion has become embedded in the culture. Nothing feels taboo anymore – you can dye your hair pink and go to the office. We’ve become more carefree and accepted with our style and can mix aesthetics together, break societal or gender binaries and show our creativity.

We can wear pearls and flowy shirts and embrace auntiecore (the aesthetic of dressing like an aunt), or pair the pearls with your surfcore outfit, to blend the aesthetics together. It’s more about looking good in the outfit rather than looking appropriate for who you are.

Of course, people are still leaning towards specific styles and clothes, but unlike 10 or 20 years ago, people now have a rotation of aesthetics to pull from and alternate. We’re going out of our comfort zones, having fun like we’re stylists working on editorials. Style is not just one thing anymore; it’s multi-faceted and mirrors the complex nature of the current world. Who needs rules anymore?