Aries, Stüssy, Palace and Supreme. These are just a few of the biggest brands in fashion right now and they all have their roots in the countercultural sport of skateboarding. Skating and the culture around it has never been bigger, officially hitting the mainstream when it became an Olympic sport at the 2021 Tokyo Games, but how has it kept its edge, the authenticity which is so important to its place within the cultural lexicon of today?

In this episode, Osman Ahmed, Fashion Features Director at i-D speaks to Tyshawn Jones, pro-skater and two-time Thrasher skateboarder of the year as well known for his death-defying feats on the board as his lucrative modelling career. Sofia Prantera, founder of Aries, remembers the early days of the London skate scene and making it up as they went along and William Strobeck, legendary skate filmmaker reflects on the sport’s roots. Cultural commentator Naomi Accardi explains the history of the sport and the turning point in the early 2010s. Dede Lovelace, star of ‘Skate Kitchen’ and HBO series ‘Betty’ shares her views on the importance of community in skateboarding, while Guillaume ‘Gee’ Schmidt, co-founder of Patta, reflects on the importance of authenticity and community in streetwear.

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‘Killer’, ‘Hard’ and ‘Tougher than the rest’. These were all phrases adopted by legendary stylist Ray Petri who brought together a small group of friends under the moniker Buffalo and subsequently changed the way we think of styling today. It was a look, an attitude, a crew marked by their signature navy blue MA-1 bomber jackets with the word ‘BUFFALO’ printed on the back. Perhaps not a subculture per se, but the style that evolved from the Buffalo movement was inherently subcultural, taken from the streets and translated into pioneering images that were transmitted to the rest of the world through the pages of ‘80s style bibles i-D, The Face and Arena. Sportswear paired with high fashion, men wearing skirts and the quintessential ‘80s look of a bomber with a pair of Levi’s 501s were all spearheaded by the creative community around Buffalo which included the likes of Mark Lebon, Jamie Morgan, Judy Blame, Nick and Barry Kamen, Mitzi Lorenz, Neneh Cherry and a young Naomi Campbell. When Petri passed away from AIDS in 1989, he had not enjoyed much commercial success but left behind a legacy that would change the look of fashion forever.

In this episode we hear from Mark Lebon and Jamie Morgan who were there from the beginning. They discuss what London was like, how this group came to be and what Buffalo really was. i-D’s Editor in Chief Alastair McKimm explains the importance of Buffalo to his own work as a stylist and creative director. Kasia Maciejowska, editor and author of the book The House of Beauty and Culture discusses the importance of styling and how Ray Petri changed how we interact with the fashion image while writer and researcher Eilidh Duffy explains how the Buffalo look permeated fashion and why it remains influential today.

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A group of football fans living in Liverpool in the late 1970s were destined to change men’s fashion forever. They were called the scallies and with their close Mancunian relatives the perries, they would eventually spread their sartorial standards all over the UK. These groups of football fans with a penchant for expensive European sportswear would come to be known collectively as ‘the casuals’. Back in the 1980s you might have thought that the casuals were simply a group of tracksuit-loving, thieving hooligans who travelled around the UK and Europe going to games, getting into scraps and robbing sportswear boutiques blind. But that’s not the whole story. The casuals shaped late-20th century menswear and changed men’s fashion forever. From the scallies and the perries; through to the Britpop phenomenon, then Metrosexuality, the term ‘terrace fashion’ can cover a lot of different separate cultures that existed between the late 1970s and 2000s, but two things bind them all together: football and fashion.

In this episode Osman Ahmed, Fashion Features Director at i-D speaks to Ollie Evans, vintage fashion dealer who runs Too Hot Ltd, about terrace culture’s working class stylistic origins. Turner Prize winning artist Mark Leckey describes his own relationship to football and the culture it fostered when the ‘casuals’ were at their peak. Editor-in-chief of CircleZeroEight Elgar Johnson explains how the metrosexual came to be, and Felicia Pennant of SEASON Zine describes how football’s relationship with fashion and gender is moving into a new, more intersectional era.

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In the 1990s one area of Tokyo saw the rise of a unique style movement that would go on to change street fashion forever. Harajuku, a small neighbourhood between the busy shopping mecca of Shibuya and neon-hued nightlife of Shinjuku became the epicentre of a series of truly fashion-led subcultures that were transmitted to the rest of the world through the street style bible FRUiTS. From urahara to lolita, wamono to decora, teenagers from all over Japan would come to show off their latest genre-bending looks. With trends appearing in a flash and disappearing just as quickly, this thriving area became the most exciting place to be in Tokyo in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, these style subcultures were a rebellion against the upright, corporate mentality of Japan. Little did these innovators know that their jaw-dropping approach to fashion would still be influencing and inspiring the global fashion industry over two decades on.

In this episode, Osman Ahmed, Fashion Features Director at i-D talks to Yuniya Kawamura, author of ‘Fashioning Japanese Subcultures’ and Professor of Sociology at FIT, about what makes a Japanese subculture different from one we might find in the West. Josephine Rout, Japan Curator at the V&A explains how this area of Tokyo came to be one of the most innovative style incubators in the world. Vogue Japan’s Tiffany Godoy recounts her first-hand experience of Harajuku when she moved to Japan in the late 1990s and the innovations in fashion she witnessed there, while Yoon Ahn describes the diversity of styles she came into contact with when she moved to Tokyo in 2003. Shoichi Aoki, editor of legendary street style magazine FRUiTS, explains his motivation behind capturing the looks of Harajuku, and Shahan Assadourian, founder of @archiving.stacks tells us why Harajuku subcultures are still so relevant today.

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In the dark streets of 1970s Soho, there once lay a club called The Blitz. It was within these walls every Tuesday night that the glitterati of London’s post-punk scene would gather to pose to a soundtrack of Bowie, Kraftwerk and the occasional Edith Piaf song. To get in, you didn’t just have to look good, but the emphasis was on being totally original in the way that you were dressed. Edwardian sci-fi pirates and bondage nuns, with hair done at the nearby salon Antenna, were not unheard of at The Blitz. These ‘Peacock Punks’ were first dubbed ‘the cult with no name’, and then the ‘Blitz Kids’, but one label would eventually stick - the New Romantics.

Born from the beginning of Thatcher’s miserable reign, the New Romantics were the ultimate escapists. Most were artists, musicians and fashion designers - others were professional posers. There are stories of spending art school grants not on paint or canvases, but Victorian bodices from the costumier Berman’s and Nathan’s, or rolls of fabric for Tuesday night’s next look. Before Berghain’s Sven, there was Steve Strange on the door of The Blitz: ‘Honey, would you let you in?’, was the line no-one wanted to hear. Galliano was there, as was Boy George, Derek Jarman, Cerith Wyn Evans and even David Bowie. It would go on to shape London’s cultural scene for decades to come.

In this episode Osman Ahmed speaks to milliner Stephen Jones, Blitz’s in-house DJ Rusty Egan, legendary Blitz door girl and New Romantic icon Princess Julia and photographer Derek Ridgers about what it was like to be there, and what it means now. Drag queen of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame Bimini Bon Boulash explains the lasting influence of the New Romantics on identity and queerness, and London-based designer Charles Jeffrey emphasises the legacy of New Romantic aesthetics on contemporary pop culture.

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Designer hoodies, oversized logos, luxury tracksuits and the cult of the sneakerhead. It’s likely none of these would exist without the influence of hip hop. In fact, the fashion industry exists in its current form because of pioneering black stylists, artists and designers who paved the way for the likes of Kanye West and the late Virgil Abloh to become the most important designers of the early 2020s.

But hip hop’s relationship with fashion is a complex one. For 50 years, designers like the Harlem couturier Dapper Dan, and Misa Hylton, stylist for Lil’ Kim and Mary J. Blige who defined the look for hip hop’s women in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, have had their work co-opted by the fashion industry with little or no credit at all. In recent years, these artists have received that credit where it is long overdue, and here Osman Ahmed unveils the story of this rocky relationship, as well as hip hop’s rise from a small subculture in The Bronx in uptown New York into an international symbol of pop culture.

This week, we hear from Harlem couturier Dapper Dan himself on crafting the look of hip hop half a century ago, as well as Aisha Durham, author of Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology, who discusses the relationship hip hop has with mainstream culture, and the scholar Dr. Marquese McFerguson emphasises hip hop’s importance in communicating black experience in America. DJ Semtex foregrounds hip hop music as an art form, Cultural Curator Kish Kash retells the history of hip hop, as well as his own affinity with it as an Indian kid growing up in the UK, and Chantelle Fiddy highlights the hip hop artists-turned designers who changed fashion forever.

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The e-girl is one of the most pervasive internet subcultures we have today. But the e-girl didn’t appear out of nowhere - her origins lie in aesthetic styles which emerged during third wave feminism in the US. From the Riot Grrrls, to skater style, through to indie rock, soft grunge and emo, the e-girl is an aesthetic amalgamation of subcultures from the relatively recent past. In particular, the 1990s streetwear brand x-girl, founded by Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon and stylist Daisy von Furth, served as a blueprint for the rehashing and remixing of subcultural styles, the wearing of too-tight baby tees and general girl-centrism found in the culture of the e-girl.

In 1993, after a conversation with Beastie Boy and founder of streetwear brand X-Large Mike D, Kim Gordon teamed up with X-Large store employee and stylist Daisy von Furth to create a brand that girls like them - cool, streetwise New Yorkers - wanted to wear. The silhouettes were inspired by the mods, Godard Girls and motifs from men’s streetwear, fusing their feminine staples, like mini skirts and a-line dresses, with a no lycra ethos and perfectly-fitting jeans, all with a maximum price of $60. This, as the legend goes, was the beginning of streetwear made by girls, for girls.

In this episode Osman Ahmed speaks to cultural critic Biz Sherbert about the codes and conventions of the e-girl. Bleach London founder Alex Brownsell and Director of Special Projects at Marc Jacobs Ava Nirui discuss the influence of tumblr. Daisy von Furth and her sister, noise musician of Pussy Galore fame Julie Cafritz, explain the cultural moment x-girl emerged in, and Erin Magee, designer of MadeMe, emphasises the importance of x-girl for teenage girls both in the ‘90s through to the present day.

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Even if it doesn’t always get the credit it deserves, the influence of Dancehall can be felt throughout the entirety of mainstream pop culture today. The sound percolates through Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Drake, and even the Yorkshire-born Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You. Female musicians are dressing like ‘90s Dancehall Queens - Beyonce’s Nusi Quero look on the cover of RENAISSANCE wouldn’t have looked out of place on a ‘90s Dancehall Queen, and neither would most of the fits in Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s video for WAP. 

What many might not know, though, is that Dancehall, despite its oft-dirty lyrics and overt sexuality, is a culture born of resistance. As artist and historian Fiona Compton explains in this episode, it’s “poor people’s music”. Emerging from the 1970s soundsystem parties of Kingston, Jamaica, its lyrics are often just as much social and political commentary as they are rude.

In this episode, i-D’s Osman Ahmed talks to Sean Paul about his musical career, the influence of Reggae, what’s happening now and what we can expect for Dancehall in the future. Fiona Compton contextualises the genesis of Dancehall culture and its role in female empowerment within Jamaica. The designer Bianca Saunders, who grew up in South London’s Caribbean community, explains the importance of fashion to Dancehall parties, and Matteo Bellentani, Head of Product and Design at British shoemaker Clarks, tells the story of Dancehall’s most iconic shoe: a pair of Clarks. Finally, Shenseea tells us about the changing sound of Dancehall and how she’s bringing it into new territories.

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Hailing from London’s East End, grime is a genre that exploded into the cultural mainframe in 2014 with Skepta and JME’s That’s Not Me. Speaking to both the cultural moment - with the rise of social media apps like Instagram beginning to distort reality - as well as Skepta’s experience in the music industry, it marked grime’s first spotlight as a genre of international significance. But it was well over a decade earlier that grime had emerged from East London, broadcast through the DIY transmitters stuck on top of buildings by pirate radio stations like Rinse FM and Deja Vu.

The sound was like nothing heard before, with beats made on game consoles, and artists spitting lines so fast over the top it’s a miracle they didn’t run out of breath. A reaction to the earlier London-centric genres of jungle and garage, grime was like their little brother, deeply raw, always fresh and full of energy, with a tracksuit and Air Force Ones to boot.

In the first episode of this new series, i-D’s Osman Ahmed speaks to music journalist Chantelle Fiddy about the cultural significance of Grime as a genre, alongside its sartorial style. Saul Milton of Chase and Status remembers his first interactions with jungle and grime. D Double E recounts the early days of grime and the community formed around it, and Semtex reflects on the success of so many of its artists in pop music in the late 2000s. Dan Hancox, author of Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime recounts the rise and fall, and then the unexpected rise of grime once again.

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