An Alternative State Of Shock

Photographed By: Elvira Gligoric
Make-up: Gabriella Mattson
Clothes Provided By: Shock
Styled By: Ellinor Forje

A few years ago, on my way into town, I noticed a girl in a striking purple velvet coat. Her style resisted easy definition. It was alternative, certainly, but more than that, it felt like a deliberate fusion of influences, a quiet refusal to belong to any single aesthetic. She had gathered fragments from countless subcultures and made them entirely her own. One individual, her own tribe.

She told me she had found the coat on a website called Drac -in- a -Box. What stayed with me was not just the coat, but her observation, people often admire such pieces, yet rarely buy them. They hesitate, convinced it is not “them”, that anything tinged with goth or morbidity lies outside their identity.

I was reminded of a gift I once bought for my brother, a beautifully understated shirt in a soft beige grey, with a delicate pencil sketch of Mickey Mouse at its center. At first, he refused to wear it beyond the privacy of his home. He insisted it wasn’t for him. This, from someone who had grown up loving Disney. It took some persuading to get him to wear it to work, just once, on a casual Friday. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. From that point on, the shirt moved effortlessly through his life, worn to work, to social gatherings, to nights out. What had once felt like a risk became a staple, validated by the approval of others.

Designers such as Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood have long drawn inspiration from the streets of London, from those who dress instinctively, without waiting for permission. Yet when these same ideas appear on runways or in glossy magazines, they are suddenly deemed acceptable, even desirable. We forget that the originality we admire was always present, long before it was curated and endorsed.

So why the hesitation?

Independence in style begins with a willingness to step beyond what feels familiar. Seek out what you instinctively resist, and wear it with conviction. What once seemed foreign may, in time, feel entirely your own.