page_title: Rave
section_title: Attire
hierarchical_section_title: Rave / Characteristics / Attire
caption_attribution_description: Jenny Atomik, Cyberpunk Designer, San Francisco, 2008
context_page_description: A rave is an organised dance party at a nightclub, an outdoor festival, warehouse, or other private property or public spaces, typically featuring performances by DJs, playing a seamless flow of electronic dance music. The word also means excellent, great, or brilliant, and can be used to describe any genre of music and entertainment. At its broadest definition, "rave" can be used to describe many forms of music, not limited to just rave music- which is why fusion genres exist, even within rave music itself. DJs at rave events play electronic dance music on vinyl, CDs and digital audio from a wide range of genres, including techno, hardcore, house, bassline, dubstep, New Beat and post-industrial. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.
context_section_description: Since the late 1980s, rave fashion has undergone constant evolution with each new generation of ravers. Many of the rave fashion trends have appeared internationally, but there were also individual developments from region to region and from scene to scene.
  At early rave parties, often costume-like clothes and garments with signal color look such as protective suits, safety vests, dust and gas masks were worn and combined with accessories such as vacuum cleaners, homemade glasses, pacifiers and whistles. Clothing with slogans such as "Peace, Love, Unity" and smiley-face T-shirts first appeared with the acid house movement of the 1980s. Further popular themes of the early rave scene were plastic aesthetics, various fetish styles, DIY, 1970s, second-hand optics, retro sportswear (such as Adidas tracksuits), sex (showing much skin and nudity, e.g. wearing transparent or crop tops), war (e.g. in the form of combat boots or camouflage trousers), and science fiction.
  Common fashion styles of the 1990s include tight-fitting nylon shirts, tight nylon quilted vests, bell-bottoms, neoprene jackets, studded belts, platform shoes, jackets, scarves and bags made of flokati fur, fluffy boots and phat pants, often in bright and neon colours. Also gaudy coloured hair, dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings came into fashion with ravers. Widespread accessories were wristbands and collars, rings and glow sticks, as well as record bags made of truck tarpaulins. In the early 1990s the first commercial rave fashion trends developed from this, which were quickly taken up by the fashion industry and marketed under the term clubwear. Different dress codes also evolved in the various sub-scenes of the rave culture. For example, the typical gabber or psytrance raver dressed significantly different from "normal" ravers, but common basic features remained recognisable.
  Since the 2000s, the clothing style of the rave culture remains heterogeneous, as do its followers. Particularly in North America, rave fashion continues to be characterised by colourful clothing and accessories, most notably the "kandi" jewellery that fluoresces under ultraviolet light. They contain words or phrases that are unique to the raver and that they can choose to trade with each other using "PLUR" (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect). This style of attire was again taken up by the fashion industry and marketed as "rave fashion" or "festival fashion", now includling all kinds of accessories to create unique looks depending on event. In contrast to this and starting at Berlin techno clubs like Berghain in the 2000s, a strictly black style, partly borrowed from the dark scene, has established itself within parts of the techno scene. Certain rave events such as Sensation also have a strict minimalistic dress policy, either all white or black attire.
caption: Cybergoth neon fashion under a nightclub black light. While some ravers have natural dreadlocks, cybergoths often create artificial neon dreadlocks in various colours.
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