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While almost everyone recognizes the rising popularity of electronic music over the past decades, few has awareness of its big impact on our lifestyle, especially fashion. In 2003, Billboard magazine commented that “music stars are the fastest-rising groups of fashion’s celebrity.” More significantly ,documentary How Clubbing Changed the World brought up the phenomenon of the elitism being altered by electronic music in the fashion industry. Does electronic music pose a big impact on transition of fashion from classical to modern and casual, if yes, why? Before we look closely at this question, it is important to look at the history electronic music influenced fashion first.

 

Electronic music, music performed with electronic instruments, first became popular in the 1970s, even though artists like the Beatles started using electronic instruments by incorporating keyboards and synthesizers into some of their experimental songs as early as the 1960s. It was in the 1970s when electronic music entered the mainstream and began to define itself with fashion expressions. Girls wore tight leather or denim pants, boy’s outfits were less definable, but could be characterized by intense colorations, silly costumes, and computer graphics. 

 

Yet its influence kept growing until today that the most popular pop artists like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber have implemented aspects of dubstep, house, and trance into their singles. Electronic music's influence on fashion has entered the fashion mainstream, as well. In recent memory, EDM-influenced concepts started appearing as far back as 2014, when Jeremy Scott’s SS15 collection stuck with a palette of neon shades and made a direct reference through kandi bracelets. Givenchy’s Resort 2017 collection embraced the former, utilising a multi-coloured geometric print for a kaleidoscope-like effect.

 

Despite the influence and inspiration, there are also voices against the raving fashion on its sexualization. They are concerned with the pheomenon that raving fashion has changed these years and it no longer is about individual expression and fashion. It is now about showing off butts. 

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This online forum will discuss the similarities between music and fashion industries, why electronic music influenced fashion they way it did, and critiques of EDM fashion respectively on page Music and Fashion,  Electronic Music, and Sexualized EDM Clothing.