Black Alternative Fashion Is A Practice of Authenticity

Punk and alternative communities create a particular subculture that can be defined in many distinct ways. By nature, punk can be defined by anti-establishment, anarchist politics that typically center communities existing within the margins. Expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo, their music sits with nuanced yet difficult emotions that get reduced to brash feelings by mainstream critics. The alternative community does not shy away from expressing themselves in ways that feel honestly authentic to them, focused more so on true expressions of self than on the mainstream aesthetics. Still, there are codes and styles within their own community that make up punk fashion. Alternative clothing often looks like a physical manifestation of the metal, grunge, or angsty themes conveyed throughout much of the musical genre. Diving into the creativity and nuance of alternative fashion, AFROPUNK taps digital fashion creators to discuss how style is cultivated and how they bring their Blackness into this form of expression. 

True to the idea of authenticity, Kiara Grimes lets how she feels dictate how she dresses, which can be fluid. “I personally don’t try to put myself in a specific box,” she tells AFROPUNK. To her, ‘alternative fashion’ simply means to dress in ways that feel honest to you regardless of the current trends. “For everyone that’s going to look different and even for me over the years that has looked different. Some people think alternative just means dark clothes and band shirts but I think that it’s actually a deeply personal expression of your own style without the heavy pressure from what’s trendy.” 

For Erica Fletcher, the way she dresses is a love letter to herself. Pulling across many sources, she describes her fashion sense as “an amalgamation of my entire life and everything I

have ever been interested in and loved.” Fletcher likens ‘alt fashion’ to anything that is outside of the norm, and classifies her style as such because she is often drawn to the unique and odd, mentioning specifically her interest for “macabre” themes.

Cultivating personal style can be a journey of self-exploration, and as such, may begin at different times in each of our lives, and grow to be a continual process. Fletcher has been dressing within the realm of alternative fashion since she had the autonomy to choose her own clothing. “My parents really allowed me to live and navigate in whatever phase or space I was in,” she begins. “When I was in 8th grade, I wanted to be scene/emo so badly so my

mom would take me to Hot Topic and let me get vampire-esque jewelry.” She believes her current style fully took shape during the pandemic, as she started to take inspiration from movies, music, and her own feelings to occupy herself creatively while in the house. 

For Grimes, she really dove into alternative experimentation in 2019, when she began to thrift and make her own clothing, “I started thrifting really odd pieces and challenging myself to wear them in different ways, which then inspired me to do a challenge where I took $50 to a thrift store and tried to buy things to not repeat an outfit for a month.” She continued this challenge month after month, until she developed a steady practice and newfound wardrobe of thrifted and self-made items, “I’d say about 50% of my outfits contain something I made myself.” What began as a test to dress herself affordably, turned into an expansive creative practice.

With personal style woven so tightly with perception of self, identities, such as race, are important considerations. Both Grimes and Fletcher speak to the experience of feeling othered socially, within and outside of alternative spaces. Fletcher explains how being a Black woman in punk has improved over the years because they have started to proudly assert their right to exist within the subculture, while Grimes describes how liberating it has been to find her voice through this space.  

“I spent a lot of my childhood trying to fit into spaces I didn’t, and I think that is a feeling a lot of Black women growing up in less diverse spaces can connect to. There was always an acceptable version of myself I had to fall into,” Grimes recalls. Through the community of Black alternative women she has come to know online, she no longer feels that pressure to reduce herself and instead feels inspired everyday to express what comes naturally to her. 

“Most people associate being goth, emo, or alt with being white and that’s not remotely true! Black women come in so many different fonts and we express ourselves in many ways,” Fletcher explains, and emphasizes the love she has for the Black alt women who show up for one another in the digital space.

On Black women’s cultural impact on alt style, they tell AFROPUNK that the influence is undeniable. “The creativity in Black culture is something that makes an impact whenever it enters a space. Black women have an ability to see something and think ‘how can I make that work for me?’ [especially with hair],” Grimes says. 

Fletcher goes on to posit that, “Black women are the prototype for the alt aesthetic, 100%. Have you seen the hairstyles amongst the alt community? They’re almost identical to the Black hair magazines from the ‘90s and early 2000s.” She offers the examples of TLC, Janet Jackson, and Missy Elliot, pioneers for style and beauty that in many ways encouraged Black women to break from restrictive molds of expression. 

Fletcher embraces being a Black alternative woman in fashion because it allows her to express every aspect of herself, making her feel set apart from the crowd. Grimes finds the way she shows up healing for her younger self that would not have had the bravery to do so. Together, they underscore the love they have for their community of Black alt women in style, and how they all encourage each other to be limitless. As fashion is a personal language, styling yourself should come from a place of freedom, fun, and curiosity.