Little goblins: Why are Melbourne scene kids wearing designer rags?

On a recent trip home to Melbourne, I noticed all the hot young things wearing what I like to call “distressed designer rags”: clothes with unfinished or uneven hems, hanging threads and ribbons, intentional holes, and knotted fabric. Of course, older generations’ confusion over young people’s clothing choices, including deliberate rips, is nothing new. But this is not your average pair of distressed Levi’s. It is a distinct aesthetic that conjures bush doof festival fashions, a deranged toddler with a pair of scissors, Mad Max, and Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, who has been dubbed the “First Daughter of Bushwick” for her commitment to the kooky fashions favoured in the Brooklyn locale.

An Instagram story enquiring about the designers and cultural forces behind this trend elicited passionate responses from followers who declared the style a “trash chic renaissance”; “elf punk”; “Rainbow Serpent circa 2010”; “craft core cyber girl”; “general apocalypse vibes”; and “fashion tree wizard”. Australian labels Karlalaidlaw, Maroske Peech, Die Horny, Sschafer, Egg Lemon, Stella Vendetta and Ramp Tramp Tramp Stamp, as well as “everything at Error404 and Sucker” (stores in Fitzroy North and Brunswick, respectively) came up again and again. These designers’ accounts showcase everything from a knitted beanie reminiscent of the “pussy hats” popularised ahead of the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., to a dress comprised entirely of what appear to be knickers, and an embroidered cap proclaiming “sapiosexual”.

Niamh Galea, the Sydney-based-but-spiritually-Melbourne designer behind Ramp Tramp Tramp Stamp and the aforementioned lingerie dress has many friends who dress like “little goblins”. “This aesthetic comes from working with deadstock fabrics or whatever you can find. In the past you’d envision a piece you’d want to make and go and find the fabric, whereas now maybe you’re working the other way,” she says. “Sometimes people will ask to choose their scraps for my g-string and lingerie pieces, and I have to explain that it’s meant to be intuitive and about using what is on hand.”

Sometimes the style is less explicitly in service of sustainability and more about rejecting a perfect, flawless fashion ideal.

“I experiment a lot with dye techniques and prefer fabrics to be distressed and in their raw state. It gives attitude to the pieces,” says Karla Laidlaw, a Melbourne-based designer who makes clothes under her namesake label, as well as a recent project called Hydra Opia. Galea and Laidlaw list labels such as POC Denim, Eckhaus Latta, and Claire Barrow among their inspirations. Others mapped this aesthetic back to a community of VCA and RMIT students that formed around a since-closed experimental fashion and art space called Centre for Style in the early to mid-2010s.

“The rag aesthetic implies a repurposing of materials, which sits adjacent to what was happening at the VCA, where there’s a 20 th century history of the reuse of materials,” says Dr. Ricarda Bigolin, Associate Dean of Fashion and Textiles Design at RMIT University, and researcher and designer at D&K. “For example, “readymades”, where people repurpose found materials to make sculptures. There is an alignment across art and fashion with people working that way.”

While contemporary designers are making rags an intentional aesthetic, they have always been part of fashion.

“Before the start of fast fashion in the 1980s, any normal person had practices in place to reuse their clothes. Your dress gets ripped, you mend and repair it, then you turn it into a cushion,” says Dr. Bigolin.