I noticed something for the first time today. At uni NOBODY dresses metal. I go to uni in central London, I hang out in the [large] library often and I see hundreds of students a day, not to mention other Londoners. Today I noticed that I was the only one that dresses and looks 'metal' [please let's not get into a debate as to what that means]!

Any ideas as to the reasons for this? It must be generational, and to do with the fact that metal and goth are not emerging trends anymore. In the '80s and '90s it was quite normal to see metalheads on the streets, but they are not trendy new styles anymore. Camden is not awash with metalheads and goths like it used to be. Conversely, 'hipster' music/fashion is en vogue and so people feel they need to associate with it through their dress sense to be part of it and fashionable.

It's not like fewer people listen to metal. So all the metalheads are in hiding. I went to a folk metal gig the other night and everyone was out in their metal gear... but it seems now like they'd just thrown their suits off for the day, ruffled their hair and gone in.

The hippies and the prog rockers are still out there but just not out in the streets wearing flairs. I suppose people only 'dress' their musical taste as the everyday norm when it suits them.

Does anyone else see fewer people dressing 'metal'? Have you yourself made the switch to more 'standard' forms of dress?

You sure about that? If you're in university now, presumably you were not born/too young to be aware of the popular styles back then.

I'm doing a master's now - my bachelor's was in the late 90s/early 2000s. I certainly remember going to Camden as a teen in the mid '90s and seeing far more goths around than now. And there were more shops for them. Even the ever-stalwart Resurrection Records upped sticks and left a few years ago.

All I ever wear in my off-time is band shirts/merch, and yeah, in college I did often get a lot of weird looks for my shirts. It doesn't really bother me though, and there would be the occasional metalhead that I would come across who would be wearing a band shirt, or they would see mine and I would briefly talk to them. The fact is, metal is not for everyone and even those who do enjoy it might feel inclined not to always show it because of the way people perceive it.

Well, I don't know. I occasionally see a long haired metalhead with all the leathers on around town but not often. Personally I just wear a few band shirts, mostly jeans and some normal lace up shoes. I couldn't give a fuck dude, as long as I am wearing good clean clothes that fit me well that's all that matters to me. Clothes and tattoos and all that don't make a person, it's how you live, I think.

Maybe people realized that bullet belts, combat boots, sleeveless band tees, and blood/beer/puke/sweat crusted denim vests are not conducive to paying the bills.

Hahaha yeah, I mean there's a time and a place for everything. I don't wear my kutte (patched vest) when I go to university or I don't wear my Carcass tshirt when I go to my grand-mother's birthday dinner.

If I'm not at work or a "prim and proper" thing (meaning it involves my girlfriend's family), I'm wearing band/horror tees and beat-up jeans/shorts. I've essentially dressed the same since I was 12, but I'm not spending more than 5 minutes getting dressed unless I actually have to.

You're right, a lot of that shit is expensive. I always marvel at how goths can afford their clothes these days. Most goths don't have highly-paid jobs [as far as I know] and plenty of goth clothes are £50-£100 a pop.



People used to do those kinds of things. I think these days people feel less need to look 'extreme' overall. Maybe extremism itself is old hat and passe, or has been redefined. The hipster revolution was/is a sign of the times whereby being different is just another take on being well-dressed.

People used to do a lot of shit that they don't anymore. I don't really see why you're all hung up on people not wearing battle vests to their parents' anniversary parties or some shit. Who cares? If you want to, dope. Do it. I'll occasionally wear tamer metal shirts (a la Summoning) to some family gatherings but I'm not going to wear my Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan shirt for obvious reasons. People dress how they dress and it's really fucking dumb to make a big deal about something that literally does not affect your life in the slightest.

But flannel-wearing hipsters are esmaculating true metal! DMU told me so!

The fuck does it matter? I see band shirts and long hair every now and again, and just as reference, that's how I usually look too. But whatever there's tons of people out there who like metal and don't "look the part". Who gives a fuck. All this counter culture crap is annoying as anything.



You're one to talk you hip ass fuck with your business casual attire. YOU'RE AN ENEMY OF METAL.

I meant more along the lines of "should I hire this bloke who dresses business casual or that bloke who looks like a Double Dragon villain." Cost aside, "dressing metal" isn't something that's going to land you a steady job outside of a niche record store.

I love the idea that plaid shirts are somehow exclusive to "hipsters." Like, people talk about them like they were invented in Brooklyn back in 2006 or something. People wear plaid. It's ubiquitous. Honestly, if you don't own at least one plaid shirt, you're weird and I can't fuck with you.

This.

Personally, band shirts are cool but I can't really get into the whole headbanger aesthetic. I'd rather be a flannel wearing hipster or a super sp00ky goth any day.

I've been thinking of this as well. The last month I've been working at a high school and there's no one dressing like a metal head. But not only that, there is really no one who looks to belong to a specific youth subculture at all.

The generation that was a few years older than me had the skinhead thing going. Closer to my age, and at my age, punk became popular. My generation was however largely a rock/metal one (growing up with GN'R and Metallica). Some turned to the electronic music thing that happened with The Prodigy but that quickly faded in favour of the more long lasting Hip-Hop trend. Point being, I always remembered people dressing and belonging to subcultures. And the ones I mentioned were just the ones that were connected to music. We also had kickers and other fashion based subcultures.

And now, I see no one even attempting to look different.

Briefly mentioned in the first post, I recently noticed I rarely see goths anymore. Shame, that's one of my favourite looks on girls.

At concerts I always wear my lucky Powerslave t-shirt, because of that one time I saw Iron Maiden when it was 35C outside and I found a water bottle on the ground to keep me alive. Aside from that I don't give an arse about "looking metal". When I used to have metalhead co-workers, that one photo of me wearing my friend's antique executioner's helmet was enough to silence the issue.

Yeah it has definitely changed. I was in HS in the mid 90's and here is what I saw for the most part:

1. Grungers (20%)- They wore the flannel shirts and chain wallets and looked scruffy like those in the Seattle scene at the time. This group also contained ex-metal heads as well.

2. Metalheads (10%)- They still wore tight fitting jeans and band T-Shirts and had long hair mostly. The size of this group waned considerably after the early 90's and many converted to Grungers from what I remember.

3. Gangstas / Wiggers (20%)- This was perhaps the most rapidly increasing population at the time. Anybody remember JNCO jeans? The rap subculture captured much of the rebellious youth in the mid to late 90's as the metal scene was dying in the US (at least where I lived).

4. Normal (50%)- These were the types who were not part of any subculture at least according to their dress. I remember Polo shirts, Tommy Hilfiger, and Lucky Jeans as being popular with the preps. There was even some Wrangler wearing country/western people I could include in this. Oh, and the jocks wore letter jackets and jerseys still.

Of course there was some overlap. I remember drugs uniting groups that would have otherwise stayed away from one another, like grungers and gangstas.

Anyways, it is not the same anymore. I think the reason is that pop-culture does not influence the youth today as much as it did in the past. Heck, the 50% from above that were not in the Normal category were almost defined by the music they listened to.

Nowadays most HS kids don't care much about music at all, at least in the school that I taught at. Probably because the quality of mainstream popular music has taken such a nosedive since the glory days of the mid 90's.

Well, I've had long hair for over 10 years now (and I don't expect that to ever change) and I basically wear band shirts 100% of the time, except for work. I have no reservations about wearing evil/Satanic shirts around non-metal people or relatives, even if it gets awkward. And it's not because of some image thing, or because I'm being antagonistic or edgy...I simply love it and am proud to be a metalhead. I love having long hair and Metal shirts, it's just who I am. People who say "I don't dress metal because people won't take me seriously" obviously have some deep held insecurity or something. It's like people are afraid to show or express their passions for fear of rejection. Obviously the same principle works against people who play dress up and try their hardest to look as metal as possible so all their friends will notice at the local mall. The moral is: dress however you want (except for obvious circumstances such as work/funeral/wedding) - fuck anyone else. Fashion is as meaningless as life itself.

Some very interesting responses indeed in this thread, thank you. Some relate to the lack of subcultures present in general, and others fiercely state that dressing subculturally is irrelevant. I feel that the most interesting comment is:



Metal used to be - and sprung from - the need to counter mainstream culture. Its cause has always been extremity. But the belief that counterculture per se is annoying is self-defeating to metal. One can argue "I like listening to metal, I don't have to dress it", but the original aesthetic of metal was a lifestyle not a listening style. Being a metalhead was like being part of a subcultural ethnicity. But now people not only see dressing metal as being irrelevant to being a metal listener, but annoying. So metal's previous rebellious cause has outdated its derivatives.

In support of another point earlier made by another poster that no-one looks different these days, yes indeed. Everyone conforms. It's almost Orwellian.

I still regularly see people dressed in a metal way and I also see goths quite often (although perhaps not as much as I did in the early 2000s). I live in a much, much smaller city than London - maybe London's just shite?

Dude, you had me totally inspired until this.

It's certainly not what it used to be. This country is a sad place at the moment with little hope of improvement in the near future. Sounds like I should give Munich a try, I know the beer would be way better than here.

Yeah and you probably speak better German than Bavarians.

Maybe this is a logical stretch, but I've noticed that when I go to concerts in the area, very few people have the "under 21" Xes on their hands at the venues. That probably means they actually live in the town and aren't just here because of the college (which makes up over half of my city's population), seeing as they're not of undergrad age anymore. That would support the conclusion that metal is still mostly a lower/middle-class genre of music and, consequently, you'll see fewer obvious metal fans on a college campus because fewer of them can afford a postsecondary education.

I've been to three gigs this year, Ensiferum, Swallow the Sun/In the Woods and Moonsorrow/Korpiklaani. At none of these gigs was there anyone who looked under the age of 25. I imagine it would have been a different story if I were at a Babymetal gig. Teens tend to go to bands that are trendy. None of the other bands I have mentioned are, hence one would see a slightly more mature crowd.



I see what you're saying, that people from underprivileged backgrounds are more likely to be metal fans and less likely to go to university. I don't think that metal is constrained by class though. And it doesn't hold water when one looks on the streets and sees no-one who looks goth or metal. Remember, this is not about those who just listen to it, but dress it. Dressing metal is no longer a prerequisite for fanship probably because a] people see it as unnecessary expense [as opposed to vital or indicative of a lifestyle choice] as expressed earlier in the thread or b] metal's increasing tendency to speak up on social issues rather than just raw angst means it has inherited a new fan class who deem dressing metal incompatible/unacceptable in their life and their peer group [this is another point, do metalheads hang out in groups anymore? At a recent gig I was at individuals seemed to be talking to one another randomly in the crowd like they had only just met].

Yeah but the point I'm making is that metal isn't a culture or way of life anymore, nor should it be. I get why it was that way back in yesteryears but it doesn't need to be that now. My generation and the one behind us and most likely the ones yet to come aren't suffering through the same crap that was happening in the 60's, 70's, and 80's times are different and people are just chill now. There's no need to rep who you are with the way you look, no need to identify with a group just by sight. Take a guy like Starmere for example, dude is GQ like nobody's business and he listens to a fuck ton of metal. Or Frog who's a hipster. Point being you don't need to look the part in this day and age. Just be you and that's all.

Side note to all this; I feel as though my generation is probably the last one to have these groups define themselves by appearance. I remember in high school it was still that way and each click had an area they occupied and pretty much only hung around each other during free times. I doubt there's much of that going on these days. Except for Juggalos.

I don't wear metal clothes unless I am in the company of other metal enthusiasts, it's that simple. Why parade around shit that nobody is impressed with or has similar values in, even still people who 9 times out of 10 associate the metal look with psycho bone headed behavior, or lastly think of you as some manchild and don't treat you like an adult. Let's be honest the metal look is crying out for attention "look at me, I have realistic looking corpses on my shirt, look at me, trve krimson tag front with maggot infested skull", and when the metal shirt is not and doesn't have an obnoxious style in uniform black it might as well not be metal. And that's the other thing, it's the complete opposite of non conforming now because so many wear it. So why do I care what people think? Because like it or not appearance matters, whether it be work related, making friends or being treated respectfully. I love metal but I don't need to wear a fucking billboard of it around like some manchild way of proving I do infact love metal, just grow some balls and strike up a conversation.

^ what the fuck are you yammering on about

I see people dressed "punk" around here all the time. Metal not as often, but still relatively regularly. Some people probably take it too far but jeans + band shirt + long hair will never totally go out of style. It's what I like, it's what I've worn for about 15 years now, and I'm not going to stop.

I tend to agree with what volutesworth says above, but for slightly different reasoning: at my white-collar job, you cannot really get away with dressing "metal" obviously. Most offices have some kind of minimal dress code- slacks, dockers, either polo or button down shirts, etc. People who encounter me walking around downtown would immediately assume I am some kind of preppie dude, or at least, a white collar office worker. And I really don't care; I am defined by more than just what music I listen to (and I listen to more than just metal anyway.) If you are trying to impress girls, you don't necessarily want to be parading around in a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt, spikes, and ripped jeans- although there may be a higher number of interesting cute metal chicks around in other cities, that has never been the case anywhere I've ever lived. Plus, at some point it does become an age-appropriate thing. I still dress "metal" when I go to shows though.

At the college thing: That was years ago, but when I went to college- the Grateful Dead was the "in" thing at that campus at that time. So everyone suddenly became hippies/Grateful Dead fans and started dressing as such, trading denim jackets and metal tees for tie-dyes and sandals. Even a few people who had once been metalheads or punks in their teen years- which I always thought was fake and annoying. Some people in college just start to assume metal is lame and/or passé, and latch on to a new trend they consider more hip or mature. Yeah, its shallow- and probably a lot of those hippy ex-metalheads were never really that into metal in the first place (they pretended to be for much the same reason they got into the Dead- it was just another club to join so they could fit somewhere.)

Yes but what is 'you' when there is no sartorial expression of individuality? Everyone looks identical on the streets these days. I see what you're saying, that outward appearance is no indicator [or qualifier] of taste, and nor should it be. But dress sense is supposed to be an indicator of one's individuality and lifestyle, an inward expression expressed outwardly. Of one's personal choices and ability to choose. When everyone looks the same, who is making the choices?

I have to cohere with this point:



I think if there's one thing that people are scared of these days it's rejection. Rejection from trends, from their peers, from the established order. We live in a society where fewer and fewer people are willing to take risks because if they do, there's less chance of acceptance. We live in a victim-led, hypersensitive, zero-responsible [in that it denies responsibility], faux-empowerment culture. And everyone wants acceptance. So yes, dressing metal may not be so relevant to the genre anymore, but individuality is less important than ever, and has been overtaken by fear.

Well yeah, I feel like all this work discussion is painting things in a needlessly black and white manner; I obviously wouldn't flout band shirts at most white-collar jobs or on a date either, but I enjoy wearing them sometimes when I'm just bumming around with friends. Plus viewing said shirts as exclusively "explicit" or offensive also misses the point a bit IMO given how much metal has expanded in terms of aesthetics since the days when it just Iron Maiden or Cannibal Corpse shirts; IE I tend to favor abstract/archaic-looking shirts like the two below (just to pick two random favorites from my collection)

http://images.bigcartel.com/product_ima ... 000&w=1000

http://www.debemur-morti.com/en/blut-au ... shirt.html

Of course, some could counterargue that wearing shirts that aren't explicitly metal defeat the point of the style in the first place (to tie it back into the lifestyle discussion above) - and that's a legitimate argument, albeit one I don't really care about either way. I'm just saying it's not as rigidly black and white as Oxenkiller and voluteswarth seem to be saying.

But does everyone look the same? I don't think they do. There is maybe a degree of homogenization, what the internet changing how culture is transmitted among young people and the cross-pollination of styles and music genres brought into the mainstream. But even if sub-culture specific fashion choices are less prevalent than they once were they certainly haven't gone away entirely. I see lots of folks rocking an identifiable look. Hell, I've got a bloody steampunk living in my apartment building. Whenever I see him strutting up the walk with his top hat and fancy cane and goggles I always wonder what he's like behind closed doors. Like, does he strip down to an undershirt and boxers or just sit around all gussied up with a snuff box and a snifter of brandy?

Anyway, if you're spending a lot of time at university and basing your premise on that it's possible your results are skewed. As some said it could be a class thing, reasonably well-off middle class people of similar age are indeed more likely to dress similar.

What the fuck are you on about? Not everyone looks the same... where do you live back ass Pennsylvania? Unless you think everyone looks the same just cause you don't see crazy 80's - 00's punk, goth, and metal outfits anymore. But that's just you being bat shit crazy then.

Let's go this route; two guys walk into a bar. Guy one wears band shirts and jeans or shorts. Guy two wears suits. Both share a inner love for metal but project outwardly how they want to look, what's comfortable for them. Where's the problem? And who looks the same?

Starmere (sorry I keep referencing you Fish Man) likes looking GQ and sexy as fuck and there's nothing wrong with that. I prefer to look sexy as fuck with long hair, a beard, and an Average Joe attire. So again what is this nonsense about who's making choices and the other crazy circles you're going in?

I wear metal band t-shirts and hoodies almost o na daily basis and I see people at my university doing likewise as well as I do on the streets. So what you're saying seems strange to me.

I have seen a number of metal shirts at my university. Not heaps, but I just assume that people into metal equates to about 1%, haha. Although I have seen them. I sometimes see them at the mall (saw a kid wearing a Behemoth shirt recently which shocked me).

I wear band shirts daily. My mother hates it. My friend tries to suggest alternatives to wear. It's how I want to look, though, and I will continue to do so until the day I get tired of it and want to wear Rip Curl muscle tops.

My mother does not care much about it. Then again I'm 25, so it's not like she can tell me anymore what to wear or not. I know that she's not a fan of metal, so it's understandable she might not like my clothing much. It's mostly she thinking I should start wearing shirts more often because that's more "mature looking". Nut I really don't like shirts and won't wear one unless I'm forced to(as in underneath a suit).

If it wasn't for band t-shirts and hoodies, i wouldn't know what to wear. I also like simple clothing without any drawing or template on it, like a black t-shirt with nike's tiny logo on the left. If I go into a clothing store nowadays all I see is clothes for hipsters, businessmen and metrossexuals. None of that appeals. So I rarely shop for clothing and when I do it's online. I like video game themed t-shirts. Need to get a hadoken and a zelda t-shirt/hoody someday. Also like to sleep in a Ninja Turtles t-shirt.

And hell, I still wear clothes back form my HS days. They're shorter now obviously, but as long as my belly button doesn't show, it's a good fit for me!

Good to Oxenkiller responding with a genuine response instead of the usual ignorant "duuuh, wut you say? me brains don't extend beyond me drunken verbal spew".

I own a lot of metal t-shirts, but none have tasteless art in it. I wouldn't wear a t-shirt full of gore and nudity. Just like I don't wear my Iron maiden t-shirts when I go to somewhere with some sort of dress code like a fancy restaurant or a job interview. I'm sure most people are smart enough to know that...