Inside queer club culture’s style revolution with Hyfae Shop & Magazine

As a child, dressing up was a joyful escape from a home where I didn’t always feel I belonged. Even though having short hair meant I always had to play the prince in games, I would play ‘him’ dressed in pink from head to toe. As I got older and began to go clubbing, fashion became a similar exploration of my personality — that feeling of slipping into an avatar; a more confident, sexy and bold version of everyday me. The transformative power of clubwear is something that lies at the heart of Hyfae Shop & Magazine. It was born from the realisation that fashion’s most vital innovations weren’t happening where you’d expect — not in elite fashion studios, but dingy basements and cracked-up warehouses. And nobody was properly capturing the raw energy of our scene. Since then, it’s become a platform for the designers, DJs, performers, promoters and creatives who are defining our era, some of whom I’ve interviewed for this article.

As the UK sees a sharp rise in anti-trans rhetoric, increasing criminalisation of sex work and London loses three venues per week to development pressures, underground spaces become increasingly crucial sanctuaries for queer, QTIPOC, sex workers and other marginalised groups. It’s here that people can embrace their bodies and sexuality without shame, fearlessly experiment with gender expression and concoct looks that serve as both armour and revelation to the soul. In that sense, the fashion emerging from clubs, raves and festivals carries forward a tradition of resistance that stretches back decades and forward to futures we’re still imagining. Hyfae contributor, performer and stylist Willow Stone puts this feeling into words: “Clothes are not only there to hide your body, but they actually show the world more of you. I think that’s really exciting.” And with authenticity comes connection. As queer club night Club Are’s Mika Kailes explains: “I see fashion as this kind of nonverbal language. Secret codes. How sometimes you think, oh, maybe this person I might get along with.”

Moving from London to Berlin really opened up this idea to me. The way people dressed broke away from conventions that felt more ingrained at home. The more unique your look, the better — people were discovering totally new notions of beauty that were all about DIY expression, rather than refinement. This is one of the things I love most about Hyfae designer Jonty K. Mellmann’s take on fashion. Each of his pieces is completely unique, characterised by his self-described “crusty ravecore flavour” and littered with free party references. Art history and music in-jokes are sewn into its seams. Suddenly, a look takes on a whole new meaning.

Whilst Berghain regulars will complain that Berlin’s most notorious club has lost some of this rare sparkle over the years (it’s still pretty magical, though, I’d say), there is no shortage of new parties and collectives to pass on the torch. Lunchbox Candy is one such event. Of all the parties I’ve been to, it is possibly the most unrestrained when it comes to expressing queerness and sexual liberation through style. Many people visiting Lunchbox see the event as their own personal creative challenge with drag, nudity and customisation being the norm. I’ve never seen so many cut, pinned and painted looks in one place. One of its founders, Adam Munnings, explains that Lunchbox emerged from “an honest place of something that we wanted to see. In short, joy. A representation of queerness that is more than a sexual orientation. It’s a point of view, a pushback on societal norms. It’s not a fashion party. It’s not a costume party. It’s an identity party. It’s about radical self-expression.”

Back in London, Club Are has a different approach to this same energy. For Kailes and co-founder Abdulla Jama, the project emerged as “a kind of cross between audio visual exhibition and a dance party,” born from creative dissatisfaction. “I really didn’t enjoy any of the fashion projects I was doing at the time. It’s like there was no purpose, and it felt a bit soulless,” he tells me. The solution came when he used his studio to host his birthday party: “The studio was in this crazy, hot, abandoned factory building. We had the whole top floor, a massive space. It’s crazy how it’s completely in the middle of nowhere, but all of sudden the whole of the queer scene was there, with people dancing on the tables until the next day. It felt very special — this really beautiful energy that finally gave me the confidence to start something. We see Club Are as a kind of continuous conversation with our community.” 

Club Are’s founders aren’t the only ones to be inspired by a party. Hyfae designer, Burma-born Lynn L Yaung also began his label in this way: “When I moved to London, the club was a place where I could be whoever I wanted to be. It shaped how I present myself to the world and forged my self-identity. That’s how I started what is now ‘Lynn La Yaung’ — making looks to wear out every weekend!” And the lineage runs deep. When Stone (the Hyfae stylist I mentioned earlier) and I visited the Leigh Bowery exhibition at the Tate Modern, I felt the parallels intensely. Taboo, where Bowery spent transformative nights in the ’80s forming his philosophy of “dress as though your life depends on it”, became a playground for radical self-expression. And there, Bowery’s performances were legendary — he’d completely transform each week, sometimes spending entire days creating looks for just one night.

Meanwhile, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s love of club culture influenced their shop SEX, which became a meeting point for London’s ’70s punk scene. The shop’s interior was designed like a sex club’s rubber fetish dungeon, and customers had to navigate past provocative imagery and bondage gear to buy clothes. Not long after SEX took on a new name, Blitz Club became the birthplace of New Romanticism. Famous for its strict door policy — much like Taboo — Blitz was known for turning celebrities away if their look was not creative enough. Gender-fluid makeup and theatrical costumes weren’t just accepted but required — yet more proof that club spaces can provoke entire cultural movements and reshape mainstream fashion.

This philosophy echoes throughout history. Many of contemporary culture’s most exciting trends were born from these temporary utopias. Stone recognises the debt today’s scene owes: “It’s important to acknowledge that we wouldn’t be where we are today as queer people. I wouldn’t be here as a trans woman if it wasn’t for Black queer people, specifically Black trans women.” The Ballroom scene — an African-American and Latino queer subculture from the ’70s — exemplifies this creativity born from exclusion. “To be able to go to a ball and walk executive realness was the opportunity for them to feel the fantasy of the power that they saw white people have every day,” Willow explains. “A lot of what’s now deemed cool and on trend originates from their fight to progress LGBTQIA+ rights.” Seyram Noemi Abra Deh from ballroom collective House of Juicy understands this firsthand. “Even the way a lot of people talk, using words like ‘slay,’ ‘boots,’ ‘clock,’ ‘serve’ — all of that language derives from Black trans women,” she says.

Abra Deh was only eighteen, newly arrived in Berlin, when she walked her first ball, a fundraiser for Ghana’s Kill The Bill Campaign supporting transgender activist Angel Maxine’s fight against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. “I felt extra obliged to walk this ball as a Ghanaian myself,” she explains. “But the category called for something in gold, and all I had was a tiny golden necklace. I was about to get chopped until someone pointed out that necklace. The judges gave me lots of grace and I got my tens.” Usually, though, her looks take extensive preparation, often collaborating with designers to create what’s known in ballroom terms as an ‘effect’. The imagination, vision and labour that goes into these competitions is rooted in pageantry — the art of transforming into a higher self. Go-go dancer and trans activist Danni Spooner had a similar experience in London’s queer party scene. “I think queer club spaces are a space to find ourselves a lot of the time,” they tell me. “We can find our folk, we can test out a fantasy, we can be inspired by one another to live larger and kinder.” It’s freedom to dress for the world you want to inhabit rather than the one that seeks to constrain you.

Just as we can’t ignore trans identities within this discussion, sex workers also hold an important place. Since I started stripping, the fashion of sex workers has become increasingly mainstream. But the way we think about revealing the body and using clothes to create fantasy has been happening in strip clubs for decades before it was acceptable on the runway. From Berlin-based fashion brand Namilia’s recent ‘Stripclub’ collection to a neon-outline of a stripper sitting in the window of Heaven by Marc Jacobs’ — which is unironically located in front of the club where I work — these commercial hallmarks symbolise capitalism’s ability to commodify the very identities it rejects. But this exchange isn’t one-directional. As big brands embrace these aesthetics, it creates new opportunities for performers to enter the fashion space, too. Hyfae designer Lou, the woman behind Saqua Studio and her new label Angel Workwear, is one such example, using her experience as a dancer to design swimwear and lingerie that can handle the challenge of performance. Teeny tiny bikini’s and Pleasers are no longer something to be hidden, but celebrated. And let’s be honest, it’s fun to feel sexy!

With all this in mind, the question of who gets in — and who doesn’t — remains one of club culture’s most contentious debates. For Adam at Lunchbox, it’s simple: “It’s not about, are you cool enough or looking good enough? It’s about understanding that this isn’t entertainment you consume — it’s something you contribute to. If you’re a crazy misfit who needs a place to be, this is it. But if you just want to check out and get your mind blown without doing the work, it’s not for you.” At Club Are there’s no door selection, but clear community building with plenty of tickets on the door for friends and family, and, of course, the Dolls enter for free. But these protective measures aren’t without controversy. Door policies can enable discrimination that goes against the very ethos they’re meant to protect. But for marginalised communities, the stakes feel particularly high. “For queer individuals, club culture becomes such an important part of our lives because we can’t always express ourselves in daily life,” Club Are’s Kailes adds. “Life on the margins becomes the place where you find your people.” 

This intentional curation has become even more crucial as scenes gain popularity. As Abra Deh puts it, “As a person who belongs to a minority, it’s about meeting people who share lived experiences that I can relate to. Since ballroom has become more mainstream, we make a point to prioritise BIPOC, trans and queer youth — which is why we’ve started BIPOC-only ballroom sessions. That’s how we continue to hold space for the people who need it.” Their door policies might differ, then, but the mission stays the same: protecting the places where people can express themselves freely. As Lunchbox’s Munnings reflects: “It’s so important because growing up we can be told that we are too much, that we are different, that we are not fitting in. But these things that are used against us actually end up becoming our strength — our individuality.”

This idea of coming home to yourself echoes through so many stories. Dancer and activist Spooner explains how discovering their trans identity in these spaces has been a source of inner joy: “My childhood self feels understood and seen. I can play and become. I actively become the adult I would’ve adored as a child.” That got me thinking about how little me would feel about grown-up me. To be honest, I think she’d be into it. Although my pixie cut carries echoes of that weirdly controversial childhood haircut, the person wearing it has had all that extra time to play and figure out who she wants to be. Some of us get lost and some of us get found, and maybe we never get all the way there, but I can feel myself becoming more 3D.  And the skins we try on, and the parties that we wear them to — these wild laboratories of experimentation — have a lot to say for that journey.

Check out Hyfae here.