NOKI FW23: “This Isn’t Serious Fashion – This Is Freedom”

“The rave has never left,” said NOKI as he beckoned us backstage, following the elusive artist’s Fall/Winter 2023 show that debuted earlier today at London Fashion Week. Indeed, he’s right — LFW is closing with not one, but half a dozen rave-themed parties — and before those was Dr. Noki NHS’ own celebratory moment, titled “THE 22-4-1 EVOLUTIONS.”

Like last season, FW23 was a performance-lead presentation of head-turning customized one-offs, with each look being a two-for-one bogof piece that championed upcycling, something NOKI was a pioneer of before the word was really even a thing back in the 1990s rave scene. His so-called “franken-fashion” grew into horses, monsters, robots, punks and ravers alike this season, each underpinned by vivid anti-fashion anarchy, graphics, and of course, a belter of a soundtrack.

As muses/models walked down the runway with JBL boom boxes and personal phones playing a sound clash of music, we found riffs on iconic brands such as Dior, adidas, Off-White™, PUMA, and society as a whole with his play on the NHS. Think bootleg Dior speaker-holding bags, the Three Stripes’ name scribbled out to read “acids,” masking tape adorning mishmashed tees and “PIMP” on the chests of other numbers.

New to the scene was a heavy amount of sportswear, taken literally rather than streetwear’s interpretation. Here, shoulders were padded like quarterbacks, while numbers from jerseys were manipulated into hearts.

Speaking on his work, NOKI said:

“This collection, as with all of my work, is about showing how to work within a system and build a legacy that is truly and fundamentally sustainable, and remains so no matter how that system evolves over time. This isn’t serious fashion – this is freedom. This is making sustainability vivid and fun, enticing and alluring. I want to show to my students at NESTT [Noki Education of Sustainable Textiles and Technology] and those all over the world the endless possibilities of this collage technique. I want to show my audience, and that all over the world how we can turn things from toxic to positive. That is my legacy.”

NOKI FW23 can be seen in the gallery above. More London Fashion Week FW23 content can be found across Hypebeast.

Elsewhere, Ancuta Sarca went into an AI universe for FW23.