CityLife

Personality shines through in clubbers' clobber

FIERCE BUT PRODUCTIVE: Oliver and his brother

NEXT time you’re out and about, stop for a moment and have a look at the people around you. What will you see? 

Perhaps you will find yourself on a bus full of teenage MP3Js, each clad in trackies, blasting the latest donk cut from their phones.

Or maybe you’ll be in the park, watching suits, denim rockers, baggy blingers and miniskirted Topshoppers go by.   

Do you think you will see any clubbers? Would you even be able to identify a lover of nightlife if you saw one?  

Dance fans lurk among us always. They are in our schools, our workplaces, our coffee shops and parks, all waiting for that post-sunset moment when they, like mad disco werewolves, transform to become Out Of The Ordinary Joe.  

Clubbers' clobber  

“Walking down the street, I don’t think it is easy to spot someone who is into their dance music,” says Oliver Hopkinson, head of design at Dirty Smart clothing, a brand which specialises in clubbers’ clobber.  

“Rock and indie kids you can spot a mile off at any time of day. They like to let everyone know who they are. Clubbers tend to become different people when they are out in town and the same goes for what they wear.”  

So while rockers may wear the same battered kicks and vintage tees to a club as they would down the local precinct, dance disciples don all manner of glittery, neon inventions for a night out.   

However, says Hopkinson, the difference isn’t in effort, but expression.  

Jeans round their ankles  

“[Indie kids] like to look a bit dirty and wear their jeans round their ankles. It doesn’t mean they haven’t made an effort; it just comes across in a different sense.  

“When you are in a club with thousands of other people, clothing becomes a lot more than something that separates your skin from the air.  

“When the music is so loud you can’t hear yourself think, let alone hold a conversation, you have to express your personality to onlookers through the threads you don.”  

Hopkinson recently decided to start helping clubgoers with this peacock-like process, having given up a career as a DJ to bring his dance-inspired designs to the masses.   

Working with his brother (a relationship he describes as “fierce but productive”), he founded Dirty Smart with the intention of becoming a name synonymous with musical couture.  

The label launches a women’s range in November (presumably to give the disrobed ladies in its glossy ads something to wear), but the ambition doesn’t end there: “We want to be the number one brand for music lovers across the globe.”  

Who knows if that will happen; but if it does, at least it’ll make clubbers easier to spot on the bus.