April 07, 2005

• Neon. Lots of neon.
• Traditional ravers wear very large pants. Glowsticks Anything really. Neon. Google image search ravers. Get a water bottle too.
• You'll need a pacifier. Colored contacts?
• What in the hell? School sponsored rave? I don't get it? In my day, raves were places to go score bad drugs and hit on white trash girls who drove Mitsubishi Eclipses.
• google image searches ravers, collapses in hysterical laughter. . .
• Compared to these kids my parachute pants and Euro-mullet looked pretty cool. so cool....
• yes, they look like nice kids actually, although. . pastels, eergh. But I can't talk, once upon a time I wore pink high top converse sneakers and torn black fishnets and several layers of pink polka dotted tulle and thought I was pretty insanely cool. With gigantic earrings, too.
• i'd say jeans definitely. the how bout this t-shirt i saw recently: It's not a crime to masterbate
• For a 13 year old, a "candy raver" look is probably best and age-appropriate, since that is how the younger ravers tend to dress (or did at the "raves" I got dragged along to a few years back). You can probably do all of this for very little expense. Raver gear is all about comfort, since you'll get sweaty and (drug factor) might overheat, and be dancing for hours on end. Unsubtle colors/glowy stuff/shiny stuff/neat textures also for (drug factor) trippy fun. Bright colors. Candy colors. White. Touchable fabrics. Big baggy pants with very loose ankles, if you want to be extreme then so loose that the pants almost have the lines of a skirt, hanging on the hips and flared out in a triangle with a lot of sag on the bottom; but just baggy is okay too. Fleece is good for fun fuzzy pettableness. You can make them yourself, the raver guys I knew did (one did a pair in neon orange fleece, the other did baby blue), very easy to do, just use an elastic waistband or a drawstring. Or very loose corduroys could work too. Big loose colorful shirt, layer one on a plain white tee or on a white tank top because then you can strip down as you get sweaty from dancing. Backpack with both straps up or messenger bag across the chest. Bonus if the backpack is a stuffed animal or has one hanging on it (stuffed monkeys or frogs are cute and get the girls all paying attention to you). Colorful/shiny/metallic patches sewn on also great. Carry lots of candy, hard and sour candies are good and you meet people when you share. Candy necklaces and bracelets work too. Also a water bottle, very necessary. Glowsticks, glow rope jewelry, big plastic beaded jewelry on elastics, whistles, (drug factor) pacifiers. Sneakers are best for dancing (comfort!); go for more of a white athletic or retro look, low-tops not high-tops, not canvas. Tennis-style visor hat to keep sweat out of the eyes. Spiky gelled hair. He will be the coolest one there if he has a toy like this (bonus if it glows under blacklight) and he plays with it while he dances.
• Choosing clothes in high school / middle school requires a very complex equation with many many inputs. Probably why so many of us look back on those times and wonder the whole class looked so dorky.
• Hmmm ...? Let me just see here. A member with the screen-name mygothlaundry is having fashion angst concerning her adolescent progeny. Man, I LOVE this place.
• A common problem, given the existence of this online store: Rave Factory I would recommend something with a DJ reference - i.e. a t-shirt or baseball cap with turntables or a record or headphones or some 'bpm' reference on it. Also, since this is school sponsored, it probably won't be populated with drugs, glowsticks, and might not even have the rave-requisite blacklights - so you can probably go for more subtle clothes that can be worn to school normally. And a hoodie. Ravers love hoodies. Here is a nice one. And Nor Cal seems to be all over the place now. And these are some cool pants (you have to click 'enlarge' to see them) Basically, anything loose in a breathable fabric and a matte color. The whole shiny raver thing is over.
• Theatrical Shorts
• A siouxsie shirt and some clove cigs
• Sorry argh, it was already done
• Two words: Leg. Warmers. Oops, wrong decade.
• Oh, we're all being serious here? Hmm. Well, the ravers I've been hanging out with recently are wearing-- Sorry, I have to go back to this: So we're skipping the bitter sarcasm about school-sponsored bastardization and neutering of subculture? We're not calling anyone out on pandering? Nothing about a school condoning drug culture? Really? Okay... Sounds interesting. I'll give it another shot. The candy raver stuff people have mentioned is probably a little dated from what I understand-- Aw fuck, I just can't do it. Maybe if I have enough time to ready myself for it, I'll have some advice for 'Anarchy in the HS Punk Rock Prom Night.' ("Have fun, be safe, and smash the state! F-word authority, kids -- and f-word you!")
• don't forget the acid and ecstasy so he can candyflip. balloons filled w/ N2O are a plus. and maybe some weed. also.
• I say have him pick out anything he likes, but make sure he has a healthy supply of glow sticks. That way, he can call attention to himself or not, as he chooses and the hours go by.
• hutta, you obviously haven't been thirteen for a while. While it would be cool from our point of view to go punkrock and rebel against conformity, being an adolescent is, sadly, all about the conforming. :)
• Oh, I totally understand wanting to dress appropriately, even conforming. Hell, I ask my friends what to wear when I go out to new places, or weird places like "work" and "where girls could be." It's the fact that this is a school event that's weirding me out. It would be like a school putting on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the winter play with all of the drugs taken out, or a homecoming float depicting a clean-and-sober Studio 54. It's just surreal.
• hutta: well, guess what. Turns out that people have come to realize that without the insane psychedelics and opiates, dancing to extremely loud techno for an extended period of time can still be extremely fun. Just as stomping around in a mosh pit at a punk show can be fun even if you're not completely sloshed. To the poster: wide-bottomed jeans, comfortable sneakers, and maybe a few beads or glowsticks are all that's needed. Raving isn't about fashion-- it's about dancing.
• see, if it were me, i'd go this way. it's rave - oh, yes it is! it's just the filthy dirty angry black-metal-schiz-punk-fuckup-freakout of rave. yeah. fucken.
• I didn't conform when I was a teen. Seriously. And I didn't have any friends. but now everyone agrees I am amazingly cool. LOOKS LIKE IT WORKED
• They're NOT conformists! They're rebels dammit! just like all their friends
• Turns out that people have come to realize that without the insane psychedelics and opiates, dancing to extremely loud techno for an extended period of time can still be extremely fun. Just as stomping around in a mosh pit at a punk show can be fun even if you're not completely sloshed. As a wise man once said, "I don't need drugs to enjoy this... just to enhance it." P.S. - Take pictures.
• Jeans and a T. If it's a proper rave (do they still call them that?) he'll be sweating like a pig as ecstacy pumps through his young veins... For ecstacy read fizzy pop, I hope...
• Hutta: That was a great line. I might write a play called Anarchy in the HS Punk Rock Prom Night now and steal it. So little Johnnie's old enough for Grebo now, huh? Yeah, just comfortable clothes. He's a freshman. Don't try to be ostentatious. Oh, and have him play some Happy Mondays to get in the mood. Then tell him that they stole their master recordings in order to buy crack, and that's the road whence raves lead.
• It doesn't matter what he wears. It matters what his actions are, what he says, and how he carries himself. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs in junior high, and my mother bought me clothes from K-Mart throughout junior high and high school. People thought that I was smart and funny. I was actually well-liked. I just see too many people who feel that their identity and self-worth are directly linked to what they wear. That link only exists if you allow it to. Having said my irrelevant piece, I exit.
• when in doubt, a black turtleneck and black pants will get you in anywhere, from a rave to a funeral. either sex.
• one thing I haven't noticed - earplugs. might not need them, seeing as it's school-sponsored, they might keep a lid on the volume, but better to have them and not need them... speaking as a monkey who didn't use them for the first 20-odd years of his life, and now is paying the piper in my early 30's with a notch in my hearing, and asking people to repeat themselves, get him started early using them at raves / concerts / firing ranges / whatever.
• It would be like a school putting on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the winter play with all of the drugs taken out That would be awesome. I'd probably be the only one in the audience of confused parents laughing my ass off. I'll repeat the advice of baggy jeans or cargo's, beads, glowsticks. T-shirt with optional hoodie. Wear a hat if you like wearing hats. All that other stuff with the backpacks and pacifiers and stuffed animals is just dumb shit ravers do to get noticed. If you want to be a little original and not look like a retard, get a cool shirt. (Disclaimer- A 13 year old's definition of cool may differ from mine, although if he likes devo...) And definitely bring a bottle of water and some candy (keep that in a loose cargo or hoodie pocket or it'll melt).
• lots of shiny black pvc, to retain all the moisture.
• Thanks, everyone. This has indeed been very helpful. I agree that the rave-at-school is a deeply strange, some might say disturbed, concept, but then this is a very unusual school. It's tucked away up in the mountains, there are only 24 kids in 7th, 8th, & 9th grade, and it's vegetarian, run by Quakers. One of the main thrusts of the curriculum is service to others so the kids spend a lot of time doing volunteer projects all over the States: it's quite awesome. The rave should be entertaining as hell since I can't believe they even have any electronica - they usually run more to Bob Dylan covers on one of the many acoustic guitars hanging around the dining hall!
• A (presumably well-chaperoned and drugless) "rave" at school? That's really sad. In my day we'd have been ashamed to be seen anywhere near there; it sounds too much like 'Folk Night" at the Methodist church or "Jazz at the JCC". (Up with People, I say! On with Moral Rearmament! America needs more lerts!) As for what to wear, what about whatever he feels comfortable in? This isn't a debutante cotillion, is it? If that's not good enough, why not take him to REAL rave so he can see their fashions for himself?
• Sounds like a sweet school, mygothlaundry. I wish my mom would have sent me there instead of my huge, football worshipping public school :) I'd second the baggy pants thing (Caffiene is a good skater/raver brand, or at least was a couple years back), and I'd suggest layers. It gets hot while you're dancing. Then again, at a school dance, there may be more standing around than dancing. That's cool too.
• pac man t shirt, baggy jeans, glowy stuff to the max. cant go wrong ultra 90's retro
• Pac-Man 90's retro?
• Heh. Sounds like my cousin's Steiner school in Wisconsin (24 students). Every boy had to be on the football team, otherwise there wasn't one (and had to play both offense and defense- they didn't win a game in the four years my cousin was there).
• Maybe, he could come up with something on his own. Maybe a 9()'s costume isn't the way to go. If he wears jeans and a t-shirt all the time that would be comfortable. Especially when it gets to be the next morning.
• He should dress like EMF.
• Sorry, I have to go back to this: So we're skipping the bitter sarcasm about school-sponsored bastardization and neutering of subculture? For that I'd have to take ravers seriously. Ravers and their messages of peace, love, and free drugs, which are blazingly original and have never been seen before on this earth, let alone two generations ago. Ravers and their giant steps toward making the world a better place. Consider the raver, the mighty raver, to whom we all owe our lives. ...yeah, that's not happening. I kid, yo. Aren't you supposed to be smiling and telling us all to chill or groove or something? come on, take more.
• No fashion advice here, but I do want to know how this turns out.
• How did it turn out?