The Techno Aesthetic: the Berlin trend that exploded in 2024
Music and fashion come together in the techno aesthetic, transcending the festival moment. All the details of the Berlin aesthetic setting trends in 2024.
Let's start with a fact: the German government has decided to include techno music, along with 120 other traditions, in the National Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage (without any actual involvement of UNESCO). This news has brought attention back to the clubbing aesthetic, which over the past decade has become tightly linked to the techno world that has literally exploded, becoming a strong and brutal fashion trend that has influenced part of the 2024 street style.
We can define it, first of all, through its opposite: bucolic, romantic, ethereal, quiet luxury, old money, coquette—all these trends (or “cores”) share being the antithesis of the techno aesthetic. The historic Berlin club Berghain, the nerve center of this culture, knows the dress code very well. How you dress determines your entry or rejection.
The wardrobe is almost entirely black, but it's not an “elegant black” or even a “minimalist black” or a “conceptual black.” It's a “techno black,” defined by the rigor of geometries, squared lines reimagining the silhouette, mostly sharp and boxy. Berlin fashion starts here, building a wardrobe that proposes a layered black: leather, transparencies, latex—these are the materials combined to reveal the character of this total black look loaded with meanings. It’s not trivial; it's imbued with hypersexuality—a free, often provocative expression of sensuality, deliberately shameless.
Visible slips, oversized bombers worn bare-chested, stone-washed baggy pants, and black leather shoes with exaggerated lug soles are some of the most important items of techno fashion that expresses itself through no-gender. But it’s in the details that it substantively defines itself: a choker with a ring, piercings dotting the body, belts with significant buckles, and especially the 2000s sunglasses with very dark lenses, hinting at the Matrix world, perfect for attending raves. There's a lot of Balenciaga and Rick Owens, a lot of brutal fashion defined in the clubbing world, only to end up on the streets of international cities.
