When a certain X-rated Vivienne Westwood archival tee was relaunched by the late designer’s Vivienne Foundation earlier this month, it unleashed a perfect storm of presale sign-ups and online fandom debate. With fresh eyes on the drop and Google searches soaring, listings for the original vintage version started popping up on eBay for upwards of $500. The relaunch was teased with a provocative cast — Kate Moss, boundary-breaking muse and friend of the brand, alongside Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell, and Colin Jones — further stoking the hype. Suddenly, hyper-online tastemakers scrolling niche fashion zines and micro-influencer feeds were arguing over whether it was an act of feminist reclamation or just another case of nostalgia-tinged consumerism.
Either way, the internet had spoken: punk was trending again.
Except it wasn’t just nostalgia fueling the frenzy — it was the chance to own a piece of fashion history. For years, authentic Westwood “Tits” tees were few and far between, whispered about in resale circles like relics from another era. Now, with the reissue open for presale, the hyper-online crowd saw their shot to wear a cult classic, but most importantly, revive its bite.
The first wave of Westwood T-shirt wearers looked a bit different. In the 1970s in New York City’s East Village, gaunt 20-somethings in torn band shirts and cigarette jeans smoked Marlboros alongside peroxide-blondes in leather miniskirts. A steady parade of patrons passed beneath the yellowing awning of CBGB, the heart of the city’s underground. The sound of distorted guitars and snarled vocals floated out to the sidewalk: the punk anthem of a burgeoning counterculture.
Cut to 2025 Bushwick: Shaggy-haired kids in thrifted low-rise denim crowd the cracked pavement outside a derelict warehouse. They’re passing around a vape instead of a cig, and the sound echoing off the concrete walls is a sugar-rushed bassline: queue 100 gecs’ “money machine” for a taste. Their genre of preference thrives on provocation, deliberately pushing against social norms, musical conventions, and aesthetic expectations (“brat green,” anyone?). This is the generation of hyperpop, Gen Z’s answer to punk — a movement for a generation raised on climate chaos and internet connection.
In this niche corner of the pop world, the genre is pushed to its extremes. If punk was power chords and chaos, hyperpop is chaos compressed. Distortion is traded for digital clipping. DIY energy is translated into the digital form. Imagine Sid Vicious armed with a laptop instead of a bass guitar: the same signature anti-commercial attitude, echoed through auto-tuned vocals, glitchy synths, and hyperactive beats. Unlike its glossy bubblegum contemporaries, hyperpop doesn’t polish or smooth. The oversharing, sonic maximalism, and self-produced graphics are all part of the rebellion.
The hyperpop look is just as specific as the sound. Buckle-studded moto boots ripped from thrift racks stomp across cracked concrete. Vintage leather jackets somehow retain their original sheen while softened by years of wear. Glitter tears à la Euphoria streak cheeks in iridescent shards. The medium may have shifted from mosh pits to memes, but the mission endures: to stand out, self-invent, and scream “I am not like the others!” (even if it’s into a front-facing camera). The kids of CBGB may have weaponized distortion, but the kids on the corner of Bushwick and Ridgewood and plastered across TikTok For You Pages weaponize irony — posting sped-up remixes of breakup songs or dressing like a hyperbolic form of Charli just to beat the algorithm.
The punk scene manifested because the people who didn’t fit in (too queer, too political, too broke) found each other in basements and gay bars — on the communal margins.
Hyperpop picks up on the same rebel stems. Artists such as 100 gecs, Dorian Electra, and SOPHIE — the movement's late Mother Supreme — blur the lines between gender, genre, and identity until the whole binary collapses into sound. And musicians like osquinn and underscores are less “signed” than self-started, glitching their vocals until they sound simultaneously alien and intimate. Their fans, meanwhile, populate SoundCloud and Discord, hunting for 2 AM song drops and spotting the “original” TikToks before they go viral.
Even the way the two movements have spread is similar. With punk, it was Xeroxed zines, layers of flyers stapled to corner lampposts, band names spray-painted across subway cars. The scene thrived on circulation. Now, the lamppost is the algorithm. Hyperpop might live online, but the energy feels familiar: the same scrappy instinct to build a world out of what is available. Hyperpop fans make self-referential memes to hit the niche that “gets it,” queuing up Floptropica memes of a hyperpop-soundtracked meme universe that builds upon itself with ironic, self-aware humor and inside jokes. Just as their punk predecessors proudly wore “freak” like armor, hyperpop has reclaimed terms like “brat” with a defiant wink.
The way these subcultures talk has changed, but what they’re saying hasn’t: this is for us, and only us. Even the Westwood “Tits” tee is in on the joke now — once punk’s provocation, today’s presale hits, and TikTok clout prove that rebellion ages like fine irony.
