Last year, dystopian streetwear label DARKDRON staged its SS16 presentation 65-metres underground in a Cold War shelter hidden within Moscow’s Metro tunnels. Off-schedule, with no seating plan and no RSVP, founder Gio Forbice’s desire to align DARKDRON with enigma was clear from the offset. While the brand emerged as a reaction to surveillance society, the aesthetic stems from Foribce’s fascination with 80s and 90s sci-fi films and cyberpunk video games, the dystopian futures they denote and the characters within them.

Today, Forbice has dropped the lookbook for DARKDRON’s SS17 offering. Titled “UNWELCOME”, the collection takes inspiration from the machete-wielded main protagonist of the Friday the 13th horror franchise Jason Voorhees, along with Juggalos – the masked and face-painted anarchic fans who worship artists on Psychopathic Records and come together once a year for the infamous The Gathering of the Juggalos festival. “We love the look of these fans,” says Forbice. “We think their mood sits perfectly with the DARKDRON ideology, where all the kids love to be wild and anything goes. We were also inspired by legendary wrestler The Undertaker, because he knows how to kill.”

Forbice enlisted American photographer Sandy Kim to shoot the lookbook and Sky Ferriera to model the collection – both of whom he met through mutual friends in New York. The resulting imagery sees a red-lipped, love-bitten Ferriera kitted out in DARKDRON’s disproportioned silhouettes, fetishistic embellishments and bold eyebrow-raising graphics, including a spread-legged tribute to Kappa’s logo and an axe motif inspired by Juggalo hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse’s song “My axe is my buddy”. “The fit of the collection is oversized for boys and girls without distinctions,” says Forbice. “Someone who’s slovenly and rave-ready.” Meanwhile, panelled pastel jeans sit alongside graphics of a naked woman with her intestines on display, whilst an image of a bloody blade appears on a dress with a clerical collar. The lookbook is heightened by an abrasive industrial “UNWELCOME” playlist, created by Yuri (aka Zhenya Bazarov) to accompany the visuals.

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