The street style mag capturing London’s countercultural youth

They say that social media is flattening culture into an algorithmic mass of micro-aesthetics and -girl and -core trends. But step out onto the streets and you’ll find an entirely different picture. Following on from his Hair Wars zine (the inspiration behind last year’s Heaven x Bleach campaign), photographer Will Wright has spent the past few months capturing some of London’s most eccentric and alternative street style for issue two of Street Flash. Presented as a photo essay, the A5 zine continues the same format as its inaugural issue, with pages of snaps documenting hyper-colourful and edgy youth across the city, with familiar faces such as designer Claire Barrow, Hysteric Fashion and Gentle Mutilation. 

“For the new issue of Street Flash I’ve tried to focus in on what made issue one special, which was the straight-up portraits of people on the street, so this time there are four times as many as those plus around 50 per cent more content in general,” says Wright, “so basically it's all your fave bits from issue one, but way bigger and better!”

Inspired by OG street style bibles such as Shoichi Aoki’s Fruits magazine and Juergen Teller’s Go See’s book, there’s plenty of style-spo to draw on, from lolitas to punks, cyber-kittens and pastel goths. Aesthetically, it’s a slight change from the first issue, which featured rawer and louder looks, reflecting the frantic energy of post-pandemic culture. “With issue one, I think people had been cooped up for so long that there was such an emphasis on maximising raw personal expression, almost as a kind of trauma response,” Wright agrees. “In the most recent year though I think people have developed that instinct into something more refined and self-referentially playful, and rather than prioritising the kind of stark individualism that's born from isolation, have begun forming communities with people who share similar stylistic sensibilities.”

Reminiscent of the glory days of Tumblr, the looks captured in Street Flash aren’t what you’d describe as trendy, but rather highlight a heightened passion for personal style that leans heavily towards DIY. Whether it’s brightly coloured hair, scrawly tattoos, personalised adornments, or the excessive layering of Hello Kitty merch, each subject is uniquely eye-catching in their own way, which makes leafing through the zine’s pages all the more enticing. “I mostly go off vibes [when choosing subjects],” Wright expands, “but a degree of eccentricity and a healthy disregard for contemporary clout metrics definitely helps!” 

One big addition to this issue are the street style looks by Japanese photographer @meetstreetsnap, taken in and around Ishikawa. “I feel like myself and @meetstreetsnap are both part of a loosely knit collective of photographers who started at a similar time, and whose shared references have drawn us to be as invested in the cultural side of street style as much as the brands,” he explains. “I wanted to have a regular section of the zine that offered a window into these other photographers’ worlds and provide a reference point for how similar types of people are dressing in other parts of the globe.”

He hopes to expand things further and spotlight photographers from around the world; to build his own archive that documents the last decade’s street style, and reconnect to the roots of all those iconic street style magazines of the 90s and 00s. “A major goal for my work is to ultimately form an archive that has a degree of permanence, and I think online spaces which are often very transient and fast-paced just aren't the right space for that,” he concludes. “As things progress I want to make sure the physical zine represents a greater value proposition than just being a collection of pics people have already seen online.”