The Anti-Aesthetic Aesthetic: Why We’re Tired of Pretty and Leaning Into Weird
In an era once obsessed with perfectly polished feeds and color coded minimalism, something strange is happening. Weird is winning.
Across fashion, interiors, and online culture, a new visual language is emerging. One that leans into chaos, embraces imperfection, and dares to be ugly. Whether it’s an offbeat figurine like Labubu peeking from a style influencer’s bookshelf (read our little think piece on Labubu;s here) or the sudden rise of lumpy candles, mismatched ceramics, and intentionally clunky accessories, there’s a noticeable shift. Aesthetic fatigue is real, and people are reaching for something that feels less… controlled.
From Clean Girl to Chaos Core
The ‘clean girl’ look had a firm grip on trend cycles for years. Think glazed skin, gold hoops, tidy slick backs, and muted earth tones. It was aspirational and algorithm approved. But with it came pressure, a curated kind of beauty that often felt unattainable, especially for those outside a certain economic, racial, or cultural bracket.
Enter chaos. Enter ‘ugly cute’. Enter the anti-aesthetic.
This isn’t about rejecting beauty altogether. It’s about redefining what beauty means. Instead of symmetry and softness, there’s texture. Instead of cohesion, there’s contradiction. People are layering chunky rings, wearing oddly shaped bags, or posing beside plush toys that look more haunted than huggable. It’s deliberately off. And that’s the point.
A Rebellion Dressed in Style
Ugly fashion isn’t new. Balenciaga built an entire empire out of absurd proportions and normcore distortion. But what’s happening now feels different. It’s less about designer subversion and more about personal agency. Creatives are styling their spaces and their selves with objects that confuse the algorithm. It’s niche. It’s noisy. It doesn’t make sense on a Pinterest board, and that’s why it feels authentic.
Labubu, with its bug eyes and chaotic charm, represents this rebellion. It doesn’t beg for approval. It simply exists, strange, bold, and unapologetically itself. The same can be said for the resurgence of indie brands making intentionally “off” accessories, or the boom in amateur DIY aesthetics where raw edges and asymmetry are a badge of honour.
Aesthetic as Emotion, Not Just Appearance
At its core, the anti-aesthetic movement is an emotional response. After years of social and visual perfectionism, people want relief. Weirdness offers that. It allows for expression without expectation. It also makes space for cultural quirks, inside jokes, and nostalgic artifacts that don’t align with mainstream notions of taste.
We’re in a moment where softness and strangeness can co exist. A toy can sit beside your candle collection and still say something about your taste. A mismatched outfit can feel more honest than a coordinated one. And beauty? It can be odd. It can be loud. It can make you look twice.
So What Does This Mean for Style?
For the African creative class, this moment is ripe for reinterpretation. We’ve always infused symbolism, storytelling, and bold visual language into our fashion. Now, there’s permission to play even more. To create without polish. To style with instinct instead of rulebooks. To experiment with things that look “wrong” but feel right.
The anti-aesthetic aesthetic isn’t a trend. It’s a recalibration. A move away from aspirational sameness toward expressive freedom. And as with all things in culture, it begins with a shift in the eye.
So the next time something looks weird, pause before you scroll past. It might be the most honest thing you’ve seen all day.
