R13 . Pre-Fall 2025 - New York City

(Images R13.  2024)

Punk started in New York City?  Right? More specifically Lower East Side ala CBGB's back to back early garage rock, proto-punk shows and more specifically NYC rock and roll rebel and icon, Richard Hell and his "Blank Generation", which was recorded in 1975 and heard by the late Malcolm McLaren, the once manager of the Sex Pistols, as a possibility that his U.K. manufactured group could take it all a step further, which they did a year later in 1976, and in true punk fashion, imploded in 1978.  New York City, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was indeed a city crumbling around its cacophony of creativity, driven by cheap rents, which in turn spearheaded individualism like no tomorrow, yet in all of its irony NYC then later spearheaded gentrification, prefabrication and feigned elements of digital entrepreneurism throughout the 1990s 2000s to date.  A lesson, if you want clean potemkin villages, don't complain.  

Can our long awaited rebellious counter culture return with gusto?  So far, the horizon looks void and empty, and if a new Blank Generation is to arrive on the scene, it may arrive like it was always there, or not at all.   In the meantime, the most Fascist and dangerous President America has ever had, has been voted in for the 2nd time.  Yet, Chris Leba of R13, as noted with his Spring 2025 collection is offering a clue, that what ended in New York City, may also begin in New York City, with his homage to the rebellious and punk rock stylisations that have been molded to fit the R13 personae, without relying too much on nostalgia. 

For Leba's Pre-Fall 2025 lookbook array, the NYC designer has crafted that effortless, devil-may-care styling, in complementing that beloved iconic Punk Rock ethos of not caring, or overthinking of what you are wearing.  The youth over the decades have been able to achieve this so well, and if it is one of their unconscious lessons that the young can offer, before it's structured out of them and they join, if they make it, the legions of Middle Class wannabes, let's rejoice in the effortless.  Leba's 1990s grunge, which was Generation X attempt at reliving Punk in the early 90s, is somewhat being reflected with his latest styles, yet all within those 1970s and 1980s counterculture stylizations.  However, as mentioned Leba's R13 holds more of an original distinction, even with its homage of yesteryear's rebellious aesthetics.  It feels more akin to Richard Hell's 1970s New York City, nearly 50 years ago, rather than the dawn of the internet.    

There is also a darker flow being represented with Leba's Pre-Fall collection, carrying on with the floral theme from the Spring 2024 lookbook, Leba as inscribed a lot more of his worn torn looks to the collection, with its tougher, heavier set aesthetic, seen with the shearling, bomber and leather jackets. From skull prints, shaggy and unpicked wool crop top jumpers, to the tough feminine eros of distressed looking silk tops and dresses, noted with Leba's ongoing catchphrase for his R13 styles of that ubiquitous  "Fuck you" phrasing, seen on some of the Pre-Fall 2025 styles, derived from that late 1970s hedonistic backlash, 'I dress punk rock sexy, doesn't mean I want to fuck you' attitude.

The youth are cool, when they turn off, drop out and decide to go in the opposite direction.  Even if it is a moment in time.  We await in earnest.

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(A.Glass 2024)