Emma Hope Allwood on defining Gen Z
Former Dazed Head of Fashion, Emma Hope Allwood is a journalist and creative consultant with a track record of helping brands and media brands alike to represent and reach young, culturally engaged audiences. She has consulted on talent for the Dazed 100; as a journalist she’s interviewed leading art, music and fashion figures, such as Yohji Yamamoto, Kim Jones, Barbara Kruger, and Allen Jones, and Billie Eilish; and for her latest project – slated for December 2021 – Allwood is curating an exhibition about nightlife. She is also an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins. Here, she asks, “How do you define the generation known for its refusal to fit neatly into boxes?” and unpacks why some of the 2021 winning work created for this group hits the mark.
Frenzied marketing content will tell you this post-millennial generation counts as anyone born after 1996, but culturally, 9/11 is the starting line. This was the world today’s teens were born into: the War on Terror, as abstract and unwinnable as its name; the 2008 financial crisis and its recession; and the threat of climate change as real as that of an armed gunman shooting up your school or cinema. And that’s without mentioning iPhones.
First, some context. In a 1987 interview with i-D magazine, sci-fi provocateur JG Ballard predicted social media, imagining a future of constant self-documentation, one where “we'll all be simultaneously actor, director and screenwriter in our own soap opera." 16 years later, a guy at Harvard created a website by which Ivy Leaguers could rank their classmates’ hotness, and ended up transforming the internet forever (and, arguably, F-ing up democracy in the process). In 2007, a denim and turtlenecked Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s first iPhone, and by the time the 2010s got underway, smartphones were as essential as fossil fuels.
"For the most part, they don’t remember a time before YouTube, while Snapchat streaks are social currency"
Gen Z came of age with the dizzying exhibitionism of the social internet, the all-you-can-eat buffet of streaming. For the most part, they don’t remember a time before YouTube, while Snapchat streaks are social currency. “Please do not perceive me”, a popular internet refrain, is the kind of in-joke that only makes sense when you realise that for this generation, other peoples’ perceptions are the black mirror through which they’ve filtered their entire lives.
about-face, Concrete
Ever the prophet, Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame prediction came true in the 21st century: fame wasn’t just yours for the taking: it was anyone’s. Teenagers on TikTok, the app that exploded in 2019, danced their way into high profile brand endorsements, movie roles, and number one singles, cashing in millions in the process. But it’s not all about the fame and fortune that seemingly awaits anyone with an iPhone and a ring light. If the Generation X of Douglas Copeland’s 1991 novel was epitomised by slacker nihilism, Gen Z actually gives a shit: and they don’t understand why no one else does.
A natural affinity for social justice defines this demographic, as epitomised by the Marxist make-over undergone by Teen Vogue. (“Who is Karl Marx? Meet the Anticapitalist scholar”, one 2018 headline reads, as if the long-dead communist was a new TV star – not that Gen Z cares much about TV: they rank playing video games, listening to music, browsing the internet, and social media as activities they’d rather do above watching TV or films). Trump’s destabilising 2016 election win marked a moment of mobilisation as young people saw the Hope-sloganed Obama era of their childhood warp into a nightmare, but instead of standing by, the world watched as the Parkland teenagers stood up against gun violence, and Greta Thunberg inspired school walkouts to raise awareness about climate change. Maybe the fate of Trump’s re-election was sealed when he threatened to ban TikTok, the app that 20% of Gen Z spends more than five hours a day on.
“Trump’s destabilising 2016 election win marked a moment of mobilisation as young people saw the Hope-sloganed Obama era of their childhood warp into a nightmare”
Careening between crises, from fake news to the Capitol storming, wildfires to a global pandemic, this generation finds stability in self-determination. When the world’s going to end, why not dress how you want? With a deadly plague ravaging the planet, what’s the point racking up debt going to Zoom college when you could just get rich off DogeCoin? Why chain yourself to a soul-crushing desk job when you could be a Twitch streamer, or a YouTuber, or make $30,000 a month on OnlyFans?
Gen Z is marked by a belief that people should be free to be whoever they want to be – whether in terms of sexuality (one in six identifies as LGBTQ+, the highest percentage of any generation to date by quite a margin), gender identity (half believe that the traditional gender binary is outdated) or personal style. If you are going to perceive me, then do it on my terms: instead of swearing allegiance to one style or subculture, an internet-inspired bricolage is de rigueur – while one day you might want to dress like a cottagecore fairy, the next you might feel more like being an e-girl. In other words: do you.
UNI-FORM, Ogilvy Taiwan
Consider one of this year’s winning campaigns: the launch of Halsey’s about-face, a vegan, cruelty-free, clean beauty line billed as “multidimensional make-up, made for the many of you”. Agency Concrete created a kaleidoscopic brand identity with conventions about gender and the typical, airbrushed perfection of celebrity beauty campaigns thrown out the window. Instead of filtered shots of Halsey, a musician who grew up on Tumblr, a truly diverse cast of muses showcased a series of colourful, expressive looks. In other words, beauty is no longer about copy and paste glamour, or about anybody’s gaze but your own.
Or look at UNI-FORM, the project that started with a group of Taiwanese high schoolers challenging the gendered conventions of their school dress code through an event in which their male peers and teachers wore skirts, and ended up with Vogue joining forces with fashion designer Angus Chiang to design a gender-neutral uniform, powered by Ogilvy Taiwan – and sparking a conversation about gender in schools in the process.
For Gen Z, rules were made to be broken. Whether make-up looks or school uniforms – the things Millennials accepted with resignation, or simply didn’t think to question, are Gen Z’s battlegrounds. After all, the fu