One in every of fashion’s longest-standing trends is misnaming brand-sponsored activations as “raves”. Season after season, fashion publicists will host fashion week afterparties in TimeOut venues where editor-influencers talk a bit while LSDXOXO, Richie Hawtin, or OnlyFire perform within the background. Fashion likes to align itself with the underground, but sometimes a club is only a club. “They all the time feel so serious, too,” the organisers of London’s fashion-pilled OPIA rave say over DM. “You may be camp and queer and playful while still being editorial. That’s what we’re all about. OPIA was born out of the need to showcase this queer subculture as one of the crucial progressive and non-conformist on this planet.”

Mascotted by two blonde-wigged, brainless broads – AKA Bambi Dyboski and Bautista Botto-Barilli – OPIA was established earlier this yr as “the Hard Rock Café” of the Tottenham rave scene. The entire thing is knowingly silly, like when the duo rode the District line and informed disinterested passengers that Julia Fox can be attending its inaugural event in June, which was a lie. “It’s intentionally low-brow, which in a way makes it high-brow,” they explain. “It’s tongue-in-cheek and performative. Each OPIA has its own dress code and host brand, nevertheless it’s all the time Warholian in its obsession with popular culture… in a post-human, post-digital, post-Kardashian type of way. It’s meta-ironic, we’re performing culture.” 

The primary OPIA event  – Eurotrash 3000 – was billed as “the last word futuristic girls’ trip to Mallorca, celebrating all things kitschy, slutty, and Avicii-inspired.” And so a load of LGBTQs went to a disused garage in a north London industrial estate and listened to sped-up versions of “All Fired Up” until 6AM. “We heard what the ladies wanted: the memes, the bimboisms, the green light to decorate as eccentrically as possible.” Attendees wearing Harajuku yeti boots, rhinestoned tourist trash caps, and Anna Bollina dresses with the words “drama”, “fame”, “greed”, “waste”, and “money” printed across their fronts in proto-meme fonts. “This sense of playfulness may be really empowering, sometimes probably the most radical and political thing a queer can do is to be comfortable and find laughter.”

The subsequent rave, which takes place on July 22, pledges allegiance to Black, Latinx, and Asian emos. It’s like “Berghain meets Brazil,” because the invite reads. “Full body black latex with Demonias to the beach. Reggaeton meets Rick Owens. If Miss Colombia moved to Hackney Wick, dyed her hair black, married a DJ/tattoo artist, and is within the depths of a k*t addiction.” As for the long run of OPIA, “we would like our queers to take over the mainstream fashion world, to turn out to be household names, and we’ll do this by releasing our own line of magnets, paper plates, and trash bags if we’ve got to,” the hosts write. “We wish to maintain showcasing how OPIA ravers, bimbos, and dolls are high fashion. We also need to be the It-girl afterparty for September’s fashion week. And to do the interviews at the subsequent Met Gala.”

Click through the gallery above to see a few of the most effective looks from London’s dumbest-but-smartest rave.