The looks of the season

Haha. I shouldn't be ranting about fashion. But I do. Let's say - if everybody looks alike wearing H&M the subculture is always much more unique and uniform in the same way. And certain moments of youth culture you'll never see in Paris or Milano on the catwalk but on everyday's street. Do you remember the summer when everybody wanted to look like J.Lo? If you're not 16 anymore and not up-to-date what's hot at schools you can see all those waves coming already on the Hamburg Hafengeburtstag. I don't know where those merchants get their inspiration from, but when they offer J.Lo-style headscarves, it's gonna be an "In" thing. This year I haven't found a typical "in" accessoire at Hafengeburtstag. But - late but the summer isn't over - a hair band made for ballerinas seems to be coming, as the Dom shows.

Long preface, sorry for that. I just never festival-travelled as much as this year, and some typical style and/or behavior stayed in my mind: First fest of the year I noticed was Hurricane Festival in Scheessel/Northern Germany even if I haven't been there. But I met thousands and thousands of visitors at the train stations in Hannover and Hamburg. The Hurricane is a pop/alternative orientated festival, where most of the highschool classes of Northern Germany go to celebrate their last exams. So most of the people look like "normal" end-of-term pupils. Fashion-gem of the festival: silicone wristbands. Strange behaviour of the weekend: Shouting "Helga" ("Helga" was already popular f.e. in Wacken quite some time ago. But it seems to be an evergreen).

At Rock Hard Festival, Graspop Metal Meeting and Bang Your Head maybe only the last was a step from the norm, but I already expected people running around like in the Eighties, and they were. Maybe I didn't expect people at all to wear Glam style, but it was only a few, even with Twisted Sister headlining.

Helsinki's Tuska fest was different. First of all - while there was barely a summer in Germany and "Flip-Flops" turned into more expensive and noble models, everybody seems to wear trecking sandals in Helsinki. I only had my one pair of all-weather-all-circumstances festival boots and was quite envy. While Andy was getting nuts at watching all the ladies in top-notch, sexy cloth - wearing outdoor sandals. LOL!

To give you a glimpse on the fashion: I just found the gallery Hel Looks on the internet. Well, yes, the many glam rock people cought my eye as well.

Something that was present on all the festivals this years were cuddly toys: Whether the pink SM-bunny someone was holding up all day in front of Apocalyptica and Dimmu Borgir at Tuska or the 15 little cuddly toys thrown at Dissection in Wacken or the brown bunny held up high all day in front of the main stage - this year was the year of the plush!

Ah yes, something more about the Hel Looks: Noticed the plastic bags on the first pics there, where people are heading to Tuska? What a funny thing about the conservative Finnish alcohol politics: While you are barely allowed to take alcohol with you on the festival area in Germany (because the festivals get the massive amount of their income by selling alcohol) you could of corse take a huge plastic bag of alc into Tuska Metal Fest as long as it wasn't bottled in glass. And while you had to show your passport to get into the drinking area you would bump into a drunken person and his bottle of home-distilled goods just a meter outside. A bit hilarious, isn't it?