Normal Was Never the Goal

By Rose Baxter

Somewhere along the way, “normal” became something people were supposed to aspire to.

Normal clothes.
Normal jobs.
Normal houses.
Normal opinions.
Normal lives.

Blend in. Don’t make anybody uncomfortable. Don’t wear the weird thing. Don’t say the thing everybody is thinking. Don’t decorate your house like Halloween never ended. Don’t be too loud, too dark, too strange, too much.

That sounds exhausting.

Kunts Live Forever was never supposed to be normal.

And honestly, neither was I.

Weird Has Always Been More Interesting

The things people remember are rarely the things that played it safe.

Nobody remembers the plain black shirt hanging between fifty other plain black shirts.

They remember the one that made them stop.

Maybe it made them laugh.

Maybe it made them uncomfortable.

Maybe they had to look twice because they weren’t entirely sure what the hell they were looking at.

Good.

Clothing should be allowed to have a personality.

Art should be allowed to be strange.

And sometimes the best designs are the ones that make absolutely no attempt to explain themselves.

That is a big part of why KLF has moved deeper into things like Strange Days, Carnival of Chaos, Halloween, dark humor, surreal artwork and designs that feel like they escaped from some alternate version of reality.

There are already enough companies making clothes designed to offend absolutely nobody.

We don’t need to become another one.

You Don't Have to Fit the Aesthetic

One of the things I dislike about alternative fashion is the idea that you have to belong to a specific category before you are allowed to wear it.

Too punk for this.

Not goth enough for that.

Too old.

Too young.

Too colorful.

Not dark enough.

Who made these rules?

If you like the shirt, wear the damn shirt.

You don't need permission from a subculture.

You don't need to pass a personality test.

And you definitely don't need to rebuild your entire wardrobe so strangers on the internet approve of your aesthetic.

Some days you want a skull.

Some days you want neon.

Some days you want something ridiculous.

Some days you want a shirt that looks like it came from a government department responsible for unexplained bullsh*t.

That is exactly why KLF doesn't need one perfectly controlled look.

The Best Collections Feel Like Different Rooms in the Same House

I don't want every KLF collection to look identical.

That would defeat the point.

Strange Days should feel different from Carnival of Chaos.

Halloween should be able to get darker.

Workwear should feel tougher.

Veteran designs should have their own voice.

And something completely absurd should be allowed to exist next to all of them.

They don't have to match.

They just have to belong.

Think of KLF less like one carefully coordinated outfit and more like walking through a house where every room belongs to the same strange person.

One room is neon.

One is full of monsters.

One looks like an abandoned factory.

One has a government warning sign telling you not to feed whatever is living beside the highway.

That makes more sense to me than forcing everything into one neat little box.

Normal Was Never an Option

The world already has normal covered.

There are millions of products designed to disappear into the background.

KLF doesn't need to compete for that space.

I'd rather make something somebody loves and somebody else absolutely hates than make something nobody notices at all.

Because at least they felt something.

And maybe that's really the whole point.

Wear the weird thing.

Buy the ridiculous thing.

Put the horror art in your living room.

Be overdressed.

Be underdressed.

Mix styles that supposedly don't belong together.

Let people wonder.

Normal was never the goal.

And I don't think it ever should be.