Fashion

What You Wear

Digital fabric integrates micro-circuitry into the weave of material, allowing the material to have other properties than mere adornment and protection. Others have heating or cooling abilities to alleviate the summer heat or winter chill. Most buttons and zippers incorporate microcomputers to control these functions.

• Know if they are ripped or dirty and can report this information to Agents or other readouts. Their "tags" not only contain cleaning and wear data, but also manufacturer's codes, order numbers, and sizes. The Agent can then order replacement clothing based on this data.

• Can adapt themselves to minor temperature changes by monitoring your body temp and tightening /relaxing the weave to let air in or out.

• Can change color or project 2D images on the cloth itself.

Styles of the Dark Future

In the Time of the Red, clothing is wildly varied. You take what you can get and sometimes even the biggest bankroll can't score you that cool cyberjacket (with the lighted collar) that you're drooling over. Even so, fashion tends to follow trends, most of which we have listed here; each style tells other people on The Street about the kind of image you project.

Fashion Trend Style and What it Says About You

• Bag Lady Chic: Homeless Ragged Vagrant

• Gang Colors: Dangerous Violent Rebellious

• Generic Chic: Standard Colorful Modular

• Bohemian: Folksy Retro Free-Spirited

• Leisurewear: Comfort Agility Athleticism

• Nomad Leathers: Western Rugged Tribal

• Asia Pop: Bright Costume-like Youthful

• Urban Flash: Flashy Technological Streetwear

• Businesswear: Leadership Presence Authority

• High Fashion: Exclusive Designer Couture

Entropism - “Necessity over style.”

The look of poverty that derives from humans grappling with and struggling against technology and its unforgiving advance. It denotes a lack of design blending with a general poverty of means and ideas.
This style took the lead after the end of the Fourth Corporate War in 2023. Kitsch gave way to this new style as vast and deep crises forced people to survive by any means. Entropism features streamlined appearance with complete or nearly gone flashiness of the previously popular Kitsch. In fact it is the closest one to the regular style of our modern world today.
Entropism is the style of poverty. We encounter it in the neglected parts of Night City, where the bottom rung of society has been left to its own devices. The products of Entropism are crude—ugly, even—yet durable. As its catchphrase suggests, it is design governed by necessity, not aesthetics.
Entropism embodies the breakdown the Fourth Corporate War left in its wake. When supply lines and international trade collapsed, an enormous crisis followed, leaving people to find ways to survive by any means and using whatever was available to them. That lead to the emergence of a new style that valued cost efficiency and getting the job done above all else. Corporations and tinkerers alike started producing cheap, crude implants and vehicles, hacks to get people through hard times. By 2077, some vintage examples from Entropism's heyday are still in use, but most products made in this style that we encounter are new. Plenty of companies still manufacture cheap goods for those that can afford only the lowest of the low-end.

Kitsch - “Style over substance.”

The look of a long lost golden age on people entirely unwilling or unable to forget it. It’s flashy, bold and usually cheap – filled with gold-plated cyberware, implants encased in brightly colored plastic and larger-than-life makeup.
Neon hair, illuminated tatoos and chrome – these are the most distinctive features of the classic Kitsch style. This style is the closest one to the classic Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020 table-top games and the vision of the future as seen from the 80’s of the twentieth century. Functions comes second for Kitsch. Look is the most important here. Kitsch is easily recognizable with its flashy colors and incredibly weird combinations of types of clothes that no normal person in our world would consider appropriate. But this is not our world! This is the Cyberpunk world!
Kitsch, the first of our four styles, is the lingua franca of the street. Every Night City neighborhood is awash with it, especially when focused on recreation and entertainment. Its "style over substance" mantra blares out from the objects of everyday life. Colorful and eye-catching, they must grab their potential buyers' attention in the store and distinguish them from the crowd on the street. Function comes second; looks are what matter.
Historically, Kitsch's spread coincided with the cultural revolution brought about by braindance technology. Worn down by the harshness of reality, people began to fulfill their unattainable dreams through braindance sessions. Fame, wealth, thrills, even the simple satisfaction of a happy day—anything could be achieved in a properly-tuned session. This unmooring from reality gave birth to a garish, gaudy style, marked by tacky colors and a flaunting of implants that had ceased to be mere prosthetics or unpleasant necessities. Instead, cyberware emerged as the core of a new subculture, one obsessed with owning and displaying modified body parts. Kitsch is a scream echoing through an age of crisis, war and failing states. It is the style of anarchy, of rebellion against a social order represented by corruption and all-crushing corporations. Though briefly disposed by Entropism in the years following its rise, it soon roared back and remains omnipresent and inescapable on the street.

Neo-Kitsch - “Style over substance.”

The look of infinite wealth and vanity. Synonymous with luxury, it has been blossoming among Night City’s wealthiest elites – those who can afford to buy anything, who can afford to be anything they want to be.
The most recent version of the Kitsch style, called Neokitsch, is popular amongst the celebrities and brandance stars. What makes it different from the original kitsch is the fresh new layer of flashiness added on top thanks to the modern 2077 technologies.
This is the last and most recently developed style in the fictional reality of 2077 that we've created. When the Treaty of Unification brought an end to the war between the United States and the Free States in 2070, Night City gained independence from both, claiming a new status as an international free city. With the risk of destruction lifted and the city's new leaders determined to adopt corporation-friendly policies, capital once again poured in—and was captured by an elite new aristocracy.
Thus Neokitsch was born, the style of celebrities, braindance stars, magnates, heirs to corporate fortunes and corporate CEOs—the point-one percent of the wealthiest and most influential Night Citizens, those who have become bored of the chrome, black and graphite of their suits and armored vehicles. Surrounded in everyday life by the cold style of the corporate overclass, they abandon it for gold, silver and platinum, for the warmth of real wood, ivory and natural furs—rare and exclusive materials only they can afford. Neokitsch is, in a certain sense, a return to the roots of Kitsch, while also acting as a show of forceful luxury by people with so much money they need not care about the opinions of others. It is the style of demigods, the living legends of this world.

Neomilitarism - “Substance over style.”

The look of global conflict and corporations jockeying for power. Cold, sharp and modern. Making everyone look as if they are ready to drop out of an AV’s cargo door and head straight into combat.
Deadly elegance without ostentation The Neoimilitaristic style is mostly encountered in the corporate sectors and in the more wealthier parts of Night City. Substance over style is the motto that perfectly fits people who have adopted the neomilitarism. What makes this style distinctive and different from the Entropism is the sleek and domineering aesthetics. It inspires and demonstrates power above all else.
Neomilitarism, our third style chronologically, adds a layer of deadly elegance and corporate, militaristic fashion to the stylistic mix of its predecessors. It is mostly encountered in the wealthier parts of the city, especially corporate zones and business districts. This style is epitomized by the catchphrase "substance over style," according to which products should be forceful, functional and high-quality rather than flashy. Neomilitarism's distinctive features are its cold, threatening elegance and formality, highlighted by the visible presence of militaristic accents.
Historically, Neomilitarism has its roots in the crisis that followed the Fourth Corporate War. The devastation that came on the heels of that conflict hit everyone hard, corporations and governments included. Once the dust settled and countries began more or less successful attempts to restore their authority, megacorporations like Arasaka and Militech saw an opportunity to carve out their own empires. They leapt into the fray and emerged holding a bigger hunk of the pie than ever before. Thus began a new era, one marked by Neomilitarism--a style that came to symbolize recovery and redoubled corporate dominance.