reach us

Lady Darkness

Photographed by Marco Giuliano.

She turns the hours of the night into light. Cody among the crowd of Wave-Gotik-Treffen, wearing the blackest pieces by UK-based alternative brand Disturbia in a festival hangout shot by Marco Giuliano and styled by Anca Macavei.

What is your current state of mind?

Optimistic, confused, tired, happy, enraged, driven.

Disturbia is a family-owned reality since 2003, can you shed us some light onto your darkness and tell us a bit about yourselves, your background. Who is behind it and how did it all start?

I had the seed of an idea for the brand whilst I was as student at Northumbria University studying Fashion (Frank). After graduating and generally being dissatisfied with everything, I decided to start to make my own clothes. Got samples made, my photographer girlfriend shoot them, we build an e-commerce website mainly on intuition, and the rest they say is… a slow and steady 20 years of blood, sweat and tees. Helen and I have worked in cahoots on the brand since day one and I believe the key is our collaborative and opposing skill sets.

How did you choose the name “Disturbia”, is there a specific story behind?

A university project required us to create a brand, and so I was interested in the similarity of the words suburb and disturb, and the punk connotations of the dichotomy. So this eventually became a portmanteau of the words, and et voila: Disturbia. It stuck.

Who do you design for?

We believe our customer is socially and environmentally conscious. They are looking for clothing that speaks of their individualism and creativity. Most of our customers have a dark sensibility, a sharp intellect and an even sharper wardrobe.
We’re interested in subcultural style and how this now just permeates the mainstream in this post- postmodern shitshow in which we live. So we like to create product that references all these weird countercultural signifiers but make them accessible and for everyday.

 Which living person do you most admire and would love to collaborate with?

All my heroes are dead.

Future plans you would like to share with us?

We have some exciting collaboration in the lab at the moment. We’re just mainly busying ourselves in growing the brand, our community, our team and our resolve; to make the brand more sustainable, agile and inclusive.

Lady Darkness

Credits:

Photography: Marco Giuliano / @marcogiulianoph
Styling: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Fashion: Disturbia / www.disturbia.co.uk / @disturbia
Soundtrack: AKMV-18 – Melancholia
Shot during Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, Germany
Model: Cody / @__aenima__

You may also like

The Pulse We Shared / Stone Festival

Music | Highlights
In the heart of Essen, amidst the remnants of an industrial past and the vibrant energy of the present, Stone Techno Festival organised by The Third Room collective took place. This event is more than just music; it’s a collective ritual blending history, technology, and underground culture. Three intense days in a place steeped in memory, where every beat tells a story and every sound becomes part of a unique experience

Love and Psychosis / Guillotine

Music | Spotlight
Guillotine steps forward as one of New York’s most arresting new voices, an artist shaped by the intensity of queer nightlife, the emotional voltage of personal rupture, and a background spent curating QPOC and LGBTQ+ spaces where liberation becomes ritual. Their debut EP “You’re Going To Be Ok, Just Not Tonight” turns that lived experience into a devotional landscape, merging spiritual imagery with a raw emotional autobiography. In our conversation, Guillotine distills the essence of the project: love as devotion, heartbreak as ritual, and desire as a force that destroys and remakes.

Road to Neopop 2024

Music | Spotlight
Amelie Lens, Jeff Mills, Oscar Mulero, Richie Hawtin, Chris Liebing b2b Luke Slater, Enrico Sangiuliano, FJAAK Live A/V, Klangkuenstler, and Reinier Zonneveld Live are some of the names rounding off the lineup for NEOPOP Festival 2024. After an intense unveiling of the initial artists for the next edition of NEOPOP Festival, which is set to take place at Forte de Santiago da Barra in Viana do Castelo on 8-10 August, we’re ready to go full-throttle and present the complete lineup.
Tresor31 FestivalSoundscapes vol.103 | Stingray 313