Acc-sesh-ories: The Sesh has inspired a dance music fashion movement

Fashion has always been used to indicate social cues. Goths slap on black lippy and stick metal studs into everything; EDM fans wrap enough glow sticks around their extremities to cause permanent retinal damage; punks show they're all nonconformists by fashioning pointy orange mohawks atop their skulls; techno heads hold up crucifixes to uncool colour with a strict black-only code. Subcultures always have a defined look that aligns with their identity and tells the world who they are.

Running through all of dance music’s essentially different but parallel tribes, from the house purists to the junglists, there’s a kind of Jekyll & Hyde split. There are the accepted truisms of each scene: it’s about coming together to chase a feeling, connecting with a vibe, peace and love, unity and respect. This is ostensibly facilitated by the music, but feelings are just chemical reactions, and intoxicants play their fair share in many people's’ experience. When taken to extremes, this becomes the phenomenon known affectionately as ‘The Sesh’, where any virtuous facets are lost among a cloud of ruinous behaviour.

And out of this split has emerged a new tribe, The Sesh Community. People who define themselves by their love for getting out of their minds rather than for the music. Fuelled by generation-defining internet meme pages such as Humans Of The Sesh and Ketflix & Pills, a massive and ever expanding group of like-minded sesh gremlins has come together and formed a cultural movement. As the community grows, their aesthetic uniform is being established, forming a new crusade in fashion: acc-sesh-ories, the incorporation of sesh materials into outfits.

For people who spend a significant stretch of their weekends not knowing who, where or even what they are, the creativity on display has been impressive. There’s been functional costumes, such as the Rizla bucket hat, an altruistic festival essential. Handy work fit for an Art & Textiles degree show in Amber Leaf full body get-ups, bucket hats and belts, a meta Buckfast spectacle, Strongbow cape, hard, raw, living art piece. Extreme dedication to ‘bags of cans’ and ‘the lads’ with tattoos, more tattoos, so many tattoos. Even religious symbols, homely ornaments, flags, tabloid-baiting cakes.

For those lacking in imagination or innovation, a market for acc-sesh-ories has also been established. Etsy is packed full of drab slogan tees, and laughing gas necklaces (a metal cannister on chain, £22.91 + shipping). Ketflix & Pills runs an extensive online store with their own KP clothing line, parodying well-known brands and characters to create absurdities like Seshame Street, Ketpreme, Nice Tripsies and a full Biggie On A Ciggy range, taking a feeble pun to blood from a stone levels.

To understand the ascent of acc-sesh-ories, you have to dig into the mindset of The Sesh Community. They’ve always existed within social groups who rave together, but generally been more interested in DJ benders than DJ blends. Preferring to terrorise Facebook events called things like ‘Kettfest’ than trawl through Discogs looking for obscure deep cuts. Tagging friends in videos of people throwing up on dancefloors not sharing SoundCloud links. Lurking at the main stage of Dekmantel getting stern looks for asking ‘Track ID?’ when Jeff Mills is hammering out ‘The Bells’. Distilling the essence of revered dance institution Berghain into teasing pastiche. They’re a recently liberated group, the taboo of their exploits dissolved in internet jokes and memes. Now forging a collective identity on this legitimised passion.

Writing for Thump last year, Angus Harrison’s in-depth analysis on the rise of sesh culture astutely noted the “celebrated self-annihilation” at play. And acc-sesh-ories are the natural evolution of this concept. There's only so much a Fila track top, bucket hat, and sunglasses can indicate. To truly be a sesh gremlin, to reach the optimal level, it’s not enough to just be on the sesh, you must become the sesh. Obscuring the very essence of your humanity beneath reinforced wine or yellow tobacco logos (RIP) - pulling a figurative paper bag (of cans) over your head.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Acceshories Correspondent. DM him your best looks here