Steve Aoki's Skater-Inspired Clothing Line Faceplants Into a Masculinity Crisis

Last week, in his latest show of bravado, Steve Aoki sent models on skateboards down a runway and into a makeshift skate park he built in a studio in Lower Manhattan. The strange event marked the fourth season of his Dim Mak Clothing line, his first to be released in the US after three seasons that came out only in Japan. Dim Mak Clothing will be new to most of Aoki's fans in the States, who have previously known him more for his EDM antics than his sartorial aspirations. But the collection is here, and it comes with a burning question—as the age-old advertising maxim asks, who is the Dim Mak Man?

The line offers a baffling and contradictory mash-up of skating and streetwear signifiers. Wide pants and long jackets resemble familiar silhouettes from Dickies and Carhartt; if you squint, the clothes seem almost restrained. But look closer, and you'll see how Aoki's Las Vegas nightclub instincts have taken the reins. A pant leg tapers into a limp elastic cuff that reeks of Zara athleisure; a garish pink hoodie with three-quarter length sleeves seems better suited for a Jared Leto press tour than a half-pipe; an innocent white jacket is desecrated with a fire-breathing unicorn graphic that looks like a DeviantArt riff on the Mozilla Firefox logo. Everything is covered with the kind of inexplicable swag-god racing stripes you'd find on guys waiting in line at Lavo to see, well, Steve Aoki.

Before we define who the Dim Mak man is, let's make clear who he is not—a skater. Steve Aoki himself may have skated in his youth, and the show's models were cast from the ranks of the downtown Manhattan's skate scene, but the Dim Mak Man is skate-curious at best. He files the sport in the same mental category where he keeps tattoos with skulls and 90's hip-hop and Bushwick murals. "Shit's dope," he tells you, four jalapeno margaritas deep on your Bumble date at Beauty & Essex. In other words, the Dim Mak man dabbles in edgy cultural interests without investing too heavily in any of them.

Just in case the collection's buffet of skate and streetwear motifs wasn't incoherent enough, many of the clothes are plastered with text and images drawn from William Burroughs. In an interview with the New York Times, Aoki explains that he wanted to pay homage to Beat poetry; what this literary gesture actually summons is the ghost of your high school ex who ditched you to smoke Salvia in the photo darkroom.

So if the Dim Mak Man isn't a skater or a Beat poet, who is he? According to the brand's website, the clothes are for "rebels, rockstars, and risk-takers." That's brand-speak for tech, finance, and advertising guys trying to get their groove back. The Dim Mak Man comes into existence when an upwardly mobile male who's not as young as he used to be gets brutally dumped, and starts looking for answers in all the wrong places. His buddy recommends a "confidence seminar" given by a friend of Roosh V; soon our hero is trading in brown loafers and dress shirts for spiked Giuseppe Zannotti boots and scoop neck tees. Then he gets a fade and starts hitting Meatpacking clubs like it's his job. By this point, he's a ripe target for a marketing campaign from a cake-throwing DJ-cum-designer peddling a vague composite of "badass" masculine tropes.

Ultimately, you can't fault Steve Aoki for any of this. "Music is my breadwinner, but fashion is my creative outlet," he told the Times. He's part of an ancient tradition of mid-career musicians trying to find themselves in the skate park; just ask Lil Wayne. Your only response should be pity for the confused dudes who will spend their soft-earned money on these fits. Lost in the world, the Dim Mak Man is so desperate to participate in edgy youth subcultures that he blithely garbles the codes that define them. Be kind to him; he knows not what he does.

Ezra Marcus is on Twitter.