Vaporwave clothing is streetwear built on the look of vaporwave music: pastel pink and cyan, Roman busts, palm trees, wireframe grids, old computer graphics and Japanese text, worn with a knowing and slightly melancholy wink. The quick version: start with one printed piece in those colours or motifs, keep everything else plain and relaxed, and add one retro accessory. The rest of this guide shows you how to make that look deliberate rather than like a 2016 Tumblr page you forgot to close.
A note before we start. NEOMACHI makes cyberpunk clothing, so we live on the darker, more forward-looking side of the neon fence. We are not going to pretend our shop is a pastel wonderland. But the two aesthetics share a lot of DNA, we have a few retrowave pieces that cross over well, and we think the honest crossover is more interesting than another list of generic "aesthetic" tees.
Where the vaporwave aesthetic came from
Vaporwave started as internet music in the early 2010s. Daniel Lopatin's Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010) slowed down and looped fragments of old pop and advertising until they sounded like a half-remembered dream. James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual followed in 2011, and Floral Shoppe, released under the name Macintosh Plus in December 2011, is widely treated as the album that pulled the genre's elements together.
The name is the joke. It comes from "vaporware": software that gets announced and never ships. So the whole aesthetic is about a shiny consumer future that was promised and never turned up. Empty shopping malls, hold music, office plants, screensavers, a Roman bust floating over a pink grid. It all looks optimistic and feels slightly haunted.
The jump to clothing came through online culture and streetwear. Yung Lean and the Sad Boys are often credited with tying the sound to a wardrobe of sportswear and retro branding, and it has floated around streetwear ever since, mostly as graphic tees and hoodies.
What vaporwave clothing actually looks like
- Colours: soft pink, pale cyan, lilac and white, sometimes on black for contrast. Think faded rather than glowing.
- Graphics: Greco-Roman statues, Windows 95-era interface windows, dolphins, palm trees, wireframe grids, VHS static and sunsets.
- Type: widely spaced letters (the famous "A E S T H E T I C S") and Japanese text used as atmosphere. If you wear Japanese text, find out what it says first. Our guide to Japanese symbols and their meanings is a good place to start.
- Shape: ordinary and relaxed. Vaporwave is a mood on a normal garment, not a technical silhouette. An oversized tee, a loose hoodie, track pants, retro trainers.
- Accessories: tinted or rectangular sunglasses, a bucket hat, a bumbag, chunky retro trainers. Choose one or two.
Five vaporwave outfits you can actually wear
1. The dead mall: pastel tee, washed denim
The easiest place to begin. A pastel or white tee with a faded graphic, light washed jeans, white retro trainers. It should look like you bought everything in a shopping centre in 1994 and it has just reopened. Keep colours to two and let the print do the talking.
2. The screensaver: track pants and a big print
Grid, statue or old-interface graphic on an oversized tee, with track pants and a bumbag across the chest. This is the version closest to the Sad Boys era. A retro sportswear jacket from a charity shop finishes it better than anything new.
3. City pop night: Japan as the backdrop
Vaporwave's sister genre, future funk, samples Japanese city pop, and that gives you a warmer version of the look. Pair a Japanese-inspired graphic with loose trousers and rectangular sunglasses. Our MANEKI-NEKO tee puts the lucky cat through a neon filter, and the story behind the maneki-neko is a fun one to have ready when somebody asks.
4. Retrowave on black: the darker cousin
If pastel really is not you, keep the sunset and swap the background. The FUJI tee and FUJI hoodie put Mount Fuji under a retrowave sun on a dark garment, which reads as vaporwave at a distance and cyberpunk up close. Add straight black trousers and one pale accent, such as white trainers or a lilac cap.
5. The cyberpunk crossover: dark with one pastel note
Our favourite, and we are biased. Build a dark outfit from cyberpunk hoodies and tapered joggers, then add a single pastel piece: socks, a cap, a bag strap. The SYSTEM 7 zip hoodie works here because its retro-futuristic interface graphics already nod to old machines. The pastel note looks unexpected precisely because the two palettes are near-opposites.
Vaporwave vs synthwave vs cyberpunk clothing
These get mixed up all the time, so here is the short version. Vaporwave is pastel, ironic and backward-looking. Synthwave is a sincere 1980s revival: sunset gradients, chrome and fast cars. Cyberpunk is dark and forward-looking, with one saturated accent on a mostly black outfit. We go much deeper in cyberpunk vs vaporwave vs Y2K, and if you are curious how the dark side is built, read what the cyberpunk aesthetic is and how the cyberpunk colour palette works.
Where to buy vaporwave clothes
- Charity and vintage shops for track jackets, windbreakers and 1990s sportswear. This is the most authentic source, and it suits the whole "abandoned mall" idea.
- Independent artists for graphic tees. Look for original artwork, and steer clear of shops that print someone else's album art.
- Crossover streetwear if you want the mood on a heavier, better-made piece. Our cyberpunk t-shirts are the darker option, and the Japanese streetwear guide covers where else the look overlaps.
Fit notes if you are buying from us
Vaporwave generally wants a relaxed fit. Our tees are Stanley/Stella Creator 2.0, a medium unisex fit, so take your usual size for a clean look and one size up for a loose one. Our hoodies are B&C Inspire Hooded (280 GSM, 80% organic cotton and 20% recycled polyester fleece), true to size and slim, so size up if you want them baggy. How should a hoodie fit has the measurements.
Frequently asked questions
What is vaporwave clothing?
Clothing that borrows the visual language of vaporwave music: pastel colours, Roman statues, palm trees, grids, 1990s computer graphics and decorative Japanese text. It is usually a graphic tee or hoodie worn with relaxed, retro basics.
How do you dress vaporwave without it looking like a costume?
Limit yourself to one printed piece and one or two retro accessories, and keep everything else plain. Faded colours look more convincing than bright ones.
What colours are vaporwave?
Mainly soft pink, pale cyan, lilac and white. Black works as a contrast base, but if the outfit turns mostly dark with one saturated colour, you have drifted into cyberpunk.
Is vaporwave the same as cyberpunk?
No. They share neon, grids and Japanese references, but vaporwave is nostalgic and ironic about a future that never came, while cyberpunk is about a dark future that arrived. In clothes, vaporwave is light and relaxed, cyberpunk is dark and more technical.
Pick your timeline
Whether you stay in the pastel mall or wander over to the rain-soaked side of the city, keep it to one loud piece. If the darker side is calling, start with our cyberpunk hoodies or the rest of our cyberpunk clothing.
