Top Ten Fads of 2100's NZ Youth

  1. Blue-skin; currently in fashion is a very pale blue skin tone all over, sometimes with patterns (geometric designs or Maori moko) marked in darker blues. On the cheap this can be done with biosafe paints (which avoid skin suffocation), or more permanently with proteus nanoviruses at specialised beauty clinics.
  2. Fractal clothing; cloth is embedded with colour-changing elements that creates a slowly shifting fractal pattern.
  3. Flared shirts; Primarily for men, buisness style shirts with the lower arms and cuffs flared out. Often worn with boards to make them solid, and this space is sometimes used for storing small items.
  4. Psychoactive lipstick: for women. Lipstick containing mild nanodrugs, (usually Nepenthe (see p. TS164) or an equivalent) for a kiss he'll never forget. Comes in all colours, with greens, yellows, and whites popular to offset blue skin.
  5. Curtis Monocle; named for a slinky star that popularised the style, a curtis monocle consists is a 1/2" by 3" metal strip that sticks to the temple, and has an attached monocle that can be flipped to the side. A wearable virtual interface, falling somewhere between VI glasses and a DVI.
  6. Live hair; thin manipulator threads are woven to sections of a subjects hair (not dangerous, but intricate and usually performed at a beauty clinic), enabling an AI to make the hair move in preprogrammed patterns. At a simple level it can make hair wave as if in a wind, but much more advanced effects are possible.
  7. Charm upgrade; An LAI programmed with appropriate social skills, providing constant guidance and advice on the right things to say and do. A few are puppet implants, in which case skills such as Dancing and Erotic Art are also common.
  8. Knuckle-duster implants; thin metal plates implanted on the top of each section of the fingers. Originally a gang thing (for practical value in fistfights), current mainstream versions are usually made of light plastic in bright, possibly shifting, colours. A few people have extended this fad to getting thin plates implanted along their forearms or in their face, but these are not widely popular.
  9. H-tops; for women, these tops consist of a back, shoulder straps, and sections that curve round from the sides to cover the breasts but do not meet in the middle. These side sections use carbon nanotube technologies to remain rigid, and provide support even for the well-endowed. The name comes from the sections of skin seen through one of these tops, which looks like an H on it's side.
  10. Tibetans; a tibetan is a beard, consisting of just the patch of hair between the lips and the chin, which is allowed to grow so that it hangs just below the chin. Often dyed to complement skin tones, and occasionally used as live hair.
1