It’d be easy to dismiss it as just another trend, one more “-core” that’ll feel tired in a matter of weeks. But unlike so many so-called aesthetics, this one reflects something larger.

“In the early 2000s, there was a very clear and optimistic vision of the future,” says Davina India, an indie fashion designer whose work melds traditional textiles with molten, 3D-printed forms. “Bright, glossy, almost transparent, with a strong sense of harmony between nature and technology. That kind of aesthetic vision feels largely absent today, and I think it’s important to reconnect with it and start translating those positive ideas into reality.”

With AI data centers consuming massive amounts of energy and Silicon Valley champing at the bit to secure contracts with the Department of Defense, and algorithmic feeds and AI slop have sapped the fun from the internet, and every laptop and smartphone looks as sleek and boring and dull as the next, that technology isn’t inherently so dystopian, so regimented — sapped of the meaning and mythos that humans crave. In Glitch Gothic, a portal to another, more imaginative world reopens, where the twain might meet. “Both the magical and the futuristic describe something beyond our current reality, something we can’t fully define yet, but can envision,” India adds.

Truth is, we’ve been quietly trending toward techno-mysticism for some time. Artists have been exploring the overlap between the spiritual and the technological for years. Popular apps link the spiritual and the technological: Co-Star claims to parlay AI into astrological insights; Stardust purports to weave machine-learning algorithms with “ancient wisdom” to help users understand their menstrual cycles. LLM chatbots have the paper of record openly musing about the relationship between technology and religion. (The big secret? This isn’t a radical departure; it’s a return to the norm. In ancient times, it was astrologers who mapped the skies, innovated complex algorithms, and invented the astrolabe; modern computing descended from the punched-card loom, an innovation in textile production; Nikola Tesla thought about literature and art while he tinkered with electricity, and also sought to commune with aliens. Listen, it was worth a shot.)

Another key element of Glitch Gothic is that it reminds us that craft still has a place in our tech-mediated world. It’s easy, in the age of “the cloud,” to forget that even our most advanced technologies rely on material, tactile systems — and that these same machines can be harnessed by artisans. “I use laser cutting in my work because it allows for precision and flexibility, but I always finish pieces by hand,” says Eleni Ioannidou, the designer behind furniture and accessories label 100100. “I like keeping small imperfections because they remind you that a person was involved in the process.”

Imperfections — glitches, in other words. Their presence a feature, not a bug.