To stay ahead in the fashion industry, you have to be at the cutting edge. So perhaps it shouldn’t have seemed so astonishing last week when a group of supermodels, stylists and hangers-on — rumoured to include Sophie Dahl, Anita Pallenberg and Karen Elson — announced that they were to stage an anti-fashion protest outside the London office of Vogue magazine.

Incongruous, certainly. But not surprising.

After all, what they were reflecting was the huge anti-fashion fervour that has taken hold among Britain’s coolest young women. Rather than bowing to the twin gods of Gucci and Fendi, they have become the driving force behind a new punk aesthetic that straddles all creative forms and harks back to the late 1970s (but thankfully without the spotty, spiky-haired young men).

In a world of apparent political and economic instability, a Jennifer Lopez-style image — $10,000 Versace dresses, fake tan and real diamonds — seems not aspirational but irrelevant. So on shoestring budgets, and often with no training, young women are creating their own ad hoc, random subcultures. Don’t like the music that’s on the radio? Start your own band. Don’t like the images being pushed by magazines? Create your own ’zine. Bored with the clothes on the catwalks? Buy second-hand pieces and customise them yourself.

It’s DIY culture writ large, it’s tinged with feminism and it’s fast becoming one of the big cultural forces in Britain.

The Vogue demo was all set to shake the fashion world into submission. The date was set for last Friday. The banners were painted, the chants perfected.

Just one hitch: the women in question — who happen to accept million-dollar pay cheques from the fashion houses who keep magazines such as Vogue afloat — lost their nerve. The protest was suddenly called off.

Some campaigners are made of stronger stuff. Sean Pillot de Chenecey, a trend analyst, confirms that the world is ready to hit back at fashion: “We’ve moved on now from that pseudo glitzy thing. That’s gone.”

He singles out Karen O, the controversial New York singer famed for her out-of-control live performances with her punk band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as the epitome of the new ethos: “She sums up that whole individualistic, non-branded, strong-thinking yet stylish outlook.”

Also reflecting this aesthetic is Stella McClure, a 26-year-old stallholder at Portobello market in west London. She used to work for Levi’s but found the experience unsatisfying. She now sells customised second-hand clothes and her own handmade range of bags under the slogan “Granny made me do it”.

“When I was at college I did aspire to the whole Prada thing, but now I get much more pleasure from going to a jumble sale and picking something random up for 20p,” she says.

“If you have all the money in the world, of course you can go into Dolce & Gabbana and come out looking great, but that doesn’t take any skill or imagination.”

Her next line of clothes will be a range of T-shirts with political slogans. It includes a picture of the Queen’s face above the word “squatter”, a design that subconsciously references the Sex Pistols’ infamous “God save the Queen” image.

Satya James, a 25-year-old designer, echoes McClure’s attitude. She describes her style as “posh punk”. After leaving college she worked for a fashion company in the bridal couture department, but found herself hating it.

“My first job was measuring up baronesses for their gowns, watching huge amounts of money change hands and getting paid a pittance. I was not only told what to wear to work, but how to do my hair and even what perfume to use. I spent every day thinking: why the hell am I doing this?” At the centre of the anti-fashion campaign are the so-called “riot grrrls”, who model themselves on grunge heroine Courtney Love (widow of Kurt Cobain). The movement began a decade ago in New York as a feminist attempt to reclaim rock’n’roll for women. Now riot grrrl is experiencing a mini-resurgence among young British females — with 100 women signed up to the London chapter and many more chapters across the country.

Red Chidgey, a 24-year-old student, has been involved in the scene for a few years, creating a range of magazines and getting involved with women-led music festivals.

“At the centre of riot grrrl,” she says, “is DIY, the idea of creating your own work — be it music, ’zines, fashion or art — right from scratch and that being a legitimate activity.”

She is also involved with “subvertising”, in which poster advertisements are subtly “remodelled” into attacks on the companies they are supposed to promote and often displayed on the web (www.subvertise.org).

“When I see particularly offensive ads being run on billboards, I just get really annoyed. Those images dominate our public spaces. It’s a way of directly affecting and changing a culture you find oppressive,” she says.

And that, it seems, is the key. The fashionistas may have bottled out of their protest march, slinking away on their six-inch heels, but the vanguard of young British women will not be so easily cowed. Watch out world. The new punks are coming.