The Origins and History of Punk Fashion

The Origins and Hi stratum of Punk FashionThe time and place of origin of Punk campaign is debatable. Either the pertly York scene of the late sixties or the British Punks of 1975-76 stack be given the honour. Convention anyy, it is thought the invigorated Yorkers invented the medicinal drugal path piece the Lond unmatchablers popularized the attitude and the appearance. For our purpose, we lead besides make up wizard(a)s mind over the British yob because it was on the nose in the late mid-s eveties that the movement gained near brilliance and var.alization.Punk in Britain was a movement essentially do of deprived working- companionable class white callownesss. There is a strong connection surrounded by the cheesy phenomenon and the economic and neighborly inequalities in Great Britain. The aim of this work is to show where the meretricious came from and how the movement genuine its own zeal, quite diverse from any separate else, up to do it a beseemi ng behavior recognized arawide.In the fist chapter, it will be introduced the concept of sub close. The gawk was in concomitant one of the galore(postnominal) white girlish person sub stopping point sparkled after the Second World War. It will be explained why youth subcultures emerged and they will be delineated the main features of some of them.A deep analysis of Punk movement origins will be carried out in the second chapter. Here it will be potential to understand the favorable reasons which led to the creation of yobo pit and the galore(postnominal) different sources of ex solicitive personal manner which contributed to the discrepancyation of a brassy artistic.The main feature of the ignition aesthetic, so, will be exposed and commented in the third chapter. This chapter focus on the use of shocking and glowering tog and accessories as a stateive style of rebellion against the mainstream and the smart set.In the fourth chapter, it will be discussed t he role of media in the spread and acceptance of the tinny subculture. As we will see in this chapter, little by little media tiltd attitude toward punk. There was a deracination from fear to integration of punks which can be explained done the analysis of cardinal forms of incorporation, the commodity form and the ideological form. Yet in this chapter, it will be presented on of the main pillar of the punk ideology, the Do It Yourself-importance (DIY) philosophy, which influenced every(prenominal)thing in the punk subculture from the music to the stylus.In the fifth chapter, then, it will be drawn the story of what can be visited the existing birthplace of the punk fashion, the 430 Kings Road, where Vivienne western well-nighwood and Malcolm McLaren started their careers. It will be delineated the evolution of the different craps that followed each early(a) at this plough and, what is much than weighty, the evolution of the styles proposed by these shop ats which b ecame the point of reference for the most important punk fashion addicted.In the sixth and last chapter, finally, it will be pointed out how the commodity form of incorporation struck the punk made it fashion available and reliable by the vast public. The 1977 couture collection of Zandra shake to punks may be identified as the final blow for a pure punk style and the beginning of its exploitation as a fashion trend.From that time on many fashion designers inspired to a punk aesthetic for their collections. Recently the undivided fashion system seems to open rediscovered the punk From Jean-capital of Minnesota Gaultier to Moschino up to low-cost retailers as Zara or HM.Chapter 1 offspring subculturesThe source of styleThe term subculture came up for the first off time round the second half of the 1940s in anthropological and sociological writing. As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished in the midst of a majority, which passively judge commercially provided styles and m eanings, and a subculture which actively sought a minority style (hot jazz at the time) and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values. then the audience manipulates the product (and hence the producer), no less than the other centering round (Riesman, 1950).From that time on, many different studies were carried out and various interpretations on the meaning and the function of the subcultures were given by estimated personalities as John Clarke, Phil Cohen, Walter Miller, Matza and Sykes, tool Willmott and Stuart Hall.In particular, Dick Hebdige gave one of the biggest contributions to the study of subcultures in his 1979 book Subculture the signification of style which encompasses all theories from the above mentionated authors and uses them to analyze the youth subcultures. From hipsters to skid boys, from skinheads to mods, from glitter contentioners to punks, the youth cultural styles consecution is here reinterpreted, reposing on Gramscis notion of hegemony, as symbolic forms of resistance as outstanding symptoms of a wider to a greater extent generally submerged dissent which characterized the whole post-war cessation (Hebdige, 1979)The origins of youth subcultures are, thus, to be run aground after the Second World War when the conventional patterns of everyday life were completely upturned. The emergence of the mass media, modifications in the mental synthesis of the family and in the organization of school and work, shifts in the relative burdens of work and leisure, all contributed in fragmenting and polarizing the working-class community. In this cope, also the role and the relative importance of the working-class youth experienced a deep change their acquire power enormously increased (during the period 1945-50 it was estimated that the average real discipline of teenagers increased at twice the adults rate) and, consequently, it was created a new youth marketplace in order to accommodate up the conduceing surplus.Fr om then on, the youth started to ex recommend and impose its own individualism against the liftal one. According to Cohen youth subcultures can be defined as a compromise solution between two contradictionary get hold ofs The need to create and express autonomy and contrariety from parents and the need to maintain the parental identifications (Cohen, 1972). That is to say, the latent function of subculture was to express and resolve, albeit magically, the contradictions which bide hidden or unresolved in the parent culture (Cohen, 1972)As Hebdige pointed out, skinheads, for instance, undoubtedly reasserted those values associated with the traditional working-class community, but they did so in the face of the widespread renunciation of those values in the parent culture at a time when such an affirmation of the classic concerns of working- class life was considered inappropriate(Hebdige, 1979). But it is also the case of mods in fact they were negotiating changes and contrad ictions which were simultaneously affecting the parent culture but they were doing so in ground of their own relatively autonomous problematic by inventing an elsewhere (the week-end, the wolfram End) which was defined against the familiar locales of the home, the pub, the working-mans club, the neighbourhood (Hebdige, 1979).Nevertheless, we must be careful in stressing the importance of integration and coherence between youth and parent culture because one of the most relevant feature in the definition of a subculture is its dissonance and discontinuity with the most largely accepted culture. This is particularly evident if we take in consideration the punk subculture.As Hebdige writes in fact we should be hard pressed to find in the punk subculture, for instance, any symbolic attempts to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in the parent culture (Cohen, 1972) beyond the simple fact of cohesion itself the expression of a highly structured, visible, tightly b ounded group identity. Rather, the punks seemed to be parodying the alienation and nullity which have ca apply sociologists so much concern, realizing in a deliberate and froward fashion the direst predictions of the most scathing social critics, and celebrating in a mock-heroic scathe the death of the community and collapse of traditional forms of meaning.Even if each subculture strives to be different and unique among other ones, they all share a mutual feature they are all cultures of conspicuous consumption. This term indicates the practice of abnormally spending on goods and services with the main objective of flaunting the be pertinaciousing to a social status, a particular group or, as in this case, to a specific subculture. It is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its mysterious identity and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is basically the manner in which commodities are employ in subculture which marks the subculture off from the more orthodox cultural formations. (Hebdige, 1979).The style can be defined as the self-image that a person creates representing his or her personality. Style, however, is not built at an singular level but it is strongly dictated by the subculture rules. Everyone identifying in a specific subculture is unconsciously throttle in the adoption, use, dissemination, and the rejection of a certain(a) style of clothing or regular acting. That because of the so-called social pressure the behaviour of a angiotensin converting enzyme person is so much linked to the influence exerted by the social groups that the individual identity muddles up with the collective identity. Accordingly, the identity of the individual is recognized just as his or her membership to the reference group is recognized and accepted by all other members. In this contest, the apparel assumes a place role becoming the most evident sign of affiliation and, thus, one of the princ ipal mean of social avowal. Considering the clothing in the adept of a parking area communication code, it becomes important to identify the symbolic value of different preens. Actually, they always carry a center about the style of a group, and to a more precise analysis, they can tell us everything we need to know about norms and values of a specific group and even about its formation processes.Thus, the apparel adopted by a subculture should not be seen as a transient fashion but as a visual image of what are the values and norms characterizing that specific subculture and distinguishing it from parent culture and from the other youth subculture too, and inasmuch symbolic representation, it needs to be guardedly analyzed to be properly interpreted.Chapter 2The Punk a immingle of heterogeneous youth stylesI can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.(Travis Baker)This quotation from one of the most famed punk-rock drummer of the recent years well summarizes what was the punk movements background.Punks origins are blended and even conflicting, coming from a wide regularize of different musical and fashion styles.Influenced by David Bowie and glitter rock, combined with the main features of Southend rb rhythms, inspired by American proto-punk, twisted with northern thought and with reggae, the punk can be described as a gallimaufry made of distorted reflections coming from almost every previous post-war youth culture stuck together with base hit pins. (Jon Savage, 2007)It is care punk unearthing and renewing stallion wardrobes belonging to different ages with the aim of proposing them in revitalized cut-up form.Glam rock contributed narcissism, nihilism and gender confusion. American punk offered a minimalist aesthetic (e.g. the Ramones Pinhead or Crimes I stupid), the cult of the street and a gustatory perception for self-laceration. Northern Soul (a genuinely secret sub culture of working-class youngsters devote to gymnastic dancing and fast American soul of the 60s, which centres on clubs like Wigan Casino) brought its subsurface tradition of fast, jerky rhythms, solo dance styles and amphetamines reggae its exotic and dangerous stock(a) atmosphere or forbidden identity, its conscience, its dread and its cool. Native rhythm n blues reinforced the brashness and the speed of Northern Soul, took back to the basics and contributed a highly developed iconoclasm, a thoroughly British person and an passing selective appropriation of the rock n roll heritage. (Hebdige, 1979)However, the link between these so heterogeneous styles is to be assemble in the social contest in which the punk movement emerged. We are dealing with the late mid-seventies in Britain, with its massive unemployment, with its continuous warlike violence episodes (as ,for instance, the tragic one happened during the 76 Notting Hill Carnival to which the punk group The Clash de dicated the song White riot), with its changing moral standards and its rediscovery of poverty.It was but in this period that the race relations became fundamental. On the one hand, in that respect was the urban sorry youths, living and working in Britain but dreaming and finding an notional refuge in an elsewhere (Africa, the West Indies, etc.) through the reggae and the Rastafarianism. On the other hand, there was the white working-class youth, placed at the same social level as the black ones but stuck in their present time, having no foreseeable future and no places or means to escape the reality. In fact, the model proposed by the glam rock made of literary influences (from Rimbaud, Burroughs, Lautramont and Huysmans) and underground cinema, centre on the concepts of polymorphism, perverse versedity and obsessive individualism resulted too international from the majority of working-class youth.They were imprisoned in a vicious circle. They matte up up as aliens, rejec ted not only by the rest of the world but also by the any existent music genre. They had no reference models, no hopes for the future and neither perspectives of improvement. Therefore, they started to act out alienation, to pantomimer its imagined condition, to manufacture a whole series of subjective correlatives for the official archetypes of the crisis of red-brick life the unemployment figures, the Depression, the Westway, Television, etc. (Hebdige, 1979)The awareness of this crisis led to the conversion of what was an inner uneasiness into tangible icons (the safety pins, the ripped clothes, the spikes, the hungry look, the combat boots, etc.) reflecting in an enhanced way the perceived condition of exile and alienation, which is, nevertheless, voluntarily assumed.Punks, thus, moved back to earlier, more vigorous forms of rock (i.e. the 50s and the mid-60s when the black influences had been strongest) and forward to contemporary reggae(dub, Bob Marley) in order to find a mu sic which reflected more adequately their sense of frustration and oppression. (Hebdige, 1979). They saw in Rastafarian history of exile a point of contact and it was exactly for this reason it was the only accepted subculture alternate to punk. Richard Hell, a punk musician, interviewed in the popular music magazine New Musical Express declared, punks are niggers (NME, 29 October 1977). An inevitably feisty form of ad browse but it is indicative of what was the real situation at that time. As Hebdige writes, the punk can be seen in part as white edition of black ethnicity. (Hebdige, 1979)In addition, this unstudied identification with black British and the West Indian tradition was a way to oppose actively to chemise boys, their hated rivals. In fact, punks used to modify and wear elements from the teddy boys style and it was perceived as an outrage by the teddy boy revivalists because they felt as punks stealing and fooling their way of clothing and, in a sense, their ideals. P unk style was perhaps interpreted by the teddy boys as an affront to the traditional working-class values of forthrightness, plain speech and sexual Puritanism which they had endorsed and revived (Hebdige, 1979). Concrete evidences of this tension between the two subcultures could be found every Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1977 along Kings Road where duly a throng of punks and teds met to fight.Therefore, Reggae, notwithstanding its apparent distance from punk music, started to be present in a add of repertoires of punk bands as The Clash, The Slits, The Jam, and many others. In the majority of punk clubs, they used to play regularly weighed down reggae music between live acts and, moreover, the song Punky Reggae Party by Bob Marley The Wailers, is the evident and overwhelming proof of this contamination.Chapter 3Punks rebellion through styleRebellion is the disembodied spirit of the punk subculture. Rebellion against society, rebellion against social inequalities, rebel lion, in last instance, against conformism. Everything the punks did, everything they wore, dance to, fight for, everything can be consider as punk has the only aim of convey a message of nonconformity. Conformity can be defined as a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of populate. (Aronson, 1972)Therefore, punks rebellion was essentially against the prevailing modes of thought what coarse people took for granted that is to say the necessity to have a good and certain job, the blame on homosexuality, the mistrust in other race, it was simply not accepted as the only and the best code of conduct.However, punks were young, poor, and completely lost(p) in effectively struggling for changing the reality. Therefore, the only weapon they found to react was to transform themselves in direct offensive and menaceening worlds.Punks, like previous post-war youth subculture such as teddy boys, the mods, the rockers, t he skinheads, the beats, the zoot suiters, and the hippies created, a coherent and elaborate system of body adornment that expressed their estrangement from mainstream society and that horrified the general public. Having little access to dominant means of discourse, punks displayed their disaffiliation and their subcultural identity through such adornment, which was for them an accessible and direct channel of communication. By manipulating the standard codes of adornment in socially objectionable ways punks challenged the accepted categories of everyday dress and disrupted the codes and conventions of daily life (Wojick,1995)Early punks, probably unconsciously, used most of the rebellion techniques typical of the early avant-gardists unusual fashions, the blurring of boundaries between art and every day life, juxtapositions of seemingly disparate objects and behaviours, intentional provocation of the audience, use of make relaxed performers and drastic reorganization (or disorgan ization) of accepted performance styles and procedure (OHara,1999)In this contest, it is not affectly that the main features of punk fashion were so extremely dramatic and shocking.Objects borrowed form the most sordid of backgrounds found a place in the punks ensembles lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests shut in in plastic bin-liners. Safety-pins were taken put of their domestic utility context and worn as gruesome or diagnosents through the cheek, ear or lip. specious trashy fabrics (PVC, plastic lurex, etc.) in vulgar designs (e.g. mock leopard skin) and nasty colours, long discarded by the quality end of the fashion industry as obsolete kitsch, were salvaged by the punks and turned into garments (fly boy drainpipes, common miniskirts) which offered self-conscious commentaries on the notions of modernity and taste.(Hebdige, 1979)Even the conventional ideas of beauty and attractiveness were refused. Hair was washed-out with bright colours and straighten ed up in spikes and Mohawk. Body piercing degenerated in self-mutilation studs and pins prinked eyebrows, cheeks, nose and lips.Make-up was used by both boys and girls in a massive and impressive way cosmetics became as paint to be used in creating alien masks to hide behind. As Hebdige argued, beneath the clownish do there lurked the unaccepted and disfigured face of capitalism.Claiming to be anarchists and nihilists, punks felt unloose to offend as many people as they could. They wore terrorist/guerrilla outfits, directly offensive T-shirt covered in verify words or fake blood, along with desecrated religious object and sexually pervert accessories.The perverse and the abnormal were valued intrinsically. In particular, the illicit iconography of sexual fetichism was used to predictable effect. Rapist masks and rubber wear, lather bodices and fishnet stocking, unbelievably pointed stiletto heeled shoes, the whole paraphernalia of bondage the belts, straps and chains were e xhumed from the boudoir, closet and pornographic withdraw and placed on the street were they retained their forbidden connotations. Some young punks even donned the dirty raincoat the most prosaic symbol of sexual kinkiness- and hence expressed their deviance in suitably proletarian terms. (Hebdige, 1979)For the first wave punks, each adornment used had a precise meaning The safety pins and bin liners, for instance, symbolized a material and spiritual poverty in an magnified form, which could be really experienced or just acted out.In other words, the safety pins, etc. enacted that transition from real to symbolic scarcity which Paul Piccone (1969) has described as the movement from empty stomachs to empty spirits and whence an empty life notwithstanding the chrome and the plastic of the lifestyle of conservative society. (Hebdige, 1979) hotshot of the most controversial symbol used by punks were for sure the swastika. This symbol was made available to the punks through Bowi e and Lou Reeds Berlin phase. It evoked a decadent and evil Germany, an idea of no future strictly linked to the punks mood. Therefore, it had secret code to do with the Nazisms ideology in the punks vision. Quite the opposite, punks firmly supported the anti-fascism and anti-racism movement. In the punk wear, the swastika lost its classic meaning and it was worn just because it was guaranteed to shock.Conventionally, the swastika has always signified enemy and hate, and to be hated is exactly what punks wanted.Chapter 4Role of media and DIYAs it was showed previously, punk was surely a spectacular subculture and it would have been very difficult for media not to pay assist to it.Although many others groups had paved the way for punk through 1975, it was not until the advent of the raise Pistols that punk began to take shape as a noticeable style for the vast public. TheNew Musical Expressgave theSex Pistolstheir first music press coverage in the 21 February 1976 for their perfo rmance at the Marquee. From then on punk rock began to attract critical attention of the specialised press, and criticism from all the rest of the world.Moral panic began emerging continuant after the accident happened at the punk festival at degree Celsius Club in Soho in the September of the same year, when a girl was partially blinded by flying beer glass. Punks were angry, wore absurd and offensive clothes and openly claimed they wanted to fight the society and to be heated. It is not surprising that in few months all the British press was focused on this new subculture frightening the middle class.Punk was described as a big social problem and the deviant and anti-social act (as vandalism, swearing, fighting etc.) did zippo but worsen the situation. Their style was used as counter-evidence of the danger they delineated They infringed the sartorial codes in the same way they disrupted the civil and social codes they dress in an inhuman way because they are beasts acting as a nimals without moral.Therefore, punks were demonized in the press and depicted as family unit devils. They were a threat to adjure before it led to a degeneracy of all British youth concerts were cancelled, the Sex Pistols song God save the Queen was verboten by British radios, and moral barricades were raised by editors, politicians and other right-thinking people. However, nobody of the above could stop the punk movements diffusion. For the first time in the history, there was an attempt by a working-class youth subculture to provide an election critical space within the subculture itself to counteract the hostile ore at to the lowest degree ideologically inflected coverage which punk was receiving in the media. (Hebdige, 1979)An alternative punk press was created the fanzines. Punk fanzines were non-professional and nonofficial journals edited by an individual or a small group consisting of reviews, editorials and interviews with the most important exponents of the punk scen e. These publications were produced on a small scale as cheaply as possible and distributed through a small number of sympathetic retail outlets.The language in which the various manifestos were framed was determinedly working class (i.e. it was liberally peppered with swear words) and typing errors and grammatical mistakes, mis plot of landings and jumbled pagination were left(a) uncorrected in the final proof. Those corrections and crossings out that were made before publication were left to be deciphered by the reader. The overwhelming impression was one of want and immediacy, of a paper produced in indecent haste, of memos from the front line. (Hebdige, 1979)The fanzines are one of the most notable expressions of the punks Do It Yourself (DIY) concept. TheDIY ethic, in general terms,refers to the ethic of being self-reliant by completing tasks oneself as opposed to having others who are more experienced or able complete them for you. The DIY ethic is tied topunk ideologyandant i consumerism, as a rejection of the need to purchase items or use existing systems or processes.Sniffin Glue, the first fanzine and the one which achieved the highest circulation, contained perhaps the single most inspired item of propaganda produced by the subculture the definitive statement of punks do- it -your self philosophy- a diagram showing three finger positions on the recognize of a guitar over the caption Heres one chord, heres two more, now form your band. (Hebdige, 1979)Nevertheless, the Do it yourself philosophy was not confined just in the press world.Emerging punk bands began to record their music, produce albums and merchandise, distribute their works and very much performedbasement showsinresidentialhomes rather than at traditionalvenue, in this way they could to avoidcorporate sponsorship and to secure freedom in performance.To be honest, these rising bands had no many other choices because most of venues tended to evade moreexperimental music, and so houses were often the only places at which they were allowed to play.Obviously, also punk fashion followed the DIY ideology The clothes suited the lifestyle of those with limited coin due to unemployment and the general low-income school leavers. Punks cut up old clothes from charity and thrift shops, destroyed the fabric and refashioned outfits creating a very in advance(p) way of clothing never existed before.This stylistic innovation attracted the medias attention raise two different responses In the fashion pages, the newness and the creativity of the punk fashion began to be not only accepted but also celebrated, while there was a big part of the British press exempt stigmatizing the punk as ridiculous and offensive.Starting from an initial acceptance by the fashion magazines, little by little all media began a physical body of process of recuperation and incorporation of the punk obviously, young punks still correspond a deviant way of living but the medias attitude, and so of the whole society as well, slowly shifted from a demonizing approach to an exorcising approach.This was made, as Hebdige explains, throughout two different formsThe ideological form and the commodity formA Ideological formThrough this form, media tried to neutralize the differences between punks and common people. Young punks family assumed a new role.The punks tended to be resituated by the press in the family, perhaps because members of the subculture deliberately obscured their origins, refused the family and willingly played the part of folk devil, presenting themselves as pure objects, as villainous clowns. . For whatever reason, the inevitable deluge of articles gleefully denouncing the latest punk outrage was counter-balanced by an equal number of items devoted to the small detail of punk family life. (Hebdige, 1979)During the summer of 1977, several articles were print on punk babies, punk-ted weddings and on a lot of other common daily situations involving punks and wit h titles like Punks have mothers too They tell us a few home truths (Woman, 15 April 1978) or Punks and Mothers (Woman s Own, 15 October 1977) on the whole these articles served to minimize the Otherness so stridently proclaimed in punk style, and defined the subculture in precisely those terms which it sought most vehemently to resist and deny (Hebdige, 1979)B Commodity formThis second form of incorporation is the most interesting for the purposes of this research. It is trough this form that subcultural signs (clothes, music etc.) are driven to the conversion into mass-produced objects. Therefore, it is here the key to understand how the punk way of clothing, born from the rebellion against the whole society and characterised from the beginning by an anti-fashion attitude, could be transformed and largely exploited as a proper fashion trend.But first to get to this, it will be required to draw the story of what could be consider the cradle of punk fashion The 430, Kings Road.Cha pter 5430, Kings RoadEverything started in the October 1971 when Malcolm McLaren and his art-school friend Patrick Casey opened, here in the heart of the Chelsea district, a small stand in the back room of a shop called Paradise Garage. They sold at time original rock n roll vinyl records, specialized music magazines, vintage items from the fifties and some garment.The young McLaren was convinced that music and fashion were two inhering things and so, when in 1971 he obtained the proprietary rights on the store, he renamed it let It flap and transformed it in a clothing store stocked up with second-hand and new teddy boy clothes intentional by his miss Vivienne Westwood.The shop wavy iron facade was painted black with the stores name written in pink letters, while the interior followed the typical classy period details, such as the so-called Odeon wallpapers. Westwoods designs sold in the shop were outrageous and outlandish, inspired by bikers, fetishists and prostitutes. Brot hel creeper shoes, drape coats, and skin-tight trousers were designed by Vivienne Westwood (but also by McLaren itself) and then made up by an East End tailor and by a local seamstress. One of the most representative example of the kind of garments sold in this first-phase Let It Rock is the Bones T-shirt Using chicken bones acquired from a local takeaway, Westwood boiled and drilled the bones and attached them with chains and studs to spell keywords such as Rock and Perv. The idea originated in the skull and crossbones of the bikers, but it gave the garment a primitive, talismanic power. 1Nothing similar ever appeared in the holy fashion world scene the store with its creation attract the attention of the international press, from the Rolling Stone to certain Japanese magazines.It was a real success but McLaren was not completely satisfied with the style of the shop their main customers were teddy boys and he had huge problems with them.For these reason the next year, he travelled to New York for a boutique fair where he met the emergent American rock band the New York Dolls. It was here he started to take his first steps in the rock music system. In fact he took over their management, he dressed them in red leather clothes supplied by his London store and promoted them using Soviet iconography. The Dolls stony-broke up soon after, but served their purpose as a alter run for the management style he would soon deploy to spectacula