Punk & fashion

I’ve always thought of the ‘punk’ movement as primarily being about the musical genre and it was interesting in Wednesday’s lecture to hear about its extremely strong visual culture. There seems to have been quite a bit of discussion in the entries below about the irony of this anti-establishment and anti-consumerist movement being commercialized, and looking at some of the images Nabeel showed it was striking to see just how much effect punk visual culture has had on mainstream fashion. Although the more hard-core aspects of ‘Punk fashion’ such as bondage pants, dog collars or unnatural-colored hair are only worn by ‘alternative’ groups and are easy to distinguish from the mainstream, other things like safety pins, ripped clothing, confrontational slogans and even rubbish bags have been absorbed into mainstream fashion to such an extent that it becomes difficult to distinguish them as ‘punk’.

The first thing that comes to mind is the safety-pin dress worn by Liz Hurley in 1994. This dress, as well as having the distinction (?) of launching Hurley’s career, is generally agreed upon as the thing Versace (one of the most high-profile fashion labels in the world) is best known for. As for ripped clothing, it was only a couple of years ago that the trend for ‘frayed edges’ was so big it was getting really hard in some stores to find anything with a proper hemline. Fashion icon Kate Moss (whose recent collection for Topshop had punters queuing for hours outside their London store) must have hundreds of pairs of cut-off jean shorts.

Speaking of celebrities ‘designing’ for high-street stores, Lily Allen (whose collection for New Look has just been released) is known for her tendency to pair prom-style dresses with sneakers. This style has a strong punk influence- according to Wikipedia, “many female punks rebelled against the stereotypical image of a woman by combining clothes that were delicate or pretty with clothes that were considered masculine, such as combining a ballet tutu with big, clunky boots.”

In today’s issue of ‘Sunday’ (the Sunday Star-Times magazine), there is a large picture of Moss carrying her black vinyl Chanel Coco Cabas (apparently an ‘it’ bag for the 2006-2007 season). The article helpfully points out that this bag has been likened “by more than one observer” to a rubbish bag. I saw a picture in a magazine recently of a fashion-conscious celebrity (I can’t remember who) wearing a shiny black coat, and again the caption mentioned a striking resemblance to a rubbish bag. I was also very pleased to see some shapeless shiny-looking black coats when I was in town yesterday. They are for sale in the Calvin Klein store on High Street if anyone is interested.