Not Just a Fashion
Punk Fashion and Style.
Punk is not just a fashion but a real way of being and thinking, a cultural movement and a form of social resistance.
The first aspects of Punk that catch the eye are fashion, hairstyles and music, but being a punk was more of a mindset than a trend.
Although all of this was certainly not in the intentions of his “inventor” Malcom Mclaren.
In the second half of the 70s Europe sees a strong economic crisis. Among the young people develop fashions related to the new cultural phenomena of marginalization.
Malcom Mclaren’s Punk comes from England, not just fashion but music and Life Style. McLaren offers black, artfully ripped dresses, printed with political slogans, sadomasochistic belts, belts and chains.
Sid Vicious, Sex Pistols
Punk Fashion and Style
He creates the Sex Pistols, the punk band par excellence and start a relationship with designer Vivienne Westwood.
The couple defines the punk style in a sentence:
“When in doubt, overdress”
Still, the Punk movement with its provocative actions shook that late-70s, world made of glitter, disco and Hippies flowers.
The slogan “Peace & Love” no longer has any appeal. The motto is Destroy!
T-Shirts became a proper Item of Clothing
You will see the revenge of the T-shirt, no longer considered as a simple underwear, but understood as a real item of clothing with elaborate designs and slogans. Worn with kilt, black leather jacket, tartan trousers and Dr. Martens.
The First Punks
The world needed a shock and with the Punk it certainly had it, even if the fruits of this revolution are rotten thanks to the engulfing of the mainstream. That mainstream that was already preparing the foundations for the advent of the Single Thought made of commonplaces.
“I am the Antichrist”, as the Sex Pistols sang, is not a hymn to Satanism, but the precise declaration of non-alignment with the single thought, which requires all glamour and fashion victims.
The voices outside the choir are either eliminated or incorporated with devious and falsifying methods, highlighting more aspects of the form than the content. It is in this way that in 1979 the system lowered the cleaver to the neck of the Punk movement.
The first punks in the United Kingdom were perceive as Socially dangerous subjects. Above all, young people were moved by the desire for change who questioned the false values of the bourgeoisie, its hypocrisy and its formalities. Against capitalism, its social injustices, particularly those against the working-class.
Malcol Mclaren
Punk Fashion and Style
Today it is against liberalism and its most obvious degenerations such as globalism and turbo-capitalism.
Punk offers more than any other movement, a pragmatic way out, focusing on action. “I want my rights and I want them right away!” this is the project to be implemented, moving public opinion with aggressive gestures and actions typical of those who have nothing to lose.
Not only the ideology of those who want to break everything without a reason, but of those who break everything because to destroy could be socially useful.
Punk is not Dead!
Punk is not dead because the social values of punk can be shared by everyone, across the board, where the feeling of rebellion is the guide, the thrust that triggers new frictions between the hegemonic apparatus and the opposition, giving voice to those who do not have it.
What we are experiencing today has similarities to the conditions of the 70s: attacks, economic crisis, governments unable to manage social malaise. The answer is the new desire for foolish, pissed off, heavy footed, brutal metal rebellion.
Today being Punk no longer means dressing in a certain way, but means being one in the way of thinking and acting.
And the Punk that in the 70s was the turning point, today it is still current, the most modern thing of the last 40 years.
