PUNKS

Punk Music – What music did they listen to?

• Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The trend began in garage rock and punk rock bands were a huge part of mainstream 1970s rock. Punk bands created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs and often political, anti-establishment lyrics.

• British 70's Punk bands: • The Sex Pistols, The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Damned, The

Stranglers, The Vibrators, Wire, Eater, The Adverts, The Buzzcocks, Generation X, 999, Sham 69, Slaughter and the Dogs, Siouxie and the Banshees, The Ruts, Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones,The Fall, The UK Subs, The Saints

Punk Fashion - How were they identified?

• Punk rock has been an enormous and central part of popular music. Many of punk’s have considered themselves social outcasts, excluded from mainstream society, because of their extreme fashion sense and attitudes.

• In the U.K., the fashion of punk clothing in the 70s was largely influenced by designers such as Vivienne Westwood and the Bromley Contingent. These clothes went on to be sold in stores such as SEX, owned by Malcolm McLaren, which largely consisted of extremely offensive T-shirts with images such as swastikas, the Nazi symbol, as well as inverted crucifixes. Also, similar to the United States, leather jackets, blazers, and dress shirts became popular.

• Punk clothes often purposely had rips in them with safety pins as an iconic part of their fashion, this created their identity as ‘different’ and extreme. Punk hair was, and still is very unique. It includes Mohawks, big backcombed hair, dyed (colours such as red, black, purple) Shaved parts of their hair.

• The chains, pins and studs on their clothing also represented their characters and rebellious like attitude.

What Brands were identified with them?

Punk first emerged in the mid 1970s in London as an anarchic and aggressive movement. About 200 young people defined themselves as an anti-fashion urban youth street culture. Closely aligned was a music movement that took the name “Punk”.

Vivienne Westwood and Malcom Mclaren

Punk as a style succeeded even more when Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, publicized the ideas through their joint design ventures. McLaren launched the 'Sex Pistols' Punk music group. The punk group wore clothes from a shop called 'Sex' that Vivienne Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren opened on the Kings Road, London. They sold leather and rubber fetish goods, especially bondage trousers. Later the shop was renamed Seditionaries.

What they wore

Punk’s fashion included trousers in which were deliberately torn to reveal laddered tights and dirty legs. They were worn with heavy Doc Martens footwear, a utilitarian, practical traffic meter maid type of footwear in that era, not seen on many young women until then. Safety pins and chains held bits of fabric together. Neck chains were made from padlocks and chain and even razor blades were used as pendants. The latter emerged as a mainstream fashion status symbols a few years later when worked in gold.

Punks statement hair

A focal point of the punk look was the hair which was spiked as high as possible into a Mohican hairstyle by a variety of means including sugar and water solutions, soaping, gelatine, pva glue, hair sprays and hair gel.

It was big hair before 80s big hair became everyday. Often it was coloured pink or green with food dyes. It was intended to startle the onlooker and attract attention. Over bleaching was common and also became deliberate as home methods were initially employed to achieve hitherto unknown effects.

An alternative look was to shave areas of the scalp. Both sexes did this. They intended to make themselves look intimidating. Hair was sometimes dyed jet black or bleached white blonde. Eyes were emphasised with black and sometimes cat like eye make up and vampire like lips drew more attention to the face.

Zandra Rhodes

Around 1977, Zandra Rhodes the British dress designer, took elements of the punk style and used it in her collections making refined and more elegant versions in bright colours which were more acceptable to the rich and famous. She used gold safety pins and gold chains to connect and decorate uneven hems and slashed holes. The carefully placed holes were edged with gold thread and the hems adorned with exquisite embroidery. She had always coloured her hair with exotic colours and worn it as a form of plumage.

Watered down punk chic worked its way to the top end of the market. Versace too, also decorated dresses with large safety pins, most notably a black dress that Liz Hurley wore to accompany Hugh Grant at the premiere of the film 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' in about 1992

Selfridges

In 2006, Selfridges decided to Represent a contemporary take on the spirit of Punk. Selfridges collaborated with la crème de couture including Givenchy, Fendi and Chloe, to produce a range of exclusive accessories, inspired by the trend that catapulted black-clad punks into an iconic status.

What are the ideologies of Punks?• Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture.

In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent. Punk ideologies are usually expressed through punk rock music, punk literature, spoken word recordings, punk fashion, or punk visual art. Some punks have participated in direct action, such as protests, boycotts, squatting, vandalism, or property destruction.

• Punk ideologies have often included a critical view of the world; seeing modern day societies as placing extensive limits on humanity. Punk culture originated as a movement of shock and rebellion

• Punk ethics

• In the late 1970s, the punk movement was operating in an environment controlled by outside influences. Because this invaded on the freedom of the movement, people in the punk scene began creating their own record labels, organizing their own concerts, and creating their own print media. This became known as the do it yourself (DIY) ethic. "Don't hate the media, become the media" is a motto of this movement.

• Punks sometimes participate d and still do participate in direct action such as protests, boycotts, and in some cases, violence. Some of the most extreme punks have bombed gas/petrol stations, destroyed animal research laboratories, altered billboards to include political messages, and occupied abandoned buildings. These acts are committed in an effort to create social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven ineffective.

Punks Beliefs

Although punks are frequently categorised as having left-wing or progressive views, punk politics cover the entire political spectrum. Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include anti-authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, direct action and not selling out. Other notable trends in punk politics include nihilism, anarchism, socialism, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-nationalism, anti-homophobia, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism and animal rights. However, some individuals within the punk subculture hold right-wing views (such as those associated with the Conservative Punk website), neo-Nazi views (Nazi punk), or are apolitical (e.g.horror punk).

Punks Views

Early British punks expressed nihilistic views with the slogan “No Future”, which came from the Sex Pistols song "God Save the Queen". In the United States, punks had a different approach to nihilism based on their "unconcern for the present" and their "disaffection from both middle and working class standards". Punk nihilism was expressed in the use of "harder, more self-destructive, consciousness-obliterating substances like heroin, or Methamphetamine.