“Style” by Dick Hebdige

Fashion History and Culture Tuesday 13 November 2012

“The Punk subculture, then, signified chaos at every level, but this was only possible because the style itself was so thoroughly ordered,” Hebdige, 263.

Opposition vs. Defusion

Resistance vs. Incorporation

In 1977, the Sex Pistols recorded a song titled "God Save the Queen" in open reference to the National Anthem and the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations that year, with the song intending to stand for sympathy for the working class and Resentment of the monarchy.[88] They were banned from many venues, censored by mainstream media, and reached number 2 on the official U.K. singles charts and number 1 on the NME chart.

Roland Barthes – the father of semiotics

The ‘intentional’ advert image vs. ‘innocent’ news photograph

Every object in everyday life has the potential to have covertly oppositional readings, 257.

Consider the skinhead. The object can have two meanings, both oppositional to mainstream society and, actually oppositional to each other as well.

What is original fashion?

“It is conventional to call ‘monster’ any blending of dissonant elements . . . . I call ‘monster’ every original, inexhaustible beauty.” – Alfred Jarry, 257.

How does originality and “blending dissonant elements” (John Galliano, Alexander McQueen) produce good fashion?

Levi-Strauss Bricolage

Read quote on page 258.

Mods, Mods vs. Rockers

The motor scooter, prescription pills,metal combs, these symbols have been re-appropriated as oppositional symbolsfor resistance.

Semiotical bankruptcy on the streets of Tokyo, Osaka…

In the photographs made to document the street fashion described in NRT-KIX, four identifiable suit-fashions emerge: London Gentleman, Italian Mafioso, neo-Mod/Puk and, indigenous or post-War “classic” Japanese. These categories do not of course comprise an exhaustible list of street styles in Japan. In fact, Ted Polhemus has identified more than fifty subcultures operating on the streets of Japan (1994). He describes Japan as a “supermarket of style,” an example of an ever increasing phenomenon in urban fashion centers. Within a supermarket of style, people pluck up bits from whatever style strikes their fancy just as one walks down the aisles of a supermarket choosing products regardless of taxonomical or cultural significance – you liked it, so you choose it, and the rest is incidental. This basically sums up a semiotical understanding of a postmodern fashion space. The borrowing of symbols is an important feature of Japanese street fashion. Japanese skinheads, the wearing of Malcolm X hats or the clinched fist pendant synonymous with black power (see Appendix III) are all examples of the appropriation of symbols with very little awareness – or regard – for original signification values. Whether or not a Japanese skinhead is aware of the racist overtones of the movement or of the emergence of a counteracting movement such as SHARP (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudices), which attempted to separate skinhead material style from its reactionary political agenda, is not the point: some Japanese fancy the aesthetic fitness of skinhead style and choose to wear it for that reason alone. Willoughby, 54.

Oppositional readings….

“war – and it is Surrealism’s war –is declared on a world of surfaces”Annette Michelson, 259

The genesis of punk: working-class London.

“We’re into chaos not music.” “We want to be amateurs.” -- Johnny Rotten

The genesis of punk: working-class London.

Punk style can generally be defined as a shocking and intentionally incongruous bricolage of these aformentioned movements in addition to the trademark leather jackets worn by the Rockers (Polhemus, 1994). Punk style led to a identifiable fashion subculture centred around extreme sexual predilections labelled “Perve” (Polhemus, 1994). Punk, Perve and the world of bondage, fetish and sadist-masochism are all close cousins. While Vivienne Westwood was researching fetish gear to support a designer collection based upon Punk rock in 1976, Punk group Adam and the Ants were routinely using fetish gear on stage and even had “Sex Punk” fan followers (Sabin, 1999, p. 7). The iconic Punk band, the Sex Pistols, was named after an East London sex shop. Sexual angst and aggression affect material design in Punk fashion. Adopters of Punk style utilised violence in customising their clothing, as one Londoner remarked, “I’m getting into slashing and mutilating anything I can get my hands on” (Cartledge, 1999, p. 145). Fashion, lifestyle and sexual expression are interlinked within Punk culture, and thus render Punk a close relative to the world of S&M. This quote captures the flavour of a rebellious 1970s Londoner, and British culture generally that pushed the socially accepted bounds of musical and fashionable expression.

Get Lewis Leather, best motorbike jacket in the world. Told to piss on it to make it look old. Sorely tempted, but used saddle soap instead. Persuaded mother to buy me bondage trousers for birthday. She comes with me, shameful, and ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ about price and lots of zips and straps, and you’ll trip up. Buy ‘London Calling’ Clash T-shirt which gets nicked in frantic dance session and also a mohair jumper knitted with broomsticks according to mum, which falls to bits. Bondage trousers ditched after about two times, look too new and make me feel crap, too commercial. Buy PVC trousers from shop near station, and jumper like Captain Sensible’s made out of bathroom rug: itches like fuck. Introduced to what I later come to know as homosexulaity when a man asks me where I got my trousers from and then proceeds to feel them for what, to me, appears to be an unusual length of time. White with blue stripe Adidas basketball boots are the new flavour – but badges on them. Borrowed Stiff Records ‘If it ain’t Stiff it ain’t worth a Fuck’ T-shirt. Has to be sneaked in and out of the house (Cartledge, 1999, p. 147-8).

S&M in menswear design will very likely become a more dominant trend in Japan in the coming years. Violence’s relationship to sex has been a recurrent feature in the Japanese cartoon and comic media known as “manga.” Japan’s commodification of sex is a common fixture along the streets of its cities (“Phone Box”). Ato’s autumn/winter 2000 collection shows several pieces featuring exposed internal straps which hold the garment together, but reveal visible expanses of skin (see Appendix I). Necklaces in leather and metal eye-holes reinforce the S&M aesthetic of the collection. A few initial indications within the fashion media also reinforce the resonating quality of neo-Mod/Punk style. Contemporary fashion magazines abound with products that depict bondage activities, or that exploit the sensational nature of verbal and physical violence between the sexes, all for the ostensibly marketable quality of S&M culture (See Appendix III). Willoughby, 52.

Punk, S&M as mainstream commodity.

Subcultural style in America: NYC + Dallas.

Nightlife subcultures: Studio 54 New York (left), Starck Club Dallas (right)

NYC Club Kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY0V4O7ErJ0

Nirvana – product of Pacific Northwest music subculture that went mainstream overnight.

The role of the zine in Grunge and Punk, Hebdige , 262.

Nothing essential at all, actually.

“The true text is reconstructed not by a process of piecemeal decoding, but by the identification of the generative sets of ideological categories and its replacement by a different set, Hebdige,” Mepham (1974) in Hebdige, 264.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8fLOJswWtk

“The key to punk style remains elusive. Instead of arriving at the point where we can begin to make sense of the style, we have reached the very place where meaning itself evaporates,” Hebdige, 265.

The End.

“Japan is clearly in the midst of shifting towards a postmaterialist value system. Such a transformation makes the use of fashion increasingly fractured as it sustains the expression of a postmoderinist conception of the individual self, grafted precariously and, at times, naïvely upon one of the most integral traditional cultures in the world. No less, the urban spaces in which designer and street-born innovation occurs is hyperreal and supermodern in nature. Such spaces give way to a semiotical riot on the streets and subway carriages of Tokyo and Osaka. Status imbued objects in Baudrillard’s analysis of consumer society, which Japan is certainly an example, is still important in understanding fashion consumption, however, the monolithic nature of strict luxury brand consumption has given way to a less formulaic expression of style. The prolonged economic recession has meant that contemporary fashion in Japan concerns itself with issues apart from a conspicuous display of financial wealth. As these root cultural shifts continue to run their course, fashion in Japan will become increasingly difficult to say anything essential about. As such, NRT-KIX will forever be a work in progress.” Willoughby 2000, 69-70.