Iris Publishers_Journal of Textile Science & Fashion Technology (JTSFT)

Punk, Fashion and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In this article we propose an analysis of the genesis of Portuguese punk fashion. Due to the overvaluation of the London reality, punk clothing may at first sight show a homogeneity. However, by considering different realities and socio-historical contexts, it is possible to establish a more detailed view of what was and what is punk fashion, and the constant appropriation and actualization of this aesthetic. In Portugal, in the years after four decades of dictatorship, this fashion constituted a form of disruption. Through a set of interviews with key actors of the Portuguese punk scene, we will try to determine how this disruptive fashion was triggered and also how it allowed the country’s aesthetic and cultural opening to a late modernity.

Keywords: Fashion; Punk; Do-it-yourself; Aesthetic cosmopolitanism

Abbreviations: KISMIF: Keep It Simple Make It Fast! Project; DIY: Do-It-Yourself

Introduction

Fashion and punk. Few styles have provoked (and still provoke) both an appeal and an aversion as punk does. Aversion was even pursued by the punks themselves, and that’s something that makes the appeal even stronger. It is a cycle. Therefore, it is not surprising there are numerous books, articles, journalistic works, photo books, etc. about this theme. Ironically, in a counter-punk way, this avalanche of information on punk aesthetics eventually crystallized a punk outfit with such a striking visual force that still endures today. But it creates and recreates itself in an unbroken circle since the late 1970s. Punk has fueled innovation in fashion and contemporary visual imagery in a spectrum of incessant resurrection and death [1,2]. In terms of ideology, punk assumes itself as a contesting movement in the artistic, economic and social dimensions. It was, in Western societies, a landmark of rupture and repositioning in relation to the existing social structure accompanied by a soundtrack and a visual imaginary. It was more than just a t-shirt or a song. It was an un-submissive attitude that broke the status quo and gave visibility to a youth that was unsatisfied and disbelieving the future [3].

And what was the context that allowed the emergence of punk? The genesis of punk is often interpreted by the context of economic crisis that violently hits western nations in the wake of rising oil prices. At that time, the last bastions of Great Britain’s economy were sinking: the automotive and textile industries are struggling with enormous difficulties, as so the coal and metallurgy industries. Prices raised up, wages stagnated, and unemployment increased. Hebdige, et al. [4] interpreted the punk style as a visual response to England’s socioeconomic crisis during the late 1970s [5,6].

The purpose of this article is to analyse the subversive and disruptive characteristics of punk fashion and aesthetics in Portugal. What are its specificities and similarities to the British reality that we mentioned above? How was that appropriated in a small country, completely isolated by 40 long years of dictatorship? As we will discuss in more detail throughout the text, the Portuguese socio-political context was quite different. On April 25, 1974 the Revolução dos Cravos [Carnation Revolution] occurs, which means the end of 48 years of political dictatorship carried out by the Estado Novo regime [3]. A revolution had taken place, but a cultural and customs revolution was yet missing. Fashion is a paradigmatic example in this matter. Immediately after the April 25, 1974 revolution, fashion had not changed significantly. There was a dress code, so to speak, normative. For men, the colors did not differ much: blue, black or white. What came from abroad was expensive and arrived often with delay. Hence the importance of punk in providing a universe of aesthetic possibilities to a group of young people through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) (there were also a few who could buy fashion accessories on trips to London, but they were reduced in number).

It is well known that one of the major sociological concerns is to assess how the diffusion of fashion takes place. Is it from top to bottom or vice versa? Is it a structured process or the sum of random events and actions that puts a style on the spotlight? Crane, et al. [7] considers that currently it is a highly complex process due to the geographical dispersion of the various actors involved and the huge diversity of products generated. There are two best known sociological theories on this subject. The classic model was postulated by Simmel, et al. [8]. A stylistic novelty would first be adopted by the upper classes and then progressively spread to the remaining social classes. Styles appeared in haute couture houses and over a period of time reigned there. But soon those styles were beginning to be imitated either by peers or by other social classes. By the time fashion reached the bottom of the social structure, it was depleted. Fashion is here associated with social status. Its legitimacy is only convertible into capital if its expansion is restricted. When social closure is broken, legitimacy is lost. It would be a top-down model. The second theory is based on the opposite. It defends a bottom-up model. The new styles would emerge in the lower classes and would be progressively adopted by higher social groups of the social scale [9]. Prestige is no longer associated with social status but with age. New fashion styles come from youth groups. Subcultures and youth tribes, above all. These subcultures have distinctive ways of dressing, one that attracts the eye of the fashion industry and imitation by other social and age groups [10]. These novelties would come not only from the young but also from artistic and minority groups such as homosexuals.

In both models, however, diffusion processes are accelerated by the media. In the nineteenth century, fashion needed some time to spread, not only in the country of origin, but also abroad. With the mass media, however, the whole process underwent a profound acceleration. The first model was dominant in Western societies until the 1960s, when demographic and social factors accentuated the influence of young people in all social classes. The baby boomers were a generation with economic possibilities that were unthinkable for their parents, and this factor influenced many spheres, namely fashion. Since then, the second model explains better the reality of fashion in Western societies. Before we talk about subcultures and punk in Portugal, it is important to analyze in what context punk fashion ultimately emerged. Concretely, what was fashion like in the 1970s in the Anglo-Saxon world? For Steele, et al. [11], the style of the 1970s was some kind of bastard son of the 1960s. It unveiled a confused revolt against his ancestor. One thing needs to be said. In the 1970s, fashion was not in fashion. Or rather, anti-fashion was in vogue. Mainly, freedom to use whatever and wherever one wished was the essential requirement. Fashion of the 1970s can be divided into two phases: the first, from 1970 to 1974, is characterized by the continuation of many late 1960s features such as retro costumes, shocking clothing and ethnic influences. Valerie Steele, et al. [11] calls this phase the ‘late hippie diffusion’. The second phase goes from 1975 to 1979, and fashion became both harder and more conservative. At street fashion level, hippie, peace, and love were suddenly replaced by punk, sex, and violence. On the other hand, in haute couture, prevailed the decadent style of terrorist chic [5]. At the same time, and paradoxically, there was a search for uniformity around dress-for-success clothing [6,11]. There were two main trends in this decade: androgyny and punk. This is explained by the continuing importance of music in fashion’s domain. Just as mods and hippies created their own styles, so did punk. It was an aggressive style of confrontation, with an outfit marked by references to sadomasochism. Above all, it was against the remaining hippie remnants that they existed [5,12,4,13]. Punk was riot. The clothes were cut, pierced with pins, decorated with swastika images or tampons. It was a shock. Quickly, however, the shock passed into a major influence on the fashion world. With punk, it had become a spurious task to seek to establish strict separations between anti-fashion and fashion [14].

Although part of a broader context of cultural production, and as a consequence of constraining time and space, we will focus very briefly solely on the importance of Vivienne Westwood. In 1971, Westwood and Malcolm McLaren rented the back of Paradise Garage at 430 Kings Road. Initially named Let it Rock, they sold rock’n’roll records and teddy boys-style clothes designed by Vivienne. Then began ten intense years of subversive creativity. Regardless of the various incarnations of Vivienne and Malcolm’s store, the common catalyst for their creations was the revolutionary and anarchic attitude and the struggle for a new aesthetic. In 1973 there was a new name change: Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die. But it is the following year, in 1974, that the store is renamed: Sex [15,16]. Here, rising above any measure of comfort and social selfindulgence, Westwood operates a visual poetics of deconstruction and chaos, materializing in the wearables a certain esprit d’époque that beckoned the loss of stabilizing social and cultural coordinates. Operating incisions, tears, and violations, Vivienne inaugurates an unprecedented empiricism that deconstructs the very market organization of a ready-to-wear market by appropriating massbought black t-shirts and remastering them. In these t-shirts, Westwood performs what would become the look of punk, inseparable from the urgencies of the time [17].

It is possible to identify today all the cultural and symbolic matrix of Vivienne Westwood’s creations. For example, from a small shop on Kings Road to Paris, Westwood has enhanced her influence in the fashion world by gradually joining a circuit. Often accused of selling out to the system she once criticized, Westwood became between the 1980s and 1990s a global, millionaire venture; despite its virtual belonging to the capitalist logic of production, Vivienne’s aggressive and ironic aesthetic still carries that old noise of (in) contestation, transmuting the catwalk’s sacrosanct space into a platform for debate and protest [15,18]. That’s why Theresa May - the former English Prime Minister - was wearing a ‘classic’ Westwood tartan at her swearing in ceremony in 2016.

Materials and Methods

The data presented and discussed here is the result of a long research that lasted from 2012 to 2017. A set of 214 semi-structured or biographical interviews, conducted between 2013 and 2015, were performed to self-representing actors as punks or linked to the development of Portuguese punk scenes. The 214 interviewees of the KISMIF project have in common the present and/or past participation in the Portuguese punk scene: either as musicians, or as promoters, editors, critics and other intermediaries, or as consumers. The interviews were guided by a script with more than 50 categorical entries. The interviews were transcribed and object of a classic analysis of content and/or other quantitative and/ or qualitative speech treatments. The sample was constructed by the snowball method, following the contact networks between the actors, from an initial base referenced by the research team. The analytical object was established through the contacts provided by the interviewees, which gave the research a wide territorial range. Our methodology was shaped by the categorical content analysis so as to grasp the meanings and purposes of social actions, thus favoring qualitative and intensive perspectives. Our approach methodology focuses on (sub)cultural analysis. Hebdige, et al. [4] argues that after World War II there was a profound change in the way social classes were experienced in England. Especially due to changing structural factors: the media, work, leisure and education, the increased purchasing power of young people, among others. One effect of these changes was the fragmentation of discourses about what it meant to belong to the working class. These new speeches were different from the traditional ones. From the perspective of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the emphasis was on how subcultures sought a solution for the problems affecting working-class youth. Those solutions could not overcome the fact that these individuals were in a subordinate position in the social structure. This tension, especially striking in a hierarchical society like the English one, was reflected in the form of subcultural style [4].

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