Punk Clothing
The history of punk sub culture and clothing
When looking back at the chain of events it is easy to see why alternative punk clothing is now a popular style of fashion.
In the 70′s and 80′s, punk music and art influenced a whole urban punk sub culture, emerging initially in 3 major cities, New York, London and Los Angeles. Boston and Brisbane also had similar scenes emerging around the same time. In the late 70′s, sub-divisions of punk began to develop such as pop-punk and new wave punk and later also hardcore punk and street punk became popular streams of this subculture.
The influence of music on punk subculture
Music had a clear part to play in the origination of this new following, with punk bands such as The Sex Pistols coming onto the scene. The lyrics of many punk songs expressed punk values which include animal rights, environmentalism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-sexism and socialism; most punk and alternative followers are considered left-wing when it comes to politics.
Punk clothing
The style of dress in the 70′s punk scene was very much “alternative” from the mainstream fashion of the time and often considered rebellious and controversial. Items such as tapered or drain-pipe jeans, ripped T-shirts held together by safety pins, and worn out leather jackets were typical alternative clothes usually accompanied with equally dynamic footwear such as Dr Martins, baseball boots or biker boots with heavy steel toecaps and prominant metal buckles. Interesting hair styles such as mohawks were common as well as tattoos and body piercings. Often slogans expressing their own or typical punk values were hand drawn onto T-shirts with felt tips or paint and general houshold items were often introduced into an outfit, binliners made into dresses or razor blades used as jewelery, for example.
PVC Clothes, Latex, Rubber and Leather were all popular fabrics to wear due to the association with sexual practices like bondage and S&M, again often not viewed as “main-stream”. This part of punk fashion has remained consistant into modern day punk and alternative clothing.
Modern day alternative subculture encompasses punk styles as well as gothic clothing and emo. It generally represents a following of individuals who want to be able to express themselves and not have to dress, act or think like everyone else.
T-shirts can now be bought with slogans printed on them so the felt tips and paint trend has mostly subsided but modern day punks still manage to be creative in their choice of combined fabrics, different punk style clothing and artistic approach to dress.
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