History
A punk wearing a leather motorcycle jacket with studs and spikes.
Punk rock was an intentional rebuttal of the perceived excess and
pretension found in mainstream music (or even mainstream culture as a
whole), and early punk artists' fashion was defiantly
anti-materialistic. Generally unkempt, often short hairstyles replaced
the long-hair hippie look and the usually elaborate 1970s rock/
disco styles. In the United States, dirty, simple clothes - ranging from the T-shirt/jeans/leather jacket
Ramones look to the low-class, second-hand "dress" clothes of acts like
Television or
Patti Smith - were preferred over the expensive or colorful clothing popular in the disco scene.
In the United Kingdom, a great deal of punk fashion from the 1970s was based on the designs of
Vivienne Westwood and
Malcolm McLaren and the
Bromley Contingent. Mainstream punk style was influenced by clothes sold in Malcolm McLaren's shop.
[1] McLaren has credited this style to his first impressions of
Richard Hell, while McLaren was in
New York City working with
New York Dolls. Deliberately offensive
T-shirts were popular in the early punk scene, such as the
DESTROY T-shirt sold at
SEX, which featured an
inverted crucifix and a
Nazi Swastika.
These T-shirts, like other punk clothing items, were often torn on
purpose. Other items in early British punk fashion included: leather
jackets; customised
blazers; and dress shirts randomly covered in slogans (such as "Only Anarchists are pretty"), blood, patches and controversial images.
Other accoutrements worn by some punks included:
BDSM fashions;
fishnet stockings (sometimes ripped); spike bands and other studded or spiked jewelry;
safety pins (in clothes and as
body piercings);
silver bracelets and heavy eyeliner worn by both men and women. Many
female punks rebelled against the stereotypical image of a woman by
combining clothes that were delicate or pretty with clothes that were
considered masculine, such as combining a
Ballet tutu with big, clunky boots.
Punk clothing sometimes incorporated everyday objects for aesthetic
effect. Purposely-ripped clothes were held together by safety pins or
wrapped with tape; black
bin liners
(garbage bags) became dresses, shirts and skirts. Other items added to
clothing or as jewellery included razor blades and chains.
Leather,
rubber and
vinyl clothing have been common, possibly due to their connection with transgressive
sexual practices, such as
bondage and
S&M.
[original research?]
Preferred footwear included military boots,
motorcycle boots,
brothel creepers, Puma Clydes (suede),
Chuck Taylor All-Stars and later,
Dr. Martens boots. Tapered
jeans, tight leather pants, trousers with leopard patterns and
bondage pants were popular choices. Other early punks (most notably
The Adicts) imitated the
Droogs from A Clockwork Orange by wearing
bowler hats and
braces.
Hair was cropped and deliberately made to look messy, and was often
dyed bright unnatural colors. Although provocative, these hairstyles
were not as extreme as later punk hairstyles.
1980s
Early 1980s punk fashion.
In the 1980s, new fashion styles developed as parallel resurgences occurred in the
United States and
United Kingdom. What many recognize as typical punk fashions today emerged from the 1980s British scene, when punk underwent its
Oi!/
street punk, and
UK82 renaissance. The US scene was exemplified by
hardcore bands such as
Black Flag,
Minor Threat, and
Fear.
The 1980s American scene spawned a utilitarian anti-fashion that was
nonetheless raw, angry, and intimidating. However, elements of the 1970s
punk look never fully died away.
UK punks wearing elements of early and 1980s punk fashions, circa 1986.
Some of the following clothing items were common on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean, and some were unique to certain geographic areas. Footwear that was common in the 1980s punk scene included
Dr. Martens boots,
motorcycle boots and
combat boots; sometimes adorned with
bandanas, chains or studded leather bands.
Jeans (sometimes dirty, torn or splattered with bleach) and
tartan kilts
or skirts were commonly worn. Leather skirts became a popular item for
female punks. Heavy chains were sometimes used as belts. Bullet belts,
and studded belts (sometimes more than one worn at a time) also became
common.
Some punks bought
T-shirts or plaid flannel shirts and wrote political slogans, band names or other punk-related phrases on them with
marker pens.
While this was not without precedent in the 1970s, the depth and detail
of these slogans were not fully developed until the 1980s. Silkscreened
T-shirts with band logos or other punk-related logos or slogans were
also popular. Studded, painted and otherwise customised leather jackets
or denim vests became more popular during this era, as the popularity of
the earlier customized blazers waned. Hair was either shaved, spiked or
in a
crew cut or
Mohawk hairstyle. Tall mohawks and spiked hair, either bleached or in bright colors, took on a more extreme character than in the 1970s.
Charged hair, in which all of one's hair stands on end but is not styled into distinct spikes, also emerged. A hairstyle similar to
The Misfits'
devilocks
was popular. This involved cutting a mohawk but leaving a longer tuft
of hair at the front of the head. It is still popular to this day in the
Horror-Punk scene. Body piercings and extensive
tattoos became very popular during this era, as did spike bands and studded
chokers. Some hardcore punk women reacted to the earlier 1970s movement's
coquettish vibe by adopting an asexual style.
