PUNK CASE STUDY

Style:

The Punks style made them most identifiable and frightening to civilisation. Their negation was always best used as a source of creativity; a means to reassemble and recreate; to build from the ruins (Worley, 2020). And this nihilistic attitude was reciprocated in their dress sense of deconstructed, torn, and defaced garments.

The utilisation of leather, bondage, and denim, initiated offense with the additions of safety pins, chains and studs as harsh decoration and accessory. Despite wearing what others feared to display, the Punks drove an acceptation for androgynous clothing which is highly valued in fashion today for its ease of accessibility and inclusive nature towards genders.

I can perceive a correlation between Rei Kawakubo and the punks in that they both reject prettiness, and instead are eager to produce the ugly and unrecognisable. They both have an unorthodox way of styling wherein punks often self-mutilated and pierced their bodies to demonstrate their extreme lengths of anger towards societal conventions.

They offended sensibilities through fashioning swastikas, pornographic imagery, and fetish wear. It was their uniform for change and a voice to be listened to and it proved successful, just as Kawakubo’s is for creating conversation too.

Hair:

Punk hair wasn’t anything elaborate, quite the opposite in fact. But it infused the DIY mantra they so highly exercised within their clothing which made it just as distinctive to an onlooker eye. Mohicans and liberty spikes are what we mostly associate with punk hair do’s today. But alongside this, buzz cuts, beehives, and pixie cuts presented the same superficial shock factor. Put down the blow dry brushes and leave in conditioners we utilise for our slick ricks, the punks instead employed sugar and water, soap, gelatine and PVA glue to achieve the voluptuous designs and structured do’s.