The Origin of Punk
Punk is a musical category, which gave a birth in the early of last 70's century of Britain when it was faced with an economic crisis and a great number of unemployed workers. Teenagers had a strong feeling of dissatisfaction even desperation to the realistic society. They attacked every field of the society and expressed their thoughts through a wide catharsis behavior. These emotions and trend of thoughts were embodied in the culture and art.
Punk artists expressed simple sensibility by simple chords, and poured out the human beauty and ugliness by vulgar and clear words. They praised marijuana and the God; they advocated promiscuity and also called the attention on the children with single parents; they cursed the wars, however abused violence in daily life; they had have a profligate life, however were attracted by the future, and they overthrew the old waste culture while crating the new waste ones at the same time. They had have represented another possibility and more diversities of a human development direction, which is a direct reflection of different conflicts assembles in humanity.
Then, the punk culture stepped to life from the stage, they started to uphold their determination of a thorough revolution: put on the jeans that full of rubbed hollows and printed skulls and beauties; men all had a cockscomb and women all shaved to bold that could expose their cyan scalps; digging and hanging rings on the noses and spread with indigo tin fluorescent powder on the body, seemed that only when people had a sidelong glance about them when they would be satisfied. Actually they did them for nothing, just to show that they were different and unique, and show their treacheries, with the dissatisfaction of the realistic society.
Punk activity was cooperation with a punk cock core. A young man called Malcolm Mclaren formed the band “The Sex Pistols”, which was the pioneer of the British punk revolution. Malcolm Mclaren’s girlfriend at that time is Vivienne Westwood at present, who opened a small shop selling punk clothes exclusively. That was her, who made another youth activity after hippies, and also made the King Road of London become a famous scenery line in the whole world. She has crated clothes that the modern young adults like by the “punk” palette for which reason also being called as the Mother of Punk.
She was one of the most important international designers in the early of 20th century, and was famous for its treacherous style of clothes in the 70’s that was the former punk sports duds. Many people have a conclusion of Vivian Westwood’s contribution to the fashion world: made the underground and street fashion to become popular.
The Punk Revolution’s Influence on the Modern Raiment Trend:
The punk clothes of early years has had a profound influence on the post-modern clothes style, and the eccentric fashion designers put the differentiate anamorphosis on their own clothes, which gave a great shock to the fashion industry and also poured new power into the development of fashion trend. Westwood is always the precursor of the punk revolution after all, whose goal is to challenge the traditional raiment of the fashion world. Her unique thought model is usually embodied on the twisted sutures, unsymmetrical clippings, unfinished laps and discordance colors. She insists that sex is vogue all the time, and her clothing always focus on the chest and the hip, which make décolletage a big wide collar, and put a lot of stuff to raise the hip on purpose, andput the underwear off the outside even put the bra of f the outer garment. She considers that it is very hot to wear ripping clothes for women, therefore she uses rough materials and stitches hemming and cut the middle, then makes sexy girls by tearing their clothing deliberately.
The Design of Vivienne Westwood
1. New Romanticism Campaign
As “punk” goes to the whole world, the recognition of Vivienne Westwood has been raised higher and higher. In the spring of 1983, Vivienne Westwood has run her first fashion show in Paris. Her series named “Witches” was a set of modern clothing that exposed the under belly, with which some irregular pieces of colored fabrics and rough stitches and sluttish broken cotton blocks and patches with different colors, that was a kind of unprecedented clothes. Her challenge though could not meet the sympathetic response of all the members of society; she has obtained the sidelong glance of the world.
As the New Romanticism Campaign develops, this hobby has become another popular street fashion in the early of 80’s.
2．Full Skirt Matches Jeans
When it was very popular to wear the manful wide-shoulder female clothing, there has a new type skirt on the hanger in London market, which is the nineteenth century style full skirt that Westwood has presented. It seemed that the unusual fashion has hardly obtained people’s greetings; especially it is in nowadays that they are pursuing the something nature and fit, however this kind of full skirt has been filled up the windows for three months after London Week in October. Westwood is the advocator of this kind of skirt, and wear a jean under the full skirt or a puff ball skirt. She called it as “another kind classical model” or “the fit sentiment of new era”. These exaggerated sets of techniques are used by many designers now, which have been praised highly by the trend however, since people’s aesthetic standard has changed recently.
3. Grunge Fashion
People have detested the manic punk rock music in the early 90’s, since the new music that was derived from the post punk in Seattle, was fashionable among the generation-X, and it mixed with a small part of heavy metal thought and certain part of punk philosophy. The Grunge anti-fashion slogan groups has developed, which was formed by worldly-wide street young people and famous singers with a disguise characteristic of simple (slovenly) clothes such as T-shirt, tartan shirt, Ma-L jacket, army trousers, used jeans and thick-sole sneakers and so forth, in a word, the motto of Grunge fashion is dressing down. Though the glorious days of Grunge fashion was short, its peak period was once the inspiration of fashion designers. Actually even Grunge fashion became a history, its influence has infiltrated through the trend. It has been proved by the one of the facts that army trousers have been popular for years.
4. Bobos’ Shock Wave
It has been witnessed the original form of the fashion logos with mixed appearance that rose with rock music half a century ago, and the hippie and punk spirit that constructed on passion and decadent has overturned the traditional esthetics completely, and smashed the prevalent classical grace and gorgeous and aesthetic interest and charm with static sensation. In the 90’s of 20th century, resuscitation of Grunge style that was hovered at the edge of minimalism has crated Bobos. Bobos’ style mingled with conciseness and luxury, with delicacy and indulgence, which has filtrated anything about impetuous impurity and affected fetter and then back to the romantic of capitalism Bourgeois and advocated the liberated Bohemia free style. The most symbolic designer is John Galliano.
The Spring /Summer Collection that John Galliano designed for Christian Dior on the Paris Fashion Week 2001 Spring /Summer has applied camouflage pattern, contrasted and composed with plastic, leather, denim or printed silk, traditional tartan and so on, then crated the wide and sluttish effect by combing elements of punk and street chic.
Besides that, one of the most excellent visual behaviors within Galliano’s collection was adding intensive street style in the clothes that supposed to be dignified and gorgeous in the Paris Fashion Week 2003 Autumn/Winter. Rivet, punk style, rock spirit, heavy metal and the tattoo-like joint-clothesof Dior’s collection for women this year had a very shining image. Mixing and matching different materials is his usual trick to, shining patent leather, pearl jeweler chains and aiguillette made by fox’s fur, with an idea that never obey the normal standard and a mix-match technique surrounded a drama atmosphere, all these things takes people’s breathe away.
Punk Revolution’s Influence on the Raiment Development of Japan and China
Vivienne Westwood has established her own unusual fashion style, since she exhibited her works in 1972.
From Issey Miyake, Kenzo,Yohji Yamamoto and the latest Junya Watanabe, they all used the style of British alternative designers for references. Junya Watanabe has provoked people’s vision by his powerful and unconstrained imaginary in the Paris Fashion Week 2002 Spring /Summer, which made the show became classic. The reconstituted series of denim, urban cotton print were the essential among the three themes. Denim with fins, acid pickling or destroy wash or special printing dyeing, goes through with pleating, jointing, hollowing and grooving, which are novel and alternative with a sense of beauty like remaking again. Girls who wear it are just mixed the style of classical princess and the feature of modern punk cool girl, which is very unique.
Thanks to these brilliant local designers, the Japanese raiment culture developed rapidly, which has narrowed the paces between Japan and the International fashion trend.
In China, there are hot guys and dolls who are at the edge of fashion are not only hit on the Korean and Japanese cultures, also purchase the fashionable clothing in the European and American countries and their underground raiment culture. Digging numbers of holes on the ears, perforating silver rings; wearing thick and slender golden bracelets on the wrist, and golden necklaces around necks; a Mohican head with colorful hairs like Beckham, all these makes a vivid post-modern image of a Chinese punk.
The Chinese punk road goes very slow, however there are still a great number of alternative brands and clothes designers that lead the punk road.