Vivienne Westwoods Punk Fashion

Vivienne Westwood is a British fashion designer and business woman. She is hugely responsible for introducing punk and new wave into mainstream fashion. She is well known for being one of the most influential fashion designers there is.

She is often seen as “punk’s creator”.  Although the majority of the punk scene was hidden in the depressed economic and political conditions of the mid 1970s. 

Punk seemed to be a young person’s reaction against the older generation. They considered it outdated and oppressive when aside the newly recognized and influentional youth culture. Vivienne, being a creative fashion designer, then brought this fashion to the public. 

Vivienne Westwood was a seamstress in the “SEX” shop which she was partners with McLaren in. They combined their ideas on punk fashion and made it happen.

The punk fashion publicised even more that they had imagined. McLaren then launched the “sex pistols” who wore and bought all their clothes from the “SEX” shop which Vivienne and McLaren were partners in.

The shop was later renamed “Seditionaries”. They sold the same clothing but mainly focused on the music side of things.

Seditionaries played a huge part in the 1970’s punk movement.

“SEX” had lots of famous visitors such as, The sex pistols, Adam Ant and Bromley Contigent. This shop became very successful and famous throughout the punk scene. They also produced famous clothing such as the “God Save The Queen” shirts, the cowboys, the “Destroy” shirts, the “Venus shirts” and many others. 

An anarchy punk band called Crass

Crass were an English punk rock band, they were formed in 1977. They promoted anarchy as a political ideology, a way of living and as sort of a resistance movement. Crass are the first band compared to other punk bands to properly promote anarchism, for them it is a way of life.

 Crass were the ones who made anarcho-punk very popular throughout the punk subcultures. They advocated direct action, environmentalism and animal rights. Crass did everything for themselves such as graphics, sound collages, albums and films. They critisised mainstream culture hugely and decided to tackle this by promoting things such as feminism, anti-war, anti-racism and anti globalism.

Crass practiced “direct action”. They did this by spray-painting graffiti messages around London underground (using stencils), advertising on billboards, organising squats and sorting out political action. They also decided they would dress in black with military style clothing with a black backdrop behind them which contained many of their “icons of authority”. These being things such as The Christian cross, The Union Flag, The Swastika and an Ouroboros.

They were very influential on the punk culture itself and were also considered to be involved with the “art punk” genre. This being because of their use of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases and improvisation.

An overview of punk fashion

Punk fashion is generally clothing, peircings, jewellery, hairstyles and body modifications of the punk subculture. Many punks wear these types of clothes and accessories to make a statment. Many commercialized fashion designers have used lots of elemnts from the punk fashion and applyed it into their work, this being people like vivienne westwood and Jean paul.

Punk fashion was origionally handmade but then later became more commercialized and started to sell in shops and record stores. This was mainly throughout the 1980’s. 

A lot of the mainstream punk style was influnenced by Malcome McLarens’s shop “SEX”. Deliberatly offencive t-shirts were extremely popular in the early punk scene, such as the “DESTROY” t-shirt which was sold at “SEX”, which featured an inverted crucifix and a nazi swastika. Lots of punks also often ripped their clothes on purpose as a type of trend. Items which were regually associated with punks were: leather jackets, costomised balzers, patches, deleiberatly controversial images and dress shirts randomly covered in slogans such as “Only Anarchists are pretty”. 

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