Mother of Punk
Vivienne Westwood is often cited as punk's creator, but the complex genesis of punk is also found in England's depressed economic and sociopolitical conditions of the mid-1970s.
Anarchy in the U.K.
Westwood, a former schoolteacher, was the seamstress in the SEX shop partnership with McLaren and made manifest their combined punk vision through her creations. Westwood designed both her and McLaren's clothing before they opened their first store, Let It Rock, in 1971. Let It Rock catered to the "Teddy Boy" subculture, which was a 1950s revival look. In 1972, they renamed the store Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, and changed the focus to emphasize the emergence of the Marlon Brando-influenced rocker/biker style that was popular at the time. In 1974, they again changed the name of the shop to reflect McLaren's new shock tactics, this time to SEX, where they sold S&M (sado-masochistic) inspired clothing, met the Sex Pistols, and added their punk line, Seditionaries,4 in 1976.5 SEX was the center of the punk fashion scene and many young punks hung out, worked, or bought clothes there when they could afford them. Shrewd entrepreneurs, Westwood and McLaren were instrumental in defining and marketing the punk look at the precise moment that it was taking the streets of London by storm.
(www.metmuseum.org)
This extract is useful in that it pin points a strong female character as a key icon of the punk movement, it also however highlights how superficial and short lived youth subcultures can be. We see this from the continuous rebranding of Westwood and Mclaren's shop to cater to the trends that seem to have changed every year or two in the seventies.
No comments:
Post a Comment