Punk music developed in the 1970s and was characterized by fast, hard-edged music with short songs and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Iconic British punk bands from the 1970s included the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. Punk fashion was meant to distinguish punks as social outcasts and included torn clothes held together with safety pins, dyed hair styles like Mohawks, and chains and studs on clothing. Key figures in the punk fashion world included Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. Core punk ideologies centered around rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, and individualism.

1. PUNKS

2. Punk Music – What music did
they listen to?
• Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in
the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The trend began in
garage rock and punk rock bands were a huge part of mainstream 1970s
rock. Punk bands created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs
and often political, anti-establishment lyrics.
• British 70's Punk bands:
• The Sex Pistols, The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Damned, The Stranglers, The
Vibrators, Wire, Eater, The Adverts, The Buzzcocks, Generation X, 999,
Sham 69, Slaughter and the Dogs, Siouxie and the Banshees, The Ruts,
Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones,The Fall, The UK Subs, The Saints

3. Punk Fashion - How were they
identified?
• Punk rock has been an enormous and central part of popular music. Many of
punk’s have considered themselves social outcasts, excluded from mainstream
society, because of their extreme fashion sense and attitudes.
• In the U.K., the fashion of punk clothing in the 70s was largely influenced by
designers such as Vivienne Westwood and the Bromley Contingent. These clothes
went on to be sold in stores such as SEX, owned by Malcolm McLaren, which
largely consisted of extremely offensive T-shirts with images such as swastikas, the
Nazi symbol, as well as inverted crucifixes. Also, similar to the United States,
leather jackets, blazers, and dress shirts became popular.
• Punk clothes often purposely had rips in them with safety pins as an iconic part of
their fashion, this created their identity as ‘different’ and extreme. Punk hair was,
and still is very unique. It includes Mohawks, big backcombed hair, dyed (colours
such as red, black, purple) Shaved parts of their hair.
• The chains, pins and studs on their clothing also represented their characters and
rebellious like attitude.

4. What Brands were identified
with them?
Punk first emerged in the mid 1970s in London
as an anarchic and aggressive movement.
About 200 young people defined themselves as
an anti-fashion urban youth street culture.
Closely aligned was a music movement that took
the name “Punk”.

5. Vivienne Westwood and Malcom Mclaren
Punk as a style succeeded even more when
Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren,
publicized the ideas through their joint design
ventures. McLaren launched the 'Sex Pistols' Punk
music group. The punk group wore clothes from a
shop called 'Sex' that Vivienne Westwood and her
partner Malcolm McLaren opened on the Kings
Road, London. They sold leather and rubber fetish
goods, especially bondage trousers. Later the shop
was renamed Seditionaries.

6. What they wore
Punk’s fashion included trousers in which were
deliberately torn to reveal laddered tights and dirty
legs. They were worn with heavy Doc Martens
footwear, a utilitarian, practical traffic meter maid
type of footwear in that era, not seen on many
young women until then. Safety pins and chains
held bits of fabric together. Neck chains were made
from padlocks and chain and even razor blades
were used as pendants. The latter emerged as a
mainstream fashion status symbols a few years later
when worked in gold.

7. Punks statement hair
A focal point of the punk look was the hair which was spiked as high as
possible into a Mohican hairstyle by a variety of means including sugar and
water solutions, soaping, gelatine, pva glue, hair sprays and hair gel.
It was big hair before 80s big hair became everyday. Often it was coloured
pink or green with food dyes. It was intended to startle the onlooker and
attract attention. Over bleaching was common and also became deliberate as
home methods were initially employed to achieve hitherto unknown effects.
An alternative look was to shave areas of the scalp. Both sexes did this. They
intended to make themselves look intimidating. Hair was sometimes dyed jet
black or bleached white blonde. Eyes were emphasised with black and
sometimes cat like eye make up and vampire like lips drew more attention to
the face.

8. Zandra Rhodes
Around 1977, Zandra Rhodes the British dress designer, took elements
of the punk style and used it in her collections making refined and
more elegant versions in bright colours which were more acceptable to
the rich and famous. She used gold safety pins and gold chains to
connect and decorate uneven hems and slashed holes. The carefully
placed holes were edged with gold thread and the hems adorned with
exquisite embroidery. She had always coloured her hair with exotic
colours and worn it as a form of plumage.
Watered down punk chic worked its way to the top end of the market.
Versace too, also decorated dresses with large safety pins, most
notably a black dress that Liz Hurley wore to accompany Hugh Grant at
the premiere of the film 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' in about 1992

9. Selfridges
In 2006, Selfridges decided to Represent a
contemporary take on the spirit of Punk.
Selfridges collaborated with la crème de couture
including Givenchy, Fendi and Chloe, to produce
a range of exclusive accessories, inspired by the
trend that catapulted black-clad punks into an
iconic status.

10. What are the ideologies of
• Punks?
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk
subculture. In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with
concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and
discontent. Punk ideologies are usually expressed through punk rock music, punk literature,
spoken word recordings, punk fashion, or punk visual art. Some punks have participated in
direct action, such as protests, boycotts, squatting, vandalism, or property destruction.
• Punk ideologies have often included a critical view of the world; seeing modern day societies
as placing extensive limits on humanity. Punk culture originated as a movement of shock and
rebellion
• Punk ethics
• In the late 1970s, the punk movement was operating in an environment controlled by outside
influences. Because this invaded on the freedom of the movement, people in the punk scene
began creating their own record labels, organizing their own concerts, and creating their own
print media. This became known as the do it yourself (DIY) ethic. "Don't hate the media,
become the media" is a motto of this movement.
• Punks sometimes participate d and still do participate in direct action such as protests,
boycotts, and in some cases, violence. Some of the most extreme punks have bombed gas/petrol
stations, destroyed animal research laboratories, altered billboards to include political
messages, and occupied abandoned buildings. These acts are committed in an effort to create
social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven
ineffective.

11. Punks Beliefs
Although punks are frequently categorised as having left-wing or
progressive views, punk politics cover the entire political spectrum.
Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom
and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include anti-
authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, direct action and not
selling out. Other notable trends in punk politics include nihilism,
anarchism, socialism, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-
sexism, anti-nationalism, anti-homophobia, environmentalism,
vegetarianism, veganism and animal rights. However, some individuals
within the punk subculture hold right-wing views (such as those
associated with the Conservative Punk website), neo-Nazi views (Nazi
punk), or are apolitical (e.g.horror punk).

12. Punks Views
Early British punks expressed nihilistic views with
the slogan “No Future”, which came from the Sex
Pistols song "God Save the Queen". In the United
States, punks had a different approach to nihilism
based on their "unconcern for the present" and
their "disaffection from both middle and working
class standards". Punk nihilism was expressed in the
use of "harder, more self-destructive,
consciousness-obliterating substances like heroin,
or Methamphetamine.