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Style Tribes: The Fashion of Subcultures
Style Tribes: The Fashion of Subcultures explores the style, fashions and ideology of youth movements of the last 100 years, including flappers, swing kids, mods, rockers, surfers, hippies, punks, disco, hip hop, Harajuku and hipsters. Fully illustrated, it delves into the stories behind the styles, what sets each of them apart, and looks at the influence and legacy of each of these tribes.
The advent of industrialisation, globalisation and modernism in the twentieth century brought with it an explosion of subcultures, most of which are defined by their youthfulness. As subcultures gain media attention they are absorbed into the mainstream, and the style is often picked up by the fashion industry. The book will look at how these subcultures have been translated into fashion, from flappers and teddy boys to punk and grunge.
Subcultures inspire, influence and blend into one another: hippies were a continuation of the beat movement, combined with a surfer lifestyle influence, while Jamaica's rudeboys and London mods inspired the original skinheads. There's also a running theme of 'the hipster' - a word that emerged from Harlem in the 1920s from 'hip' or 'hep', meaning non-conformist and one step ahead. This concept has played a part in understanding subcultures including zoot suiters, the jazz loving hipsters of the 1940s, beatniks, the hippie and now the contemporary hipsters with their beards and skinny jeans.
Illustrated with historic and contemporary images, it colourfully details each group to give a comprehensive overview of each subculture.
The advent of industrialisation, globalisation and modernism in the twentieth century brought with it an explosion of subcultures, most of which are defined by their youthfulness. As subcultures gain media attention they are absorbed into the mainstream, and the style is often picked up by the fashion industry. The book will look at how these subcultures have been translated into fashion, from flappers and teddy boys to punk and grunge.
Subcultures inspire, influence and blend into one another: hippies were a continuation of the beat movement, combined with a surfer lifestyle influence, while Jamaica's rudeboys and London mods inspired the original skinheads. There's also a running theme of 'the hipster' - a word that emerged from Harlem in the 1920s from 'hip' or 'hep', meaning non-conformist and one step ahead. This concept has played a part in understanding subcultures including zoot suiters, the jazz loving hipsters of the 1940s, beatniks, the hippie and now the contemporary hipsters with their beards and skinny jeans.
Illustrated with historic and contemporary images, it colourfully details each group to give a comprehensive overview of each subculture.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2016
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February 23, 2021
Táto kniha je skvelá pre tých, ktorí sa zaujímajú o módu, ale nevedia kde začať
Je to taký dobrý odrazový mostík - máte tu rýchly historický prehľad, knižky/pesničky/ľudí, ktorí ovplyvnili dané obdobie a každá kapitola má veľa obrázkov, takže ľahko nájdete čo sa vám (ne)páči a v podstate kam ďalej pokračovať. Plus, ja som sa dozvedela z tejto knižky o úplne nových štýloch obliekania a celkom mi to tak rozšírilo obzory.
Avšak je to zamerané prevažne na 20. storočie, a keď chcete ten "hlbší" ponor do danej problematiky už musíte ísť na internet alebo zobrať si ďalšiu knižku.
Je to taký dobrý odrazový mostík - máte tu rýchly historický prehľad, knižky/pesničky/ľudí, ktorí ovplyvnili dané obdobie a každá kapitola má veľa obrázkov, takže ľahko nájdete čo sa vám (ne)páči a v podstate kam ďalej pokračovať. Plus, ja som sa dozvedela z tejto knižky o úplne nových štýloch obliekania a celkom mi to tak rozšírilo obzory.
Avšak je to zamerané prevažne na 20. storočie, a keď chcete ten "hlbší" ponor do danej problematiky už musíte ísť na internet alebo zobrať si ďalšiu knižku.
August 23, 2017
Quotes:
Sections: Flapper/Harlem Renaissance/The Zoot Suit/Swing Kid/Beatnik/Teddy Boy/Greaser & Rocker/Mod/Surfer/Hippie/Rudeboy/Skinhead/Hip Hop/Northern Soul/Disco/Punk/New Romantic/Goth/Acid House/Goa Trance/Grunge/Riot Grrrl/Britpop/Emo/Neo-Rockabilly/Hipster/Steampunk/Harajuku Style/Sapeur/Kogal
Intro:
In revolutionary France, the Incroyables and Merveilleuses reacted to the Reign of Terror with decadence and a dandyish, attention-grabbing dress, including wearing a red string around the neck for those who had lost their lives to the guillotine.
It was in the 1950s that the concept of the teenager was first introduced by advertising men, looking for a new way to sell products. Teenagers were a consumerist force and champions of individuality—rather than dressing like their parents, they made the decisions as to what they wanted to buy and wear—and rock and pop music would measure the taste of a person, and what group they belonged to, more than ever before.
Subcultures begin organically and often it is only once they become part of the mainstream that they are given a label. As John Lydon once said of punk: 'If you call it punk then it probably isn't.'
Vibe is about about having secret, specialist knowledge.
Hippies were a continuation of the beat movement, combined with a Californian surfer lifestyle, while Jamaica's rudeboys and London mods inspired the original skinheads.
There's also a running theme of 'the hipster'—a word that emerged from Harlem in the 1920s from 'hip' or 'hep', meaning non-conformist and one step ahead.
It could be argued that subcultures are much less easy to define nowadays. They flourished at a time when young people would have to scrimp and save to buy the latest records and fashions and would therefore be more likely to follow one scene closely.
Flapper:
The 'flapper' has its roots in the seventeenth century, indicative of a fledgling bird flapping its wings for the first time. In the 1890s it was slang for a young prostitute, and just before the war it was used to mean a lively teenage girl.
Coco Chanel [was involved in making the flapper style]
The female body was demystified, with women shaving their exposed armpits and showing off their legs, when twenty years before a glimpse of an ankle was considered scandalous. 'For the first time since civilization began the world is learning that girls have knees'.
'The hushed pall that hung over the house, meals eaten day after day in tearful silence, when Nancy at the age of twenty had her hair shingled...Nancy using lipstick, Nancy playing the newly-fashionable ukelele, Nancy wearing trousers, Nancy smoking a cigarette'
Harlem Renaissance:
Despite this pride in color, professional dancers working in many parts of the United States were made to do the paper bag test—where their skin was not to be darker than the bag. Chorus girls would try to lighten their skin with lemon juice or cosmetics that offered promises of light mocha tones.
As Langston Hughes said of the 1920s, 'it was a period when negroes were in vogue,' and this was particularly true in Europe.
The Zoot Suit:
The word 'hep' originated in the early days of jazz to refer to someone in the know, and as swing became popular, the use of the word 'hip' became more widespread. Calloway published his own Hepster Dictionary in 1939, where he defined a hepcat as 'a guy who knows all the answers, understands jive'. 'Zoot' was hipster patter—a common term in the late 1930s within urban jazz culture, and also a Cajun word for 'cute', coming from the New Orleans jazz scene. The zoot suit was also referred to as a 'killer-diller coat' in Harlem slang.
After the war ended and rationing was relaxed, the zoot suit became more mainstream. By 1948 a slimmer version was marketed to white men as a 'bold look', and worn by white jazz aficionados like Bing Crosby who would take on elements of what was originally a black fashion. They were what Norman Mailer referred to as 'the white negro', listening to Charlie Parker and smoking weed, or 'tea'. Artie Shaw described Crosby as 'the first hip white person born in the United States'.
Swing Kid:
Swingjugend, or swing youth, were teenage swing fans in Nazi Germany who rejected the Hitler Youth in favor of jazz.
Matt Wolf, whose documentary Teenage covers youth groups before the end of the war, described Tommie Scheel as 'the hippest of them all, smuggling swing records and British fashion into Germany to rebel against the Nazi regime. He is almost like a proto-punk, you could say.'
In 1936 a swing club was founded in Dusseldorf where members adopted English names and greeted each other with 'Swing High!'
Beatnik:
'The first hipsters were a far cry from the affected zombielike "cool" stance that came to predominate later,' said journalist Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone.
In Venice Beach, beat men went barefoot or wore sandals, and, according to Lawrence Lipton's study, they grew beards as a way to 'reject the rewards of the goddamn dog-eat-dog society.'
In New York, journalists and ad men began sprouting beards and wearing elkskin shoes, 'the lap-over Indian moccasin kind that no beatnik could ever afford to buy.' By 1960, beatnik fashion had crossed into high-end designs. 'It was clear that the beatnik-heiress look is the latest to roll off the Seventh Avenue cutting boards,' wrote the New York Times. Girls would wear their beat look at the weekends, when they could get away with carefree, casual dressing and off-the-shoulder tops. It was a 'gilded bohemia', but without the poverty and suffering. The cool beat girl would become sexualized, with a Miss Beatnik competition in 1959 at Venice Beach and Playboy magazine introducing actress and model Yvette Vickers as a 'Beat Playmate'.
In London trad jazz fans emulated the beats and Paris existentialists with jumpers, duffel coats, scarves, and paint-splattered jeans.
William Burroughs would reflect 'on the awesome power of the word. Kerouac's On the Road sold millions of Levi's and created thousands of espresso bars to serve their wearers. His book launched a children's crusade to Paris, Tangier, Kathmandu, Goa, Mexico, Columbia, winning converts everywhere.'
Teddy Boy:
As a reaction against America as the new world leader, Savile Row tailors like Hardy Amies produced an outfit for the upper classes which nostalgically referenced the reign of Edward VII, a time of confidence, wealth and a definitive class system.
By 1952 groups of working-class teenagers were inspired by news articles to appropriate the Savile Row New Edwardians, turning something that had been designed fro the wealthy and connected into a statement against the class system.
They couldn't afford the Savile Row suits, but they would devote any expendable income on perfecting the look, which was quite separate from mainstream fashion.
Mod:
Mods had disposable income and higher purchase options to spend on the right clothes, which would go out of fashion in a month, and records, firstly jazz then obscure rhythm and blues. Richard Shirman of the band the Attack said: 'The coolest thing you could do was walk around the West End of London with the latest LP under your arm.'
Hippie:
Hippie culture can be traced back to the German movement Der Wandervogel at the turn of the 20th century, which promoted folk music, paganism, and organic healthy foods. Many of the Germans who settled in California brought this alternative lifestyle with them and opened health food stores to promote it. It was adopted by the Nature Boys, a group in the CA desert who celebrated a back-to-nature lifestlye. Eden Ahbez wrote the song 'Nature Boy' which became a hit with Nat King Cole's recording in 1948. In On the Road Kerouac noted that while passing through Los Angeles in the summer of 1947 he saw 'an occasional Nature Boy saint in beard and sandals'.
[UK hippie obviously more stylish and serious, influenced by Mods and London culture]
Skinheads:
Skinheads became cult figures on film in 1971 when Stanley Kubrick's controversial A Clockwork Orange heavily referenced the style of the skinheads. The droogs wore thin braces, rakish hats, heavy boots and canes with blades, and spoke in a hybrid of cockney and Slavic created by Burgess in the original book.
Hip Hop:
Hip hop style grew out of a 7 mile radius in the South Bronx in the early 1970s to become a billion dollar industry by the mid-1990s. Hip hop combined the four elements of DJing, MCing, graffiti, and breakdancing, where the fashion was about being fly and fresh.
Disco was the current black sound, but its fashion of excess was not relatable to life in the Bronx. It wasn't conceivable to imagine tough street gangs donning disco style.
Wearing a flatcap was a link with working class origins, while wearing the baseball cap twisted the concept of leisuretime and sportswear being a preserve of the wealthy, as it had been up until the 1960s.
Punks wore torn t-shirts, but b-boys ensured they had perfect creases in their jeans.
While the East Coast developed the original hip hop style, the ghettos of Los Angeles brought gangsta rap to public consciousness with Compton's NWA and Ice-T, shocking America with a violent depiction of drugs, police brutality, and misogyny.
Designer labels were always a part of the aspirational side of hip hop, and in the 1980s Ralph Lauren had become the sought-after brand by the Lo-Life gang in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who worshiped the Polo logo and dressed exclusively in the waspy brand. By 1992 they had branched into Guess, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger and fila, emulating hip hop stars. 'They gave a new reading to class/racial codes, these B-boys were appropriating ruling class style and parading it with a sardonic grin.' One member of the Lo-Life crew was quoted saying, 'We're saying fuck you to this rich, white millionaire.'
Northern Soul:
Northern mods still held onto their scooters, soul music, and speed.
Northern soul combined British style with a love of American music, but it was also a culture of nostalgia—it was the soul music of the 1960s that they obsessed over.
Disco:
Disco came at a time of great social change, when hippie ideals had been replaced with apathy and the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal had deflated hopeful utopian dreams. The fun of disco was pushing the extremes, from clothing to behavior that reflected social change. It was time for dressing up again, replacing psychedelic folky hippie fashions with shimmering gowns that would compete with the lighting and glitter balls.
It was women who would come to represent the disco era, with their soaring vocals and anthemic songs of survival for the repressed and marginalized.
Disco began as an underground movement in the black and Hispanic gay community in 1970s Manhattan, when crime-ridden New York was a dangerous city to be in at night. The feel-good sound served as an effective celebration of gay rights after the 1969 Stonewall riots, sparked by a NY bylaw criminalizing two or more men dancing together.
Goth:
Goth culture was a dark and macabre offshoot of the original punk movement, capturing at its heart the theatricality of Victoriana and the occult. In the late 1970s, encouraged by Siouxsie Sioux's DIY fashion, it fused the symbols of Gothic literature and film with glam, punk, and the new romantics, creating a distinctive style of its own.
The gothic girl, while edgy and dark, has always been depicted as alternative, cool and mysterious and she knows her own mind. In this way, goth characters like Winona Ryder in Bettlejuice and Lisbeth Salander in Steig Larsson's Millennium series have become feminist icons—outsiders who are intelligent and think for themselves.
Goth fashion thrives in Europe, in Germany in particular, where large annual festivals are held. The M'Era Luna Festival in Hildesheim is the biggest goth gathering in the world along with Whitby Goth Weekend in England.
Acid House:
Acid house wasn't created from one core influence, instead it was the convergence of numerous scenes and movements, including the hedonism of disco, the DJ innovations of early 1970s hip hop, the German futuristic electronica of Kraftwerk, the inclusive pilled-up attitude of northern soul, the hippie Ibiza scene and Chicago and Detroit house and techno. This mash-up was reflected in rave style—a combination of hippie psychedelic clothing, comfortable club gear and football casual sportswear.
Shoom created tshirts with the yellow smiley face log, and it became the defining emblem of acid house. The smiley had originally been designed in 1963 by American advertiser Harvey Ball for an insurance company to motivate their workers, and it then appeared on stickers at free festivals during the psychedelic movement.
One of the first outdoor dance events was the August 1988 Boy's Own party in a barn near Guildford. 1989 would see an explosion in warehouse parties and outdoor events and over the new few years parties would be held in fields in Hampshire, abandoned mills and industrial estates in Lancashire, turning into a game of cat and mouse between the police and the ravers. The Castlemorton Common festival became the biggest illegal rave in history as crusties and weekend ravers partied for seven days, leading to front page outrage and the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, giving police power to shut down gatherings.
Goa Trance:
This 1980s hippie party scene on Goa, with its white beaches and tropical forests, was spread by word of mouth, and began attracting backpackers and New Age travelers from around the world.
Bali, Nepal, and Thailand were backdrops to a rave scene which thrived in environments where living was cheap, with readily available drugs and where the traveler garb of ethnic prints and native, hand-crafted jewellery tied around necks and wrists was easy to get hold of. Despite dressing as if they had no money, this backpacker scene was often criticized as a middle-class way of breaking from social confines without the need to work. They would take themselves away from the comforts of the west—to hammocks on beaches, squat toilets and long distance bus journeys—all in the name of adventure.
As Goa became more popular, travelers or 'trancepackers', would search out the next Goat that had yet to be discovered by the crowds. The scene had all but died out in Goa with a police crackdown on outdoor parties due to noise and drug issues. One of the new places, was the jungles of Puerto Rico, where in 2000, El Cuco, a 3 day psytrance festival took place.
Grunge:
Before Starbucks, Microsoft, and Kurt Cobain, WA in the 1980s was a sleepy backwater of lumberjacks and blue-collar workers with a DIY music scene created around shopping malls and video stores, dance parties in garages and gigs in alleys. Musician Jeff Gilbert said: Seattle isnt a glamorous town at all. It was pretty pathetic. Very depressing, that's where the music came out of.'
Grunge was the antithesis of 1980s greed. Gen X were the slackers depicted in Douglas Copeland's 1991 novel of the same name. They raged against corporate America and consumerism.
Grunge fashion was born from necessity and practicality, and rejected aesthetics of conventional beauty. It threw together borrowed items, thrift store lumberjack shirts and cheap finds from the bottom of a bargain bin.
Musicians on the punk rock music scene looked like loggers or steel workers with their denim jackets and unwashed look that was quite different from the flamboyant heavy-metal style popular at the time. Up on stage in sweaty Seattle music venues they became sex symbols, with their long, unkempt hair covering their eyes or sticking to their faces with sweat, heavy socks worn with work boots and flannel shirts tied around their waists.
Grunge also celebrated the idea of the reject, the nerd who doesn't fit in, particularly with the ironic 'Loser' tshirts by Sub Pop which came to represent grunge's unlikely heroes like Cobain, who was regularly picked on at school.
'In a way "grunge fashion" was a non-fashion. That's why it was so funny that it turned into a Marc Jacobs line for Perry Ellis.'
Kurt Cobain died in April 1994 and modish Brit Pop was already waiting to step into grunge's tired place and take center stage. Grunge would be revived 20 years later as hipsters went environmental and railed against consumerism, mimicking a faux anti-fashion stance with ripped denims, floral dresses, and big boots.
Riot Grrrl:
Olympia, WA had a thriving punk scene with a DIY feel of creating and recycling, and like many women on college campuses in the early 90s, girls were interested in feminism. They created artworks and photos with feminist messages as a reaction against reports of violence against women and sexism in the media.
Britpop:
Neo-mod style that played to British oridinariness, Manchester swagger and the lad and ladette culture of drinking pints, Adidas, and football. Burst of color and optimism to counter influx of American grunge and slacker culture.
Damon Albarn, lead singer of Blur, said in 93: If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.'
Emo:
Emo was a movement for a generation raised on the internet, who found escape in music and dressed like young skateboarding goths brought up around suburban shopping malls.
'Scene people are happy emos' a scene girl said in 2010.
Neo-Rockabilly:
Bettie Page and Johnny Cash on acid
Hipster:
The modern hipster grew from the gentrified urban areas of Shoreditch in London and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where predominately white middle class groups of young people who worked in creative industry developed a self-referential, ironic way of dressing and being. While often seen as consumerist —always searching for the hot new thing, particularly with technology—they were environmentally conscious and supportive of independent businesses, with words like 'artisan', 'single origin', and 'craft beer' becoming stereotypical.
Tweed caps, waistcoats, and beards spoke of rural, old-fashioned times. Hipsters blended skinny jeans with lumberjack shirts ironically.
It was the electroclash scene that laid the groundwork for the modern-day hipster. In 2002, in Williamsburg, Berliniamburg was a club for the electroclash scene, where synth groups like Fischerspooner, Tiga, Chicks on Speed, and Peaches paid tribute to the 1980s.
The neighborhood Dalton in London
Spike Lee criticized the gentrification of Brooklyn: Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers for the facilities to get better?
Borrowed from hippies, grunge, punk, and hip hop and fused them into a melting pot of styles and trends, instead of creating a culture of their own, hipsters proved content to borrow from the past.
The idea of being the most authentic was also important, finding new 'undiscovered' places [from Hudson, New York to Casper, Wyoming] places in the world to visit.
Being ironic became another signifier, wearing something kitsch or in bad taste ironically, such as a trucker hat, porn star mustache, wife beater, vest.
Steampunk:
Unlike other subcultures, not just for the young, some followers in their 30s, 40s, or 50s
'We're living in a world where everything is a beige plastic box, so going back to a world that was elegant and beautiful has an appeal.'
Sapeur:
It's about masculinity, politics, and changing the stereotypes of how people see Africa. "You colonized us but we dress better than you."
Kogal:
Invented emojis
Sections: Flapper/Harlem Renaissance/The Zoot Suit/Swing Kid/Beatnik/Teddy Boy/Greaser & Rocker/Mod/Surfer/Hippie/Rudeboy/Skinhead/Hip Hop/Northern Soul/Disco/Punk/New Romantic/Goth/Acid House/Goa Trance/Grunge/Riot Grrrl/Britpop/Emo/Neo-Rockabilly/Hipster/Steampunk/Harajuku Style/Sapeur/Kogal
Intro:
In revolutionary France, the Incroyables and Merveilleuses reacted to the Reign of Terror with decadence and a dandyish, attention-grabbing dress, including wearing a red string around the neck for those who had lost their lives to the guillotine.
It was in the 1950s that the concept of the teenager was first introduced by advertising men, looking for a new way to sell products. Teenagers were a consumerist force and champions of individuality—rather than dressing like their parents, they made the decisions as to what they wanted to buy and wear—and rock and pop music would measure the taste of a person, and what group they belonged to, more than ever before.
Subcultures begin organically and often it is only once they become part of the mainstream that they are given a label. As John Lydon once said of punk: 'If you call it punk then it probably isn't.'
Vibe is about about having secret, specialist knowledge.
Hippies were a continuation of the beat movement, combined with a Californian surfer lifestyle, while Jamaica's rudeboys and London mods inspired the original skinheads.
There's also a running theme of 'the hipster'—a word that emerged from Harlem in the 1920s from 'hip' or 'hep', meaning non-conformist and one step ahead.
It could be argued that subcultures are much less easy to define nowadays. They flourished at a time when young people would have to scrimp and save to buy the latest records and fashions and would therefore be more likely to follow one scene closely.
Flapper:
The 'flapper' has its roots in the seventeenth century, indicative of a fledgling bird flapping its wings for the first time. In the 1890s it was slang for a young prostitute, and just before the war it was used to mean a lively teenage girl.
Coco Chanel [was involved in making the flapper style]
The female body was demystified, with women shaving their exposed armpits and showing off their legs, when twenty years before a glimpse of an ankle was considered scandalous. 'For the first time since civilization began the world is learning that girls have knees'.
'The hushed pall that hung over the house, meals eaten day after day in tearful silence, when Nancy at the age of twenty had her hair shingled...Nancy using lipstick, Nancy playing the newly-fashionable ukelele, Nancy wearing trousers, Nancy smoking a cigarette'
Harlem Renaissance:
Despite this pride in color, professional dancers working in many parts of the United States were made to do the paper bag test—where their skin was not to be darker than the bag. Chorus girls would try to lighten their skin with lemon juice or cosmetics that offered promises of light mocha tones.
As Langston Hughes said of the 1920s, 'it was a period when negroes were in vogue,' and this was particularly true in Europe.
The Zoot Suit:
The word 'hep' originated in the early days of jazz to refer to someone in the know, and as swing became popular, the use of the word 'hip' became more widespread. Calloway published his own Hepster Dictionary in 1939, where he defined a hepcat as 'a guy who knows all the answers, understands jive'. 'Zoot' was hipster patter—a common term in the late 1930s within urban jazz culture, and also a Cajun word for 'cute', coming from the New Orleans jazz scene. The zoot suit was also referred to as a 'killer-diller coat' in Harlem slang.
After the war ended and rationing was relaxed, the zoot suit became more mainstream. By 1948 a slimmer version was marketed to white men as a 'bold look', and worn by white jazz aficionados like Bing Crosby who would take on elements of what was originally a black fashion. They were what Norman Mailer referred to as 'the white negro', listening to Charlie Parker and smoking weed, or 'tea'. Artie Shaw described Crosby as 'the first hip white person born in the United States'.
Swing Kid:
Swingjugend, or swing youth, were teenage swing fans in Nazi Germany who rejected the Hitler Youth in favor of jazz.
Matt Wolf, whose documentary Teenage covers youth groups before the end of the war, described Tommie Scheel as 'the hippest of them all, smuggling swing records and British fashion into Germany to rebel against the Nazi regime. He is almost like a proto-punk, you could say.'
In 1936 a swing club was founded in Dusseldorf where members adopted English names and greeted each other with 'Swing High!'
Beatnik:
'The first hipsters were a far cry from the affected zombielike "cool" stance that came to predominate later,' said journalist Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone.
In Venice Beach, beat men went barefoot or wore sandals, and, according to Lawrence Lipton's study, they grew beards as a way to 'reject the rewards of the goddamn dog-eat-dog society.'
In New York, journalists and ad men began sprouting beards and wearing elkskin shoes, 'the lap-over Indian moccasin kind that no beatnik could ever afford to buy.' By 1960, beatnik fashion had crossed into high-end designs. 'It was clear that the beatnik-heiress look is the latest to roll off the Seventh Avenue cutting boards,' wrote the New York Times. Girls would wear their beat look at the weekends, when they could get away with carefree, casual dressing and off-the-shoulder tops. It was a 'gilded bohemia', but without the poverty and suffering. The cool beat girl would become sexualized, with a Miss Beatnik competition in 1959 at Venice Beach and Playboy magazine introducing actress and model Yvette Vickers as a 'Beat Playmate'.
In London trad jazz fans emulated the beats and Paris existentialists with jumpers, duffel coats, scarves, and paint-splattered jeans.
William Burroughs would reflect 'on the awesome power of the word. Kerouac's On the Road sold millions of Levi's and created thousands of espresso bars to serve their wearers. His book launched a children's crusade to Paris, Tangier, Kathmandu, Goa, Mexico, Columbia, winning converts everywhere.'
Teddy Boy:
As a reaction against America as the new world leader, Savile Row tailors like Hardy Amies produced an outfit for the upper classes which nostalgically referenced the reign of Edward VII, a time of confidence, wealth and a definitive class system.
By 1952 groups of working-class teenagers were inspired by news articles to appropriate the Savile Row New Edwardians, turning something that had been designed fro the wealthy and connected into a statement against the class system.
They couldn't afford the Savile Row suits, but they would devote any expendable income on perfecting the look, which was quite separate from mainstream fashion.
Mod:
Mods had disposable income and higher purchase options to spend on the right clothes, which would go out of fashion in a month, and records, firstly jazz then obscure rhythm and blues. Richard Shirman of the band the Attack said: 'The coolest thing you could do was walk around the West End of London with the latest LP under your arm.'
Hippie:
Hippie culture can be traced back to the German movement Der Wandervogel at the turn of the 20th century, which promoted folk music, paganism, and organic healthy foods. Many of the Germans who settled in California brought this alternative lifestyle with them and opened health food stores to promote it. It was adopted by the Nature Boys, a group in the CA desert who celebrated a back-to-nature lifestlye. Eden Ahbez wrote the song 'Nature Boy' which became a hit with Nat King Cole's recording in 1948. In On the Road Kerouac noted that while passing through Los Angeles in the summer of 1947 he saw 'an occasional Nature Boy saint in beard and sandals'.
[UK hippie obviously more stylish and serious, influenced by Mods and London culture]
Skinheads:
Skinheads became cult figures on film in 1971 when Stanley Kubrick's controversial A Clockwork Orange heavily referenced the style of the skinheads. The droogs wore thin braces, rakish hats, heavy boots and canes with blades, and spoke in a hybrid of cockney and Slavic created by Burgess in the original book.
Hip Hop:
Hip hop style grew out of a 7 mile radius in the South Bronx in the early 1970s to become a billion dollar industry by the mid-1990s. Hip hop combined the four elements of DJing, MCing, graffiti, and breakdancing, where the fashion was about being fly and fresh.
Disco was the current black sound, but its fashion of excess was not relatable to life in the Bronx. It wasn't conceivable to imagine tough street gangs donning disco style.
Wearing a flatcap was a link with working class origins, while wearing the baseball cap twisted the concept of leisuretime and sportswear being a preserve of the wealthy, as it had been up until the 1960s.
Punks wore torn t-shirts, but b-boys ensured they had perfect creases in their jeans.
While the East Coast developed the original hip hop style, the ghettos of Los Angeles brought gangsta rap to public consciousness with Compton's NWA and Ice-T, shocking America with a violent depiction of drugs, police brutality, and misogyny.
Designer labels were always a part of the aspirational side of hip hop, and in the 1980s Ralph Lauren had become the sought-after brand by the Lo-Life gang in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who worshiped the Polo logo and dressed exclusively in the waspy brand. By 1992 they had branched into Guess, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger and fila, emulating hip hop stars. 'They gave a new reading to class/racial codes, these B-boys were appropriating ruling class style and parading it with a sardonic grin.' One member of the Lo-Life crew was quoted saying, 'We're saying fuck you to this rich, white millionaire.'
Northern Soul:
Northern mods still held onto their scooters, soul music, and speed.
Northern soul combined British style with a love of American music, but it was also a culture of nostalgia—it was the soul music of the 1960s that they obsessed over.
Disco:
Disco came at a time of great social change, when hippie ideals had been replaced with apathy and the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal had deflated hopeful utopian dreams. The fun of disco was pushing the extremes, from clothing to behavior that reflected social change. It was time for dressing up again, replacing psychedelic folky hippie fashions with shimmering gowns that would compete with the lighting and glitter balls.
It was women who would come to represent the disco era, with their soaring vocals and anthemic songs of survival for the repressed and marginalized.
Disco began as an underground movement in the black and Hispanic gay community in 1970s Manhattan, when crime-ridden New York was a dangerous city to be in at night. The feel-good sound served as an effective celebration of gay rights after the 1969 Stonewall riots, sparked by a NY bylaw criminalizing two or more men dancing together.
Goth:
Goth culture was a dark and macabre offshoot of the original punk movement, capturing at its heart the theatricality of Victoriana and the occult. In the late 1970s, encouraged by Siouxsie Sioux's DIY fashion, it fused the symbols of Gothic literature and film with glam, punk, and the new romantics, creating a distinctive style of its own.
The gothic girl, while edgy and dark, has always been depicted as alternative, cool and mysterious and she knows her own mind. In this way, goth characters like Winona Ryder in Bettlejuice and Lisbeth Salander in Steig Larsson's Millennium series have become feminist icons—outsiders who are intelligent and think for themselves.
Goth fashion thrives in Europe, in Germany in particular, where large annual festivals are held. The M'Era Luna Festival in Hildesheim is the biggest goth gathering in the world along with Whitby Goth Weekend in England.
Acid House:
Acid house wasn't created from one core influence, instead it was the convergence of numerous scenes and movements, including the hedonism of disco, the DJ innovations of early 1970s hip hop, the German futuristic electronica of Kraftwerk, the inclusive pilled-up attitude of northern soul, the hippie Ibiza scene and Chicago and Detroit house and techno. This mash-up was reflected in rave style—a combination of hippie psychedelic clothing, comfortable club gear and football casual sportswear.
Shoom created tshirts with the yellow smiley face log, and it became the defining emblem of acid house. The smiley had originally been designed in 1963 by American advertiser Harvey Ball for an insurance company to motivate their workers, and it then appeared on stickers at free festivals during the psychedelic movement.
One of the first outdoor dance events was the August 1988 Boy's Own party in a barn near Guildford. 1989 would see an explosion in warehouse parties and outdoor events and over the new few years parties would be held in fields in Hampshire, abandoned mills and industrial estates in Lancashire, turning into a game of cat and mouse between the police and the ravers. The Castlemorton Common festival became the biggest illegal rave in history as crusties and weekend ravers partied for seven days, leading to front page outrage and the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, giving police power to shut down gatherings.
Goa Trance:
This 1980s hippie party scene on Goa, with its white beaches and tropical forests, was spread by word of mouth, and began attracting backpackers and New Age travelers from around the world.
Bali, Nepal, and Thailand were backdrops to a rave scene which thrived in environments where living was cheap, with readily available drugs and where the traveler garb of ethnic prints and native, hand-crafted jewellery tied around necks and wrists was easy to get hold of. Despite dressing as if they had no money, this backpacker scene was often criticized as a middle-class way of breaking from social confines without the need to work. They would take themselves away from the comforts of the west—to hammocks on beaches, squat toilets and long distance bus journeys—all in the name of adventure.
As Goa became more popular, travelers or 'trancepackers', would search out the next Goat that had yet to be discovered by the crowds. The scene had all but died out in Goa with a police crackdown on outdoor parties due to noise and drug issues. One of the new places, was the jungles of Puerto Rico, where in 2000, El Cuco, a 3 day psytrance festival took place.
Grunge:
Before Starbucks, Microsoft, and Kurt Cobain, WA in the 1980s was a sleepy backwater of lumberjacks and blue-collar workers with a DIY music scene created around shopping malls and video stores, dance parties in garages and gigs in alleys. Musician Jeff Gilbert said: Seattle isnt a glamorous town at all. It was pretty pathetic. Very depressing, that's where the music came out of.'
Grunge was the antithesis of 1980s greed. Gen X were the slackers depicted in Douglas Copeland's 1991 novel of the same name. They raged against corporate America and consumerism.
Grunge fashion was born from necessity and practicality, and rejected aesthetics of conventional beauty. It threw together borrowed items, thrift store lumberjack shirts and cheap finds from the bottom of a bargain bin.
Musicians on the punk rock music scene looked like loggers or steel workers with their denim jackets and unwashed look that was quite different from the flamboyant heavy-metal style popular at the time. Up on stage in sweaty Seattle music venues they became sex symbols, with their long, unkempt hair covering their eyes or sticking to their faces with sweat, heavy socks worn with work boots and flannel shirts tied around their waists.
Grunge also celebrated the idea of the reject, the nerd who doesn't fit in, particularly with the ironic 'Loser' tshirts by Sub Pop which came to represent grunge's unlikely heroes like Cobain, who was regularly picked on at school.
'In a way "grunge fashion" was a non-fashion. That's why it was so funny that it turned into a Marc Jacobs line for Perry Ellis.'
Kurt Cobain died in April 1994 and modish Brit Pop was already waiting to step into grunge's tired place and take center stage. Grunge would be revived 20 years later as hipsters went environmental and railed against consumerism, mimicking a faux anti-fashion stance with ripped denims, floral dresses, and big boots.
Riot Grrrl:
Olympia, WA had a thriving punk scene with a DIY feel of creating and recycling, and like many women on college campuses in the early 90s, girls were interested in feminism. They created artworks and photos with feminist messages as a reaction against reports of violence against women and sexism in the media.
Britpop:
Neo-mod style that played to British oridinariness, Manchester swagger and the lad and ladette culture of drinking pints, Adidas, and football. Burst of color and optimism to counter influx of American grunge and slacker culture.
Damon Albarn, lead singer of Blur, said in 93: If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.'
Emo:
Emo was a movement for a generation raised on the internet, who found escape in music and dressed like young skateboarding goths brought up around suburban shopping malls.
'Scene people are happy emos' a scene girl said in 2010.
Neo-Rockabilly:
Bettie Page and Johnny Cash on acid
Hipster:
The modern hipster grew from the gentrified urban areas of Shoreditch in London and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where predominately white middle class groups of young people who worked in creative industry developed a self-referential, ironic way of dressing and being. While often seen as consumerist —always searching for the hot new thing, particularly with technology—they were environmentally conscious and supportive of independent businesses, with words like 'artisan', 'single origin', and 'craft beer' becoming stereotypical.
Tweed caps, waistcoats, and beards spoke of rural, old-fashioned times. Hipsters blended skinny jeans with lumberjack shirts ironically.
It was the electroclash scene that laid the groundwork for the modern-day hipster. In 2002, in Williamsburg, Berliniamburg was a club for the electroclash scene, where synth groups like Fischerspooner, Tiga, Chicks on Speed, and Peaches paid tribute to the 1980s.
The neighborhood Dalton in London
Spike Lee criticized the gentrification of Brooklyn: Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers for the facilities to get better?
Borrowed from hippies, grunge, punk, and hip hop and fused them into a melting pot of styles and trends, instead of creating a culture of their own, hipsters proved content to borrow from the past.
The idea of being the most authentic was also important, finding new 'undiscovered' places [from Hudson, New York to Casper, Wyoming] places in the world to visit.
Being ironic became another signifier, wearing something kitsch or in bad taste ironically, such as a trucker hat, porn star mustache, wife beater, vest.
Steampunk:
Unlike other subcultures, not just for the young, some followers in their 30s, 40s, or 50s
'We're living in a world where everything is a beige plastic box, so going back to a world that was elegant and beautiful has an appeal.'
Sapeur:
It's about masculinity, politics, and changing the stereotypes of how people see Africa. "You colonized us but we dress better than you."
Kogal:
Invented emojis
April 18, 2020
I feel like the cover of this book makes it seem as if it is aimed towards young people (late teens / early 20s) with an interest in fashion, but as they say, don't judge a book by its cover - because the cover of Style Tribes is not so reflective of its contents.
I believe that this book would be of interest to people who like history, rather than people with an interest in fashion.
I believe that this book would be of interest to people who like history, rather than people with an interest in fashion.
October 19, 2016
I loved this book ! I am not that into fashion but the stories behind the fashion totally gripped me. It was just amazing and I feel really excited to learn more about how fashion influenced society and vice versa. This is definitely worth a read ! My friends all now want to read it. enjoy xxx
October 17, 2017
Admittedly, one of my main motivations for buying this was because it would look great in an Instagram picture. While it's beautiful imagery undoubtedly makes it a great coffee table book, the text included is also a fascinating look at modern history and society.
There are 30 sub-cultures featured in this book, the oldest dating back back to the 1920s. With a date range of almost 100 years, there were several subcultures featured that were not on my radar (zoot suit and mod) and other modern incarnations that I know and once belonged to (emo kids of the 00s, I hear ya). The book also looks at sub-cultures on a global scale, rather than just concentrating in one local. While most mentioned are predominant in the UK and USA, the author also takes us to Goa and Congo.
The book also touches upon - but doesn't directly address - the issue of sub-culture appropriation. It's long known that fashion houses eventually start including elements of popular sub-cultures in their ranges, ripping all meaning from the rebellion that started the movement (for example: before Quicksilver, the surfer sub-culture was all about anti-consumerism).
Definitely a solid read that is also ornamental.
There are 30 sub-cultures featured in this book, the oldest dating back back to the 1920s. With a date range of almost 100 years, there were several subcultures featured that were not on my radar (zoot suit and mod) and other modern incarnations that I know and once belonged to (emo kids of the 00s, I hear ya). The book also looks at sub-cultures on a global scale, rather than just concentrating in one local. While most mentioned are predominant in the UK and USA, the author also takes us to Goa and Congo.
The book also touches upon - but doesn't directly address - the issue of sub-culture appropriation. It's long known that fashion houses eventually start including elements of popular sub-cultures in their ranges, ripping all meaning from the rebellion that started the movement (for example: before Quicksilver, the surfer sub-culture was all about anti-consumerism).
Definitely a solid read that is also ornamental.
February 17, 2017
Lists different types of fashion tribes and how they came to be. E.g. Goth, punk, flappers, rudeboys, emo, etc. Quite an amusing read on the whole, though the book could do with way more pictures. Also, there was a glaring error on one of the captions which read "yound" instead of "young", that wasn't spotted.
August 22, 2024
It was from an historical point of view, which was not exactly what I was looking for. I was expecting it to be more from a fashonista point of view, with young adults as the target readership. It was still interesting but I would have liked more pictures and close-ups of the different outfits.
September 15, 2016
I felt like this book was rather lack luster and didn't contain as much content as it could of but it was interesting to see all the sub-culture groups over the 20th/21st century collated into one book.
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