Dedicated follower of fashion: The perpetual relationship between music and fashion

Ever since the "invention" of the teenager there has been a counterculture to follow, consisting of music and fashion. The clothes we wear are the easiest way to quickly identify with others who listen to the same music or have the same interests. It is a fast, simple and effective way of showing which modern day tribe you belong to. Fashion can depict a time, place, ethos and music. This relationship between music and its accompanying fashions has always fascinated me. Do the clothes accompany the music or is the fashion the most important part with the music just a distant soundtrack? You may not realise it but the clothes you wear say a lot about who you are, your likes and dislikes and have been influenced by one or more of the many countercultures from the last 60 years. You may be surprised to see the evolution of your outfit and the events that shaped it. Hear are some of the most prominent and influential countercultures over the years.


The Beats

When: Late 1940s-50s.

Music: Jazz

Style: Polo neck jumpers, shirts, berets, (if you're a man) beards.

The Beats, "beat" coming from jazz meaning "to be on the beat", were pretty much the start of the counterculture. They were often arts types interested in free expression, enlightenment and being cool or hip, and would indulge in drug use to realise these things. They were highly interested in poetry and literature and of their performance. Jack Kerouac's novel "On The Road", written in continuous prose with graphic descriptions of drug use, was highly influential to Bob Dylan, The Beatles and other 1960s artists. Audrey Hepburn can be seen portraying a Beat character in the 1957 Gershwin musical film Funny Face. The influence of the beat culture can be seen throughout the arts today in literature, journalism, music and film.


Rockabilly

When: 1950s

Music: Rock n Roll - Bill Haley and the Comets, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly etc.

Style: For the men -  Pegged trousers (wide at the top, narrow at the bottom), mix of white and pastel fabrics, greased back hair often with a quiff and/or DA at the back, blue suede shoes!
For the women - high waisted skirts and trousers, tucked in shirts, neck ties, poodle and circle skirts, hair worn up, often in a pony tail.

Audrey Hepburn

The 1950s saw the birth of the teenager and rock n roll music was their perfect soundtrack. The philospohy was rebelion - rebelion against adults, against authority, against society, against anything! In Rebel Without A Cause (1955) when asked what it is he's rebelling against James Dean answers "what have you got?". This is a perfect representation of the 1950s youth culture attitude. It set the stage for rock music and for all youth movements to follow.


Teddy Boys

When: 1950s

Music: Originally jazz and skiffle but adopted rock n roll from around 1955.

Style: For the men - drape jackets in dark shades, sometimes with a velvet trim collar, high waisted drainpipe trousers, "slim jim" ties, high neck loose collared white shirt, hair greased into a quiff and/or DA, brogues or crepe-soled "brothel creeper" shoes.
For the women - drape and tailored jacket, pencil skirts, rolled up jeans, espadrilles, long plaited hair. Later they adopted the American fashions of circle skirts, toreador pants and pony tails.

Popular in working class London, the Teddy Boy look is an exaggerated version of Edwardian dress. It was this style of dressing which christened them as it gave rise to the name "New Edwardians" shortened to "Teddy Boys" (Ted or Teddy being short for Edward). This look didn't go anywhere stylistically but its spirit had an important influence on future working class British cultures.


Mods
When: Late 1950s peaking in early-mid 1960s

Music: British beat music, RnB, Soul, Jamaican Ska. Bands include: The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds.

Style: For the men - sharp single breasted suits, thin ties, Oxford/Ivy League shirts, parkers, Italian scooter, belongings customised with union jack and royal air force roundel symbols, winklepickers, chelsea boots.
For the women - mini skirts and dresses, geometric hairstyles, flat shoes, understated make-up with false eye lashes and pale lip stick.

The 1960s saw "Swinging London", a boom in the consumer and fashion world, giving rise to a whole new style which is epitomised with the Mods. The Mods were typically working class people who spent their leisure time and disposable income following fashion and going to late night clubs to hear the latest records and show off their clothes and dance moves. Carnaby street and Kings Road were the areas with the first youth targeted fashion boutiques.
Famously reported are the clashes between Mods and Rockers in 1964 at seaside towns such as Margate, Brighton and Clacton. However it is believed that these reports were over hyped by the press in an attempt to give the culture a negative status and that in reality they were no more than evening brawls of the type which had occurred between youths since the 1950s.
By the summer of 1966 the Mod culture was in decline as the psychedelic and hippie culture grew in popularity in England. The remaining Hard Mods of the late 60s eventually transformed into Skinheads.


Rockers
When: 1962 onwards (previously known as Ton-up boys)

Music: 1950s rock n roll

Style: Leather biker jacket often decorated with metal studs, patches and pin badges, jeans, motorcycle boots or winklepickers, greased back hair, motorbike modified to appear like a racing bike.

Previously known as Ton-up boys or leather boys, Rockers are a biker subculture originating in the 1950s. It is said that the Mods originally rechristened them as Rockers but the bikers liked this new title and adopted it with pride. Rockers raced on public roads and and frequented transport cafes such as The Ace Cafe, Chelsea Bridge Tea Stall and The Ace Of Spades (think Motorhead!). Interestingly many rockers originally opposed recreational drug use. Johnny Stuart author of "Rockers! Kings Of The Road" states "Their [rockers] ritual hatred of Mods and other sub-cultures was based in part on the fact that these people were believed to take drugs and were therefore regarded as sissies. Their dislike of anyone connected with drugs was intense."
The rockers influence can be seen in all subsequent heavy metal subcultures right up to the present day.




Psychedelics

Pink Floyd

When: 1964 onwards


Music: The Beatles, Donovan, The 13th Floor Elevators, Cream, Pink Floyd, Jimi hendrix, Traffic, The Doors, Procol Harum etc


Style: Brightly coloured patterns of swirling colour. For girls, swinging London adds metallic fabrics, PVC coats, kinky boots, white lip stick and huge fake eyelashes.

A sort of British predecessor to Hippies, Psychedelics were a colourful, acid taking (at least in America as LSD was legal until 1966), mind expanding counter culture. Often middle class, their fashion, gigs and music was surreal, drug orientated and intellectual. The culture declined towards the end of the 1960s.




Hippies
When: 1965 onwards

Music: Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Style: Denim, natural fabrics often with inspiration from traditional cultures (e.g. India, native American). long hair for men and women, flowers.

Woodstock 1969

The term "Hippie" comes from the word "Hipster" which was originally used to describe beatniks who had moved to San Francisco. The early hippies inherited the values of the Beat generation and listened to Psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution and used drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and cannabis to explore states of consciousness. The Monterey Pop festival in 1967 introduced the rock music of this counterculture to the world and began the "Summer of Love". Hippies also made a political stance and, lead by Abbie Hoffman, they protested again the Vietnam war among other things. They became notorious for their antics such as trying to levitate the Pentagon in a 1967 war protest!
The most famous Hippie event was the 1969 Woodstock. Over 500,000 people arrived to hear performances by bands such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Along with the deaths of notable figures Hendrix and Janis Joplin, by 1970 the peaceful, drug orientated non conformist ethos of the hippie revolution was also dying.


Glam

David Bowie

 When: 1970-1975

Music: David Bowie, T-Rex, Sweet, Roxy Music, Slade, Wizard, Sparks

Style: Skin tight clothes including catsuits, platforms, glitter, satins, long hair & make up for men and androgyny.

Sweet

Glam, like the Mod culture, is a movement which is as much about the fashion as it is the music. The music is quite diverse, ranging from simple songs, like T-Rex, to the more complex art rock stylings of Roxy Music. The stage shows of Glam rock artists were theatrical and there was an emphasis on gender ambiguity, hence the make-up. A short lived genre, its popularity took a sharp decline after 1976. However its influence can be seen in New Romantic acts such as Adam Ant and Culture Club and Glam Metal bands such as Kiss and Motely Crue.


Disco
When: Early 1970s+

Music: The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, The Village People, Gloria Gaynor, The Jackson Five, Chic.

Look: Expensive and extravagant fashions were worn for nights out at the disco. For the men - Tight trousers, wide collared "Nik Nik" shirts, medallions. Also the beginning of the macho lumber jack shirt and thick mustache. For the women - Flowing Halston dresses.


Beginning in the early 70s, Disco went mainstream and global in 1977 after the release of Saturday Night Fever. It originated in the clubs in New York and was a reaction by the gay, black and latino communities against the domination of rock music. From 1979 Disco experienced a decline in popularity. Rock radio DJs organised burning of Bee Gees records and posters and on 12 July radio DJs organised Disco Demolition Night, an event between games of a White Socks doubleheader for dissatisfied rock fans. Some attribute the demise of Disco to the revival of rock music among other reasons. It experienced a revival in the 1990s-2000s with many hits being disco influenced songs.



Punk

When: 1974+


Music: The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Ramones, Patti Smith

Look: In New York - Leather jackets and drainpipes. In London - Tattered and torn often home made outfits, safety pins, studs, fishnet tights for girls, Doc Martins; spiked, mohawrked and coloured hair; piecings, fetishism, statement make-up.

British punk

The Ramones - NYC punk

Developed between 1974-76 Punk was a counterculture whos ethics were anti-establishment, individual freedom, anti-authoritarianism, DIY, non-conformity and direct action. The UK punk scene was slightly behind the USA with the Sex Pistols initiating the punk movement in the UK in 1975. Further uniting the music and fashion relationship is the fact that the Sex Pistols manager was Kings Road boutique owner Malcolm McLaren. He and Viviane Westwood owned the store Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die which they later rebranded to Sex, a shop that specialised in S&M inspired anti-fashion which became an important part of the punk look. The DIY ethic meant that anyone could express themselves musically even if they had no musical talent or ability. This gave rise to many people following suit of the Sex Pistols and forming their own punk bands.
Punk reached its highest in 1977 with the release of the Sex Pistol's God Save The Queen. The song created much uproar and was banned by the BBC while certain major chain stores refused to stock it. The song and its public impact are now thought of as punks crowning glory.
Around this time punk began to diversify and created factions such as 2 Tone, New Wave, No Wave and Hardcore. Its influence can still be seen today in Pop Punk with bands like the Offspring and Greenday.


New Romantics
When: 1979+

Music: Ultravox, Duran Duran, Visage, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, ABC, Human League, Soft Cell

Look: Fashion based on romantic themes including Bonnie Prince Charlie, French Incroyables, "fop" or poet shirts, 1930s cabaret and Hollywood starlets. Make-up for men as well as women and hairstyles including over sized quiffs, mullets and wedges.

Adam Ant

The New Romantic look was a reaction against the scruffy anti-fashion of punks and a semi revival of the early 70s glam look. Like the glam fashion there was a large amount of androgyny involved in the New Romantic look with both sexes wearing "gender bending" clothes. It peaked around 1981 and by the mid 80s the movement had begun to dissipate. Many of the bands who had gained wide spread fame and success in the early days abandoned the aesthetics of the movement and adopted suits which echoed David Bowies Thin White Duke era.


Indie 
When: 1980s+

Music: REM, The Smiths, The Housemartins, The La's, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, The Strokes, The Hives, Kings Of Leon, The Black Keys, Modest Mouse, The Libertines, Interpol, Bloc Party, Razorlight, The Kooks.

Look: Casual dress, band tshirts, jeans. In more recent times casual suits and fashion retrospective of the 60s can be seen.

Originally used to describe record labels, the term Indie, derived from "independent", soon became associated with the music they produced. Linked by more of an ethos than a musical approach it is a very diverse genre with many sub genres including Indie Pop, Noise Rock, Space Rock, Riot Grrrl and Emo.
In the early days the terms "Indie" and "Alternative" were used interchangeably to describe the genre. However as indie music moved through the decades, bands gained commercial success, leaving behind the "indie rock" label. In the 1990s bands such as Blur and Oasis entered mainstream music in the Britpop sub-genre abandoning small scale elements from the 1980s indie scene. As a result the term "alternative" lost its original counterculture meaning and began to refer to a new form of music which was now achieving mainstream success.
At present the change in the music industry and the rise in digital technology and the internet as a promotional tool has allowed for indie bands to achieve mainstream success. This commercial breakthrough and widespread use of the term Indie has prompted the suggestion that indie rock has ceased to be a meaningful term.




Goth
When: Early 1980s+

Music: Gothic rock, Darkwave, Deathrock, Ethereal. Bands include: Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, Alien Sex Fiend, Christian Death, The Sisters of Mercy, Xmal Deutschland, The Bolshoi, Fields of the Nephilim.

Look: Styles borrowed from Elizabethan, Victorian and Medieval, black hair and fingernails, black clothes with elements of red, purple, dark blue, dark green, velvet and PVC fabrics, powdered white faces with exaggerated make-up, pagan or occult imagery such as the pentacle.

The goth culture is an off shoot of the 80s post-punk. The mood and aesthetic is partly influenced by romanticism and neo-romanticism. The dark, morbid and mysterious imagery and mood lies in the same tradition as the late 18th-19th century's gothic novel. Unlike the punk and hippie movements the culture  is non-political. Instead part of its ideology is the recognition, identification and grief over social and personal evils which the mainstream culture wishes to ignore.
Unlike some countercultures of the 80s, such as New Romantics, the gothic culture is still in existence today. It has continually kept its counterculture title as it has never become mainstream or had a widespread following.



Acid House & Rave
When: Late 1980s

Music: Phuture, DJ Pierre, Armando, Fast Eddie, Bam Bam, Lil Louis, 808 state, D Mob, Maurice, The Sharmen

Look: Psychedelic colours, smiley face tshirts, wide jeans and often other loose fitting clothing, whistles

The first influential acid house records were produced in Chicago but as the house scenes popularity dropped in American it surged in the UK. The London night club Shroom opened in 1987 and introduced acid house to the clubbing population of Britain. The surge in people, particularly football fans, taking ecstasy and listening to music prompted a reduction in violence, such as football hooliganism, and saw the beginning of a period known as the second summer of love.
As after hours clubbing was illegal in the 80s, along with the UK's anti-club laws and the reputation clubbers were getting, it became increasingly difficult to put on events in the traditional club environment. As police would raid any after hours clubs, groups began to secretly gather in warehouses and other inconspicuous venues. This began the rave scene.
Raves were thrown by production companies or unlicensed clubs and were consisted of single events or a moving series of parties. One of the most prominent groups to organise raves were Sunrise who help large scale outdoor events. In 1989 they held the largest ever outdoor acid house rave in Surrey. The rave took place at 10pm Saturday night and lasted until late on Sunday night. An estimated 20,000 people attended over the course of the weekend.

A scene from an outdoor rave

Grunge

When: Lates 1980s - 1990s

Music: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice In Chains

Look: A scruffy appearance, ripped jeans, thrift store clothes, band tshirts, flannel shirts and other outdoor clothing, cheap and durable

Grunge girls

Grunge originated in Seattle in the 80s and became commercially successful in the first half of the 90s due to the release of Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten. Grunge concerts were straight forward and low budget with the atrists concentrating more on rocking out themselves than giving a perfect show. Their clothing and attitude towards live shows was a reaction against the flashy aesthetic that had so far dominated the 80s. Grunge songs are angst filled and often address issue of social alienation, apathy, confinement and a desire for freedom. Although the genre of Grunge enjoyed a number of years of commercial success the bands however were uncomfortable with this popularity and had either disbanded or faded from view by the late 90s. 

Pearl Jam

Reasons for the decline of Grunge can be attributed to the emergence of Britpop, a British reaction against Grunge. Noel Gallagher stated in 2006 that the 1994 Oasis single "Live Forever":


"was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die', and I was like . . . 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack, fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish." 

It can also be attributed to the many bands breaking up in the mid 90s and the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994. 

However despite its decline Grunge is still a popular genre today and Pearl Jam continue to successfully record and tour.

So there we have it, a brief look at some of the countercultures from the past and the way they've evolved and influenced our world today. Can you spot the elements which have influenced you?

If this interests you too check out the Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive for more info and pictures.