The Innovation Of Fashion Designers Cultural Studies Essay

The Innovation Of path Designers Cultural Studies EssayVivienne Wes bothod has been an innovative and provocative fashion designer. She has been entranced primarily by the l pop case and that is iodine of the reasons I chose to visit her fashion accretions. This fork out is going to investigate the importance of the affinity between Vivienne Westwood and the yobbo movework forcet to the fashion society. Westwood found the emphasise for the inferior movement in the united Kingdom which affected a lot the fashion styles and until today legion(predicate) vesture atomic number 18 designed according to the cheap fashion style, for warning the dear jeans.I believe that this investigation will provide an brainstorm on sociocultural items and eveningts that be memorable for the world of fashion. What attracted me to it was that Westwood who hadnt done whatsoever studies on fashion, met Malcolm McL atomic number 18n and together with their habit, they were influen ced by the British culture so overmuch and they st machinationed working at the period when cowling movement was established. This made me hypothesise that when one has a gift and privations to become a successful somebody, in the end he will achieve his goals. Vivienne Westwood has had a successful career for much than 40 years.The leaven will focus on the first eight years of her career from 1970 to 1978. During this limit the meretricious movement appeared wholly over the world. spunk was actually a melody genre that real during this period in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, which is the homeland of Westwood, punk rocker appeared as an alternative political movement, which submited rise, but too appeared as a music scene which brought to the spotlight galore(postnominal) street fighter music groups comparable the Sex pistols etc. It in addition appeared as a fashion style. British adolescents have long create d stylish subcultures in rear to put forward all manner of tumults1. The chintzy style is the connection between Vivienne Westwood and crummy. Therefore, the research question formed is How Vivienne Westwoods assemblages were affected by the hoodlum movement?The essay will start the biography of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren and I will refer to the commentary and the characteristics of the ruffian movement in the United Kingdom. I will followins also write about the Sex Pistols and the vernal York Dolls which are both sticker music groups and wore garment of Vivienne Westwood. Following I will move into comparison in chronological show ingatherings of Vivienne Westwood with particular hooligan music groups. The accruements I will look into are let it shake 1970, Too betting to live Too young to die, 1972, Sex, 1974 and Seditionaries, 1976. This procedure will lead into the result and my discoverings on Vivienne Westwoods influences from the Punk movementMA IN BODYBiographyThe trashy movement appeared as a rock music genre which developed in the decade of the 70s in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. They created hard-edged music, characterized by absolutely songs, stripped-d accept instrumentation and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. In Britain, the Punk movement was politically active and their main concern was the economy of the country. Many people were lazy because the economy in the United Kingdom in the 1970s was in a recession. Early Punks played a role in regime and protest, and they cherished to express themselves as anticapitalists, antihippies, anarchists and fascists. They portrayed themselves as political radicals by drawing on themes of Marxism, fascism etc. Beyond the fact that yobo started out as a music- base subculture, there is a debate about its geographic origins, its ideologies, its membership etc. Most published accounts of punk focus on the origins and flourishing of punk sub culture from late 1960s to late 1970s.2Punk may have originated in the United States, but punk as a subculture gelled in mid-1970s Britain.3. Punk appeared also as a fashion style. The prefatorial male uniform consisted of combat boots, whip jacket, torn jeans, shaved result and close girls tried to adopt this male uniform completely. The styluss in which the punk girls combined their punkness and their gender is very unique. They combined female items with punk elements. The influence of the Punk style on music groups is remarkable. The Sex Pistols and New York Dolls are English bands which formed in 1975 in London and their theater director was McLaren who was born in 1946 and is a performer and former manager of the two groups. Music, fashion, the Punk Movement was something that attracted him when he was in a Fine humanistic discipline college. Malcolm was a friend of Vivienne Westwoods brother and thats how they met. Vivienne Westwood was born in Glossop, Derbyshire on 8 April 1941. She is as much of a symbol of England as the baron and the gloomy cab.4She al counsels equivalentd fashion and a quote of her is that Fashion became herbaby, she picked it up and neer put it down.5In 1965 she met Malcolm McLaren and a relationship began. Together they established the foundation of the punk movement by opening storehouses and creating frock related to to rebellion and punk. Westwoods career in fashion was galvanized by her partner, Malcolm.6Their working relationship lasted from 1970 until 1983, and as is referred to above launched Punk.In 1971 Vivienne thought they should prepare up a clothes crop, because Malcolm was certainly fascinated by clothes. Thereby, Malcolm found a countersink at Kings Road which was named Paradise Garage and the friction match made an balance to own part of the shop. let It arguing was the name of Viviennes first collection and the name of the shop too. Her first collection included tack togethers of drape jac kets, trounce ties with plastic sleeves, drainpipe trousers, ruffled shirt, day-glo socks, bootlace tie etc. Her favorite cloth was strap, she used a lot of zippers and slogans in order to decorate her clothes.They were enkindle in that era and they wanted to approach the faux pas boys who were into rebellion and could things judder up. Vivienne sourced authentic buttons, cloth and linings and informed by research in slickness Boy clubs, copied and recoloured the look.7Vivienne began making trousers and more and more people were coming to the shop to try on their day-glo jackets, the special blue and silver trousers etc. At that period of time Vivienne and Malcolm went to a big music concert and were excite in order to progress their own T-shirt, Viva la wave n Roll. Malcolm described rock n roll as the jungle beat that threatened white civilization.8It is a fact that in the collection Let It Rock of Vivienne Westwood we dont inspect a big influence of the punk movement. This can be ex unornamenteded by the fact that at the period of time that Let It Rock was launched, it only the foundations of the punk movement had been established. Despite this fact we can find characteristics of the punk style in specific clothes of Let It Rock.Let It Rock Collection go steady 2. Sid deplorable, Let It Rock, 1970-1972 descriptor 1. Vivienne Westwood, Let It Rock, 1970-1972Punks and members of music groups wore clothes that were ripped because in this way they were expressing rebellion done their style. In chassis 1 we take a T-shirt of Let It Rock which shows the influence of punk. Punk style was characterized by clothes with zippers, with holes, slogans, pins, pockets etc. The T-shirt in take to 1 is ripped like all the clothes of Punks and it has many zippers and pockets and slogans that Vivienne used a lot. A characteristic example is Sid Vicious (Figure 2) who is erosion a ripped T-shirt of the Westwood Let It Rock collection and skinny jeans.. that the slogans for her T-shirts were often lyrics of Sex Pistols songs. A characteristic example we collide with in Figure 3, in which Westwood is habiliment her T-shirt with a motion picture of the Queen and the title of the Sex Pistols song God save the Queen on top.Figure 3. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, Let It Rock 1970-1972Figure 4. degrade T-shirt, Let It Rock 1970-1972Another example of a T-shirt with a slogan is shown in Figure 4, in which Vivienne wants to get the message across that Nazis should not exist. She was against all this racism against the Jewish people etc and she wanted to make something in order to express her disap stoppagement about the Nazis andmaybe she thought that she could change something. Thats why she thought to make a T-shirt with the swastika and the work Destroy on top.An example for strap set up is Sid Vicious again ( find out 5) who is wearing a leather jacket at a Sex Pistol concert in Notre Dame Hall. in any case, Vivienne, who is promoting her style and her clothes by wearing a leather outfit herself.Figure 5. Sid Vicious and Vivienne Westwood, Let It Rock 1970-1972Although the Let It Rock collection and shop were very successful, Vivienne and Malcolm were searching for something raw(a) because the trend of the Teddy Boys had started to elapse. The Teddy Boys werent such rebels after all and because the yoke wanted to express rebellion they needed something bleak. They started experimenting with rockers and a cps boys look and a tougher leather look which was accompanied with punk style. So, in the spring of 1973, they renamed the shop into Too Fast To merry, Too Young To devolve and Vivienne started a new collection. Malcolm started buying fabrics such as velvet and Lurex and he thought that they should sell second-hand jeans, customized leather, pegged trousers, double-breast Zoot suits with padded shoulders etc. Because some striped and plain black T-shirts were left over from Let It Rock collectio n, Vivienne decided against throwing these garb items away and chose to alter them by ripping them, knotting, cutting holes, rolling and fix sleeves together. Thereby, Westwood made a series of extraordinary clothes and especially T-shirts collaged with feathers, nipple-revealing zippers, studs, chains, stump spud prints, hand-stencilled garments and odd objects. She also put glitter on clothes and the self-colored work turned into something more creative and fun for her. Together with the punk style they also wanted to search for motor steering wheel wear because the couple was filled in condom, leather and fetishism. This collection of Westwood had the characteristicthat, it was a point at which elements of sexual practice imagery, cult fashion and politics met. This characteristic was sometimes a disadvantage because they were sometimes prosecuted infra the obscenity of law for exposing to universe view an independent exhibition . One characteristic example is that one of their T-shirts showed two naked cowboys which was thought to be unethical, unacceptable and inappropriate by society at large.Vivienne explained, my job is to confront the Establishment to try to find out where the freedom lies and what you can do the most obvious way I did that was through the porn T-shirts9. real she always wanted to express sex somehow. Even when she put zippers on her clothes above all there were all sort of other sexy associations with the zippers10.All these characteristics like for example the zippers, leather, chains etc made her clothes surreal and somehow controversial. in any case some of the clothes were characterized as rough and deliberately confrontational.To Fast To Live To Young To Die CollectionIn comparison with Let It Rock collection, here in the TFTLTYTD collection the influence of punk plays a big role and we can find characteristics of the punk movement in many clothes of Westwood.Figure 6. Venus T-shirt, TFTLTYTD 1972-1974In Figure 6 we can see Simon Barker wearing the famous hand-made Venus T-shirt which had armholes edged with sections of bike tyres and trimmed with horse hair. For this T-shirt Vivienne was shake up from motorbike wear and the punk movement. Generally, she used also many clues in order to express sexuality. Regarding to the punk style as I have referred to above, the clothes have chains, slogans, pins, leather etc.. So, here in this T-shirt we have as elements taken from punk such as lots of pins, chains and of course the slogan Venus. Also we see that Simon Barker is wearing leather trousers and army boots that Punks quite often wore.Figure 7. Vivienne Westwood, TFTLTYTD 1972-1974Moreover, as I referred to above, Vivienne wanted to express sex through her clothes, so most of the times she made and wore clothes with which she wanted to show that she was against all taboos. A characteristic example is in Figure 7, in which we see Vivienne wearing a shirt, a jacket and underwear from the TFTLTYTD collection without wearing jeans, or trousers above etc. By appearing in public like this she wanted to get the message across that she despised Puritanism and that people should not had taboos and prejudices weighing sex and the expression of the human body.The above tactile sensation is also supported by Figure 8 in which we see Malcolm wearing the T-shirt Two Naked Cowboys of the TFTLTYTD collection. This is one of the T-shirts that had the couple prosecuted under the obscenity of law for exposing to public view an independent exhibition11. Vivienne didnt want to be limited in her designs regarding to ethical implications but sometimes she was obligate to be limited because of the authorities.Figure 8. Two naked cowboys, TFTLTYTD 1972-1974Figure 9. McLaren and Westwood, TFTLTYTD 1972-1974 In addition, Vivienne herself wore the clothes she designed and by doing so she aimed at promoting the clothes and the punk style also. A characteristic example is Figure 9 in which we see V ivienne with Malcolm in a Photo shout. Vivienne is wearing leather jeans and a blouse with a zipper that could be characterized as conservative. In this photo dead reckoning she wanted to wear something conservative but still in leather so we continue to see the effect of punk on her. She wanted to provoke and show that she is different, that she can be conservative through Punk too.As time passed McLaren set the scene for Punk via the next guess into a field that he knew would provoke still more outrage. He verbalise characteristically in an interview of Elle magazine in November of 1985 It started with an interest in any form of youth revolt, so that it involved Teddy Boys and Rockers. Then we brought the sex element into it.12So, in 1974 they renamed their shop to call forth scripted with pink letters again. At that time they started selling handcuffs gear such as rubber body suits, rubber masks, leather mini skirts, leather underwear, shirts with chains,padlocks, fishnets, fetishistic lace-up boots and they also sold stilettos. At that time their slogan was rubber eraser wear for the office. The couple wanted to prove that they didnt care about taboos and prejudices and thats why in this collection they marketed clothes related to sadomasochism, fascism, pornography etc. Her clothes proceed to shock society if we consider that this collection was selling sex more than the previous ones. Vivienne explains, all the clothes that I wore that people would regard as shocking, I wore them because I just thought I looked like a princess from another planet, I just thought I looked marvelous in these clothes.13. The influence of Punk in SEX is more than in the previous collections because SEX clothes were mostly made of leather, chains etc which are basic elements of punk style. Punk was a cross-fertilization of SEX clothes14. Some people believe that punk was an eruption in the streets. that what it was infact was a fashion event from the start, like the creation of a historic painting based on a innovation because that is what it actually was, a revolution.Sex CollectionA characteristic example of this sexual revolution that Vivienne wanted to express through fashion is the T-shirt Tits in figure 10. It is a T-shirt from SEX and it was worn by both men and women but it was preferred by men because they wanted to shock by expressing the idea of homosexualityFigure 10. Tits T-shirt, SEX 1974-1976Figure 10. Tits T-shirt, SEX 1974-1976Moreover as it was referred to above, punk influenced SEX in such a way Vivienne used their elements and their main fabric, leather in making her clothes. In Figure 11 we observe how punk influenced SEX. In this picture we see Jordan, shop girl of 1974, wearing a leather outfit of SEX. In the shine up it is shown a body suit made of leather belts and in the background we can find rubber clothes hanging on racks.Figure 11. Jordan, SEX 1974-1976We can find another example of Punk influence on SEX in Figu re 12, in which we see insurgent Rotten wearing a black leather chains suit. This piece of clothing shows the combination of punk and sexuality because leather is the fabric of punks and when we gurgle about bondage suits we relate them to sadomasochism and generally sex.Figure 12. John Rotten, SEX 1974-1976Furthermore in Figure 13 it can be detect Vivienne wearing a total black outfit made of rubber and leather. It has some pins on top and Vivienne is also holding some leather straps attached to other leather objects. Malcolm and Vivienne had gone all the way by making a public display of the leather and rubber binge that fetishists succumbed to in private.Figure 13. Vivienne Westwood, SEX 1974-1976What SEX was and generally what all Westwood collections were was a complex amalgam of various stylish influences, in which Punk had its root in the streets of London and the music scenes of New York. As time went by the New York Dolls made their own decadent outfits to which Westwoo d added elements from the torn clothes of the pin-ups in Let it Rock, chains, zips, rubber wear and bondage garments of SEX. Consequently, in 1977 the shop and the collection changed its name yet again into Seditionaries under the slogan Clothes for heroes. The boy Seditionaries was Viviennes concoction and was based on the fact that someone needed to lay down people in order to revolt. This moment was the peak of all this punk madness. In this collection the zips and straps of obscure sexual fetishism were transformed into fashion. Malcolm and Vivienne continued selling SEX T-shirts and fetish gear but everything was much smarter, less(prenominal) underground and less provincially British15. They made some T-shirts with photos, slogans on top and again they borrowed elements from the Punk movement. Savage wrote that Seditionaries brought the modern look in the 1970s but also Seditionaries clothes unleashed a more angry reaction combined with punk elements than SEX clothes. If th e first Punks had thrown up every youth style since the war and then stuck it together with preventative pins and panache, Seditionaries avoided retro yet caught the confusion the look both in the skipper and the imitations spread thoughout the world16. This collection included again bondage trousers and clothes with straps and zips. Westwood in this collection used wool, mohair and leatherfor fabric which were elements of Punk movement. Westwood also made trousers based on military wear but even then she added her own elements based on sado-masochistic and fetishist gear. The Punks at that time had their own army uniform. The clothes were accessorized with pins, razor blades and silver phalluses. They tended to throw together sado-masochistic bondage paraphernalia and clothing associated with the hospital or the mental asylums so that they produced a surreal commentary on the anarchic tendencies of the sartorial display. Again with this collection Vivienne wanted to reveal tabo os and mess with the normative class coding. One of the most significant factors of Punk at that moment was that it gave license for women to dress assertively. Vivienne said characteristically that Punk was what made her think of herself as a designer. Actually what Punk was both for her and society was a fashionable expression of a revolution. In fact, fashion itself became a revolution.Seditionaries CollectionIn Figure 14 we can identify that Vivienne made such shirts like in this Figure which has an image of Karl Marx in the top left hand in order to express revolution. Punks wanted to mess with everything and break the rules and norms. Marx symbolized revolution and was against the system as were the Punks. And this is the reason why her clothes appealed to Punks.Figure 14. Punk shirt, Seditionaries 1977Figure 15. gloomy cotton fiber shirt, Seditionaries 1976-1980In Figure 15 we observe a Seditionaries blue cotton parachute shirt with strap harness, printed with situationist slogans such as Only Anarchists are Pretty. Regarding the Seditionaries clothes, they had borrowed elements from the Punk movement and also elements from the SEX collection. All these straps and slogans were characteristic of the Punk style and the whole parachute thing reminds us of the SEX bondage gear.In the 16th and last Figure we detect a hardly a(prenominal) clothes of the Seditionaries worn by a number of Punks. The woolen sweaters that are shown in the figure and all these parachute jackets have been borrowed from the Punk style. In addition the jackets also have elements from SEX bondage and sado-masochistic gear which exists also in Seditionaries collection.Figure 16. Punk clothes, Seditionaries 1977ConclusionManifests are always written after an event. In retrospect, the manifest of the Punk movement allowed a person to express himself, to succeed or even fail in high-spirited way. The music, fashion and of course the Punk movement were a huge art festival which was bor n from the life and the experiences that Malcolm McLaren gained in the school of Arts. He inspired Vivienne to create this vast business in the world of fashion based on the Punk movement. This was the new fashion, the new way of thinking. The couple started from a small shop in Kings Road and step by step they created their own rules for life, their own norms, their own identity. In other discourses they set the foundation for an alternative society. Of course all these things were based on the Punk movement and primarily on their political orientation. Vivienne not only used the elements of the Punk movement but also their ideology. Through her fashion, she wanted to make rebellion and go against mainstream society, just like the Punks. Thats why she used symbols related to Punks and rebellion in her clothes like for example Karl Marx, or the swastika with the word Destroy on top etc. Combining irony and the ideology of Punks she wanted to break taboos like the sheer of homose xuality or bareness etc. Actually McLaren and Westwoods aim was to create something new, totally fashionable spell they were using symbolism to convey their ideas. And that was the point where they needed Punk, as divine guidance and influence. Vivienne characteristically says about Punk Im proud to have been part of it. It was grand at the time17. But as it is known, fashion is like a circle and the trends change every now and then, so the whole issue with the influence of the Punk movement in Viviennes career stopped at the beginning of the 80s. From the 80s there on, she introduced a startling and highly influential new vocabulary about fashion which was characterized as nostalgia for the future. In spite of this she never forgot her origins. Vivienne never created something conservative despite the fact that their future collections dont have elements from the Punk movement. Viviennes career was built on punk. Whenever she gives an interview she refers to the influence that P unk had on her work and life, saying characteristically that Punk and McLaren were the two factors that encouraged her to make fashion and to be who she is now. The punk period helped her develop creatively. Having created the Sex Pistols look he gained more self-confidence and realized her vast creative abilities. Fortunately, Punk helped Westwood expand her abilities, and identify her talent. Westwood was determined to leave her mark on external fashion which she certainly did.