What I found valuable to share from this New Yorker piece is how author Calvin Tomkins suggests why the punk aesthetic -- in fashion, specifically -- lives on and is so relevant in 2013. It's been a perennially strong force in retail, both high and low: consider the mutations of motorcycle jackets currently on sale at stores from H & M to Chanel. Some takeaways:
- Punk in London and New York as it emerged in the late 1970s grew out of DIY (do-it-yourself) ingenuity that emerges after economic unrest. So we can see parallels to the late 2000s and early 2010s, in our culture of Making.
- Punk is also about a subculture of mash-ups. As Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Met show, says in the New Yorker, "punk was very much about customization, going to thrift stores and army stores and mixing things together."
- Punk has a very clearly defined aesthetic vocabulary (the color black; safety pins; mohawk haircuts; leather motorcycle jackets) that can be easily referenced by either DIYers or high-end designers who want to display their street-savvy.
- Punk is always about irreverance. So staging a major exhibition on the genre is irreverent. So it's likely to draw both criticism and applause. And at the very least, it will spark conversations.
