How come all non-conformists look the same?
When did music and fashion become a joint force not to be reckoned with?
Does music dictate fashion?
Or does fashion dictate music?
One of the first times fashion and music became a marketable concept was in the early Seventies, when Vivienne Westwood met Malcolm Maclaren, and they opened the King's Road emporium. Maclaren's band, The Sex Pistols, wore Westwood's anti-fashion designs to their first gig.
Punk was born.
The iconic figure of Sid Vicious in a ripped T-shirt continues to remind us of the power of the image and defines a turning point in the history of style.
Every group in society has their own clique, and each clique has their own cultures, characteristics and ‘rules’ one must abide by, music
being one of the most important elements.
It is becoming increasingly clear that fashion is not only dictating music, but the personalities and definitions of ‘cool’.
Today, fashion dictates our lives and what we wear. Whether at a party or at work, we want our dress to reflect our taste and attitude. On other occasions, we are keener on making a personal style statement.
Rachel Clark, a fashion student at
“You do get the people who look exactly the same, but then you get the extreme people who do everything on a huge scale, like dye their hair a crazy colour and shave bits off and put beads in the beards. The majority of the people who want to look "different" do end up looking like everyone else who also wants to look "different" and I think they have just got the wrong end of the stick.”
I wonder, what is it about music and fashion that go so hand-in-hand?
Fashion Rocks is an annual charity fundraiser event which features fashions by the world's top designers, being presented to live performances, by popular music acts. Naomi Campbell, supermodel and A-List bitch, has her take on the two art forms,
“Fashion and music go hand in hand, whether a catwalk or a concert, you take away the memory of both sound and style.”
Singer/songwriter Rosin Murphy echoes this,
“I definitely use fashion as part of my performance; it helps me get what I’m trying to say across a bit more.”
Amy Molyneaux of the trendy label PPQ thinks that they are many ways to analyse the parallels between fashion and music.
“I see them as two very separate things both shouting back at each other, verbalizing and visualizing the emotions of an era."
Molyneaux makes a great point, and this couldn't have been more apparent in the punk era.
Photographer Shoichi Aoki, founder of Japanese fashion magazine ‘Fruits’, specialised in capturing street fashion in Tokyo's Harajuku district. People from Harajuku have definitely grasped the idea of looking different from one another; they all dress with themes in mind and those themes range from anything to everything; candy-coloured, eye-catching ensembles, creatively mixing and modifying designer-label items with T-shirts and thrift-shop gems, coining the ‘gothic’ and ‘lolita’ looks.
The New Yorker said that though recognizable types-punks, hip-hop kids, jocks-regularly appear in the photographs, the over-all effect is less that of a tribal identity than of a super-cute costume party.
The Harajuku scene displays the street fashion of 
Brett Anderson said on the BBC documentary series ‘Seven Ages Of Rock’, that any burgeoning movement starts of as a brilliant scene, but when the corporate giants think 'Ah-ha, that's what the youths are into', it becomes totally mainstream and destroys it. Perhaps this is why non-conformists are constantly moving away from the status quo? For example, the reason why punk started in the 1970’s; as a reaction against the empty stadium rock and hedonism of the hippy era.
People who say they're not following the crowd nor want to dress like everybody else are insecure with themselves or have low self esteem. They appear that they are rebelling against the norm, when in fact they're conforming to another group of lookalikes.
I dictate my fashion of course, but I find music videos, store windows, musicians, television programs, designers and just the general scene of a particular location have some impact.
From the Harajuko girls in
So in answering my first question: yes, music influences fashion, and fashion influences music, but then again so do many things.
The comic genious of South Park sums up my point nicely:
Whilst Butter's appears to be the conformist and the conventional one because he's not in the Goth-Gang, reaffirms that, in actual fact, Butter's is the real non-conformist. He follows no rules therefore does not have to abide by what is expected of him. Some would argue he is the real 'punk'.
Fashion and Music definitely have an effect on each; northern soul and the Mod era, Vivienne Westwood and punk music, nu-rave with neon’s 80s/90s revival. Everyone I have interviewed has told me the same thing; wear something that defines you; that makes you a leader not a follower.
