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Designs For Life: Celebrating The Art Of Punk
Ever since 1977, punk has been the catalyst for an infinite number of radical art and fashion statements which continue to influence the world we live in.




Angry, aggressive and defiantly anti-materialistic, the whole point of punk was to (literally) rip it up and start again. The manifesto read “Year Zero” and the search-and-destroy mission meant stripping away the excess and pretension condoned by the mainstream musical industry of the mid-70s.
Was that job really over and done with when Sex Pistols split in January 1978? Hardly, for while it’s frequently been read the last rites, punk has somehow kept on breathing and – music aside – it’s been the catalyst for an infinite number of radical fashion and visual art-related statements which continue to influence the world we live in today.
Early punk fashion
Early punk fashions were initially ragged on both sides of the Atlantic, but this was often borne from necessity. Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, for example, has frequently stated that he wore clothes held together with safety pins due to extreme poverty, while in her book Just Kids, Patti Smith recalls that her jeans were ripped from sleeping rough in the streets with her close friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. This borderline penury also influenced other “classic” punk looks such as Ramones’ T-shirts, jeans and leather jackets, and the dressed-down charity-shop chic originally favoured by bands as disparate as Television and Buzzcocks.
In the broader scheme of UK punk, however, it’s impossible to ignore the contributions made by designer Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren. Deeply inspired by punk’s shock value, Westwood designed clothes sold at McLaren’s shop SEX (later Seditionaries) on London’s King’s Road, where the counter assistants included Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock and future Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde. Many of Westwood’s garments, such as the “Cambridge Rapist” and “Destroy” T-shirts (the latter featuring an inverted crucifix and a Nazi swastika) were deliberately offensive and were joined by other provocative items such as jewellery made from razor blades and chains, as well as rubber, leather and vinyl clothing usually associated with transgressive sexual practices, including bondage and S&M.
Mohawks, leather jackets, tattoos
Punk-related fashion, however, rapidly evolved as new trends emerged on the cusp of the 80s. Fans of the newer breed of street punk bands such as Cockney Rejects (dubbed “Oi!” bands by Sounds’ Garry Bushell) adopted a uniform fusing elements from traditional skinhead style (very short hair; Fred Perry shirts) along with Dr Marten boots, braces and tight rolled-up jeans.
Followers of UK82 (or “second wave”) punk bands including The Exploited, Discharge and The Anti-Nowhere League often sported Mohawk haircuts, leather jackets, tattoos and studded vests, while in the US, tall mohawks and spiked hair was also popular, along with styles such as the “devilocks” (a Mohawk variation with a longer tuft of hair at the front) popularised by New Jersey horror punk innovators Misfits. By contrast, fans of pioneering US hardcore outfits such as Black Flag, Minor Threat and Circle Jerks often dressed down, favouring everyday T-shirts, jeans, combat boots and sneakers; in the UK, anarcho-punk fashion (pioneered by animal-rights-supporting English punks Crass) usually fell back on starker, all-black militaristic clothing.
Jamie Reid and Sex Pistols’ artworks
Fashion aside, the punk aesthetic altered not only the course of popular music, but also the way in which records were designed and marketed. Rather like the Dadaists before them, punks often valued scissors and glue over paint and brushes, and it was this “ransom note”-style, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines, that came the closest to defining the image of punk when it was adopted by English artist Jamie Reid, who designed all the original Sex Pistols’ vinyl releases.
DIY designs
Punk’s intrinsic DIY approach, however, inspired a whole host of new artists and designers whose sleeves are now viewed among the most timeless in rock, even though some initially used the rawest of materials. Epping-based anarcho-punks Crass, for instance, engaged in an aerosol- and stencil-based self-promotional graffiti campaign around London’s tube network, and their resident artist Gee Vaucher frequently used stencils and highly unsettling political and war-related collages when designing the band’s record sleeves. The Clash, meanwhile, may have signed to major label CBS, but Roslaw Szaybo’s design for the band’s self-titled 1977 debut was nonetheless effectively lo-fi in its execution, with the menacing image of the band shot in an alley near their Camden HQ taking on a darkened and two-toned effect akin to a photocopied image.
Punk fanzines and posters
The legacy of punk art
Human nature, of course, tends to dictate that anything as altruistic (and/or nihilistic) as punk in its original guise will soon head for a fall. Consequently, no one should really have been surprised when both punk and its myriad fashions were gradually assimilated into the mainstream. However, while hindsight suggests it’s easy to dismiss punk as a failed experiment, rock would be considerably poorer without the music of the major punk bands, while the art and design world may not have been enhanced by stellar names such as Malcolm Garrett or Peter Saville had they not cut their teeth working with seminal punk and post-punk artists such as Buzzcocks and Joy Division.
The notoriously fickle world of fashion has also remained heavily in thrall to punk and its myriad subcultures. On the catwalk, Fendi’s 2013 autumn and winter collection drew heavily on the punk aesthetic with models sporting severe Mohawk hairstyles, while, more recently, designer Karl Lagerfeld put punk-style studs on a $5,000 Chanel jacket, and the ripped-jeans look Patti Smith once endured out of necessity found itself in the pages of Vogue. On the high street, too, the iconic Ramones logo can be found all over the world (arguably turning the group into a brand rather than a band), though punk wannabes now faced with paying nigh-on $300 for a retro cotton-cashmere Black Flag T-shirt may justifiably get the feeling they’ve been cheated.
Listen to the best punk songs on Spotify.



