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d estruction.. f utility.. d ecay.. d oom..
a pocalypse.. a gression.. i ntensity..
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PUNK:
"a visual assault that threatens personal airspace of passersby"
Early punks created a style that was antithetical to the
hippies' long hair, and pony tails, beards, sideburns,
nineteeth-century mustaches, moccasins, sandals, tie-dyed shirts,
beads, long dresses, lack of makeup, earth tones, and peasant-
inspired clothes.
The punk ethos also inverted the hippie ideals of peace,
love, romanticism, and rural utopianism by embracing nihilism,
anger, symbolic violence, and urban decay.
Although the style was seemingly random and chaotic, punks
were systematically choosing elements that were homologous with
their vales and constructing these into a meaningful whole that
expressed their ethose of the subculture.
The most immediately recognizable aspect of initial punk
adornment in Britain was brilliantly dyed and elaborated
formed hairstyles. Unnatural hair colors such as pink, lime
green, bright orange, blood red, deep purple or combinations
of several Day-glow tones were used, and hair was
frequently styled into tufts, spikes, and other designs. Some
punks dyed their hair jet black, an ever popular color in the
punk subculture because of its sinister connotations while
others bleached their hair with Hydrogen-Peroxide (H2O2).
Both males and female punks frequently cut their hair short,
cropped it in patches, or shaved thier heads completely.
Those who prefered longer hair created plumes or manes that
seemed to defy gravity, giving the impression that a jolt
of electricity had just passed through the bearers body.
Some punks created asymmetrical coiffures of varied lengths
and designs; others wore feather crowns that sometimes
resemble halos or auras. These hairstyles were held in place
by an assortment of folk concoctions- egg whites, sugar water,
spray-on-starch, Superglue, Vaseline, Ivory soap, lacquer,
Elmer's glue- as well as by commercial gels and hair sprays
such as Extra Super Hold Aqua Net. The most renowned hairstyle
associated with early punks is the "mohawk" or "mohican",
which involved shaving the sides of the head and leaving a
vertical strip extending from the front to the back. These
brightly coloured simulations of Mohican Indian hairstyles
had connotations of youth on the "warpath" and evoked
stereotyped notions of the "primitive", a designation that was
used both to denigrate punk aesthetics and label punk as a
threat to Western civilization.
Punk hair with its angular styles and cacophony of colours,
was made to appear as unnaturally as possible, thus constitutling
an inversion of hippie hairstyles, which flowed naturally down
the back or were tied in ponytails.
In contrast to the often flamboyant multicoloured hair
favoured by early punks, their faces were frequently made up
to look colorless and anemic. Both male and female punks often
applied makeup in exaggerated manner to give an impression of
pallor and lifelessness. Pale and emaciated, resembling zombies
or corpses, punk faces and physics were often transformed into
symbols of death or physical ailment, portraits of a diseased
society that reflected the idea of futurelessness.
Lips were often painted in colours associated with death-
black, dark brown, grey-purple, or were heavily rouged.
Layers of pancake makeup was applied and black eyeliners was
used to create a deathly, ghoulish appearance.
By celebrating the uniqueness of individual styles that
opposed prevailing ideas of good taste, punks implicitly
criticized dominant notions about beauty and fashion.
This anti-fashion aesthetic, which priveliged the "flawed"
and "rejected", is revealed by the punk preference for cheap
clothing and fabrics with kitschy or bizarre designs. A
hodgepodge of materials- plastic, plaid, tartan, lurex,
nylon mesh, mock zebra, tiger, leopard skin, and even trash
bags- was adopted, modified, and paraded on the streets. Lace,
leather, PVC, rubber, shiny fabrics, and army and school
uniforms were also pervasive. Sometimes punks wore
clothing inside out, thus displaying the construction of
garments. Any style abandoned by the fashion industry as gaudy,
cheap, or passe was embraced and exhibited. Ripped and soiled
jeans, T-shirts, Dr. Marten boots, and steel-toed boots were
popular, as were camouflage and military style pants
and shirts and anything else that contributed to an aggressive,
terrorist, or guerilla combat look.
Adorned in torn and tattered rags, punks looked as if they
had just returned from a fight, an automobile accident, or a
battlefield. With their clothes shredded and held together by
pins and strings, punks were literally falling apart at the
seams, a reflection of their feelings of being abused and
discarded by an unjust society.
Punks used trash and dicared paraphernalia as adornments
to symbolize their sense of rejection and their feelings about
being society's garbage.
The (trialization) and commercialization of punk, its becoming
an acknowledged musical and fashion genre prompted the claim that
"punk is dead".
GOTHIC
gothic style reflects a fascination with the macabre, the
gruesome, and the supernatural, welding a preoccupation with
Victorian romanticism, the iconography of horror films.
Rather than shredding their clothes and adoring themselves in
debris like early punks, goths created elaborate colorless
costumes that expressed their fetisization of the sinister and
morbid: clothing that is almost exclusively black; hair dyed
jet black or sometimes red, shred into manes, teased into
featherly plumes, or made to appear uncombed and disheveled;
eyes heavily shadowed with mascara and lips painted black,
grey, brown, or red; fingernails painted with the same colours;
pancake make up used to render faces deathly white so
that individuals resemble corpses, ghouls, and vampires.
Tights and stretch pants are often worn with billowy shirts or
blouses made of velvet, silk, or satin, and androgynous
appearance is common among both men and women.