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As in pop music, the predominant tendency in appearance style today relies upon sampling & mixing diverse, eclectic, often contradictory elements into a unique, personal statement. Celebrating the confusion and diversity of our age, we surf through both history and geography to find our own reality - in the mix. Excerpts from my book STYLE SURFING © Ted Polhemus ‘We are all breaking the rules - mixing sportswear with workwear, the old and the new, crossing traditional gender divides, leaping between the proletarian and the elitist, juxtaposing the natural and the artificial, mating the vulgar and the respectable . . . deliberately sending out confusing, even contradictory signals. |
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| >>>For further thoughts on life in The Supermarket of Style see the post-script of the new (2011) edition of Fashion & Anti-fashion. |
| buy Fashion & Anti-Fashion at lulu.com |
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STREETSTYLE ‘Apart from its astounding variety, streetstyle today is characterised by the extent to which it exists within the shadow of its own past. In one sense this state of affairs simply reflects the obvious fact that it now has a past - with some five decades stacked on top of each other. But at the same time the significance of this history has been magnified by the extent to which popular culture - and with it, of course, youthculture and streetstyle - has moved further and further centre stage as a defining feature of ‘Western Society’. This fact of late-twentieth century life is especially noticeable in its effect upon the present generation of youth. Reared on a constant diet of television programmes and magazine articles about previous decades and Jurassic styletribes, they are knowing in a way that previous generations were not. Many who weren’t even born in 1976 know all about Punk as if it had happened yesterday and they too had been pogoing down at the Vortex. Nor is this the limit of their knowledge: Glam, the Hippies, Swinging London, the Mods and Rockers, the original Rockabillies (as well as their eighties reincarnation as ‘Cats’) and even the Teddy Boys are all part of their pop culture education. The effect of this can be readily seen in contemporary pop videos, where caricatured figures from the entire history of streetstyle flash before the eyes in the course of three minutes. While my own generation (the ‘baby boomers’) looked back, if at all, in anger, the present generation seems sometimes to be so engulfed by the past that it is hard to discern their present let alone their future.’ p.130 ‘In the Supermarket of Style all of history’s streetstyles, from Zooties to Beatniks, Hippies to Punks, are lined up as possible options as if they were cans of soup on supermarket shelves. While retro-groups like the T.E.D.S. exhibit a commitment to their chosen group which is, if anything, even more devout than that of its original members, those who frequent the Supermarket of Style display instead a stylistic promiscuity which is breathtaking in its casualness. ‘Punks’ one day, ‘Hippies’ the next, they fleetingly leap across decades and ideological divides - converting the history of streetstyle into a vast themepark.’ p. 131 ‘In Style World, ‘nostalgia mode’ is set at full tilt, separate eras are flung together in one stretched, ‘synchronic’ moment in time, all reality is hype and ‘authenticity’ seems out of the question. This is not, however, a world devoid of meaning. Indeed, precisely the opposite. Those who shop at the Supermarket of Style know full well that every garment (a ‘target’ T-shirt or one with Queen Elizabeth II sporting a safety pin through her nose) and every accessory on offer (Hippy beads, Psychedelic plastic rings) comes as part of a complete semiological package deal.’ p.131 ‘The Supermarket of Style is much too fast-changing and loosely structured to qualify as a ‘tribe’ in any true sense of the term. This is not, however, to brand those within it as just a bunch of good-time party-goers. They are this to be sure, but underneath all the fancy dress and the posturing there is an attempt to construct a new visual language which will make it possible to say something fresh in an age when we’ve heard it all before. At its most effective and startling, this language reduces whole subcultures from the history of streetstyle to simple ‘adjectives’ - Hippy beads, Skinhead/Punk DMs, Mod target motifs, Rocker leather, Perv rubber, Glam sequins - and juxtaposes these in a single outfit. As in contemporary pop music, this might be termed ‘Sampling & Mixing’ - taking little snatches (‘samples’) from the past and mixing them together. If earlier I likened the Supermarket of Style to a shop where various streetstyles are on offer as if they were cans of different kinds of soup, here we are talking about opening all the cans up and throwing a spoonful from each into one pot. Or perhaps just a selection carefully calculated to shock the palate. For, let us not forget, this generation not only knows what different streetstyles look like, they are fully aware of the subcultural meanings which each ‘uniform’ was designed to convey. What is being sampled & mixed, therefore, are ideological as well as aesthetics differences. To combine Hippy naturalness with Pervy plastic is to play with meaning as well as with style.’ p.134 |
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STYLE SURFING ‘We are all breaking the rules - mixing sportswear with workwear, the old and the new, crossing traditional gender divides, leaping between the proletarian and the elitist, juxtaposing the natural and the artificial, mating the vulgar and the respectable . . . deliberately sending out confusing, even contradictory signals. And why? Because we don’t want to be categorised - to become just a stereotype. Because the world we live in is itself full of confusion and contradiction. Because (as in our politics and everything else) simple either/or categories and labels no longer suffice. Because now that the god of modernism is dead, everything is possible. Because we’re all on-line, plugged into the ‘global village’. Because the past and the future have dissolved into ‘the Now’. Because what’s clear, clearly isn’t. Because we’ve increasingly found that only personal appearance is capable of expressing where we as individuals are at in a kaleidoscopic and enigmatic world.’ p. 15-17 ‘If fashion arose as an expression of Modernism, what approach to dress and appearance is appropriate to the Post-modern condition? Perhaps an initial clue is provided by the dress styles found in that most Post-modern of films, Blade Runner. What then is the ‘New Look’ of AD 2019? The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one. Will everyone look completely different in AD 2020? Perhaps. But we are more inclined to see each of these characters’ styles as something that has evolved more slowly, more intuitively as a statement of ‘real’ (yet playfully, knowingly unreal) identity in a world gone mad with change, chaotic diversity and hype. Yet, at the same time, these style ‘statements’ are clearly not meant to be taken literally and this is at least as true of the humans as it is of the replicants - Dekard isn’t an English lit. teacher, his sidekick isn’t a pimp. Who is real? Who is a replicant? Who cares? Life is a fancy-dress party. Enjoy.’ pp. 32, 35 ‘ Ever since the word ‘tribal’ came into common usage (around the time of Punk’s international lift-off), things have gotten progressively less tribal in any true sense of the term. Various styles proliferate at a rate that is increasingly difficult to keep up with - Techno, Hardcore, House, Garage, Jungle, Ragga, Handbag, etc., etc, etc. - but few, if any, of these carry with them the sense of belonging and commitment that must constitute the bottom line of true tribal identity. No Jungle fanatic goes out and gets a tattoo to mark his or her devotion to this musical movement (while many a Punk or a Teddy Boy did just that). A Masai or a Maori is a Masai or a Maori - they are not into it. Likewise in Britain in 1964, you were a Mod or a Rocker - you didn’t tentatively, whimsically stick your toe in the subcultural pool to check out the temperature. You plunged right in, head first. And so, an irony. In this ‘Tribal Age’ it’s actually damn hard to find anyone who admits to being a member of a tribe.’ pp.50-51 ‘The aftermath of Punk saw a transition from the more or less orderly linear history of modernism (a ‘history’ perceived of as such) to the simultaneity of parallel universes (multiple channels on a TV set waiting to be ‘surfed’) that characterises the Post-Modern Age. While up to and including Punk a ‘story’ unfolds, Post-Punk it becomes harder and harder to discern an intelligible dramatic ‘narrative’. While previously the options were limited, the choices simple (Hipster/Square, Mod/Rocker, Hippy/Punk), now - Post-Punk - a veritable Supermarket of Style came into being, with ‘tribal’ options lined up like tins of soup on a supermarket shelf. History had ended. Now everything was possible. And all at the same time.’ pp. 54-5 ‘Despite the stereotype (mohican, safety-pins, plastic rubbish bags, DMs, etc.), Punk was never a single stylistic entity. As with the ‘Learn-Three-Chords-And-Start-A-Band’ approach of its musicians, its stylistic approach was founded on principles of individualistic DIY innovation. Such deliberate amateurishness spawned a rich eclecticism - embracing anything from old school blazers to dog collars, charity-shop peculiarities of previous decades to children’s plastic sunglasses, army surplus vests to Amazonian face painting, discarded bits of consumer packaging to customised motorcycle jackets. And all this, more often than not, got jumbled together. The French the use the word bricolage to describe a way of making something new from assorted - found, at hand - bits and pieces; it is a very apt way of describing the Punks’ approach to dress (and, indeed, to music, politics, philosophy). The objective was/is to mix together the most diverse, and unexpected, absurd and downright contradictory combinations of styles. Scavenging from ‘primitive’ tribal peoples, clandestine fetishists, a host of other style tribes (Bikers, Skinheads, Glam Rockers, Teddy Boys), 50s kitsch, 40s glamour, tacky sci-fi movies, military uniforms, etc., etc., etc., the Punks assembled for themselves individualised, unique looks and defied classification. Punk, in other words, was - from the start - such a rich rag bag of alternatives and contradictions that no coherent Next Big Thing could possibly have evolved from its eclectic diversity.’ pp. 56, 59 ‘It was Punk that (at least in terms of popular culture) emphatically put the sign of the ‘Post’ before the ‘Modern’: its chilling battle cry of ‘No Future’ heralded the end of history - the dead end of the yellow brick road of ‘progress’ and coherent ‘narrative’, which previously had been discernible only to (then) obscure cultural theorists. Trashing history (e.g. the juxtaposition of ancient ‘primitive’ body decoration, classic 1950s jackets and tacky sci-fi futurism) and meaning (e.g. the iconography of Nazi swastikas, bondage gear and school blazers reduced to visual play), the Punks ushered in the Post-Modern condition. . . In 1976, Andrew Logan and Derek Jarman held a party in their ramshackle (and then unfashionable) warehouse overlooking the Thames near Tower Bridge. The Sex Pistols came and gave their first ever public performance. Energised by these associations, Jarman enlisted the assistance of the likes of Jordan (of Malcolm McClaren’s and Vivienne Westwood’s shop SEX), Adam Ant and Toyah Willcox to create his film Jubilee. Started before Punks were even much known as Punks, this extraordinary film defies the stereotyped conformity that the media subsequently strove to impose upon the budding subculture. Here is Amyl Nitrite (Jordan), with her face criss-crossed with black lines in the style of Picasso, hair spiked up to defy gravity and yet wearing twin-set and pearls. Here is Mad Medusa (Toyah Willcox) in a pink plastic boilersuit adorned with a fifteenth-century lace ruff, her hair dyed orange but cropped like a marine. Here is Crabs (Little Nell) in diamonte tiara, old school tie and not much else. Here is Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) in jewelled, lace-embroidered splendour, surfing history to pick her way through the rubble. Here also, graffitied on a wall behind an opening scene where flames and thick smoke billow from a baby’s pram, is the word ‘POST MODERN’. Quite rightly. Eclecticism, the end of history and of narrative - losing the plot - confounding any distinction between past, present and future, the collapse of all meaning except the wall-to-wall pastiche, fragmentation and what Neville Wakefield has so poignantly termed ‘The Twilight of the Real’ . . . it’s all there in Jubilee. And, of course, in Punk’s vision of the next/last millennium. pp. 62, 63, 65 ‘Unlike those who feel and express a consistent commitment to a particular subculture, ‘Clubbers’ delight in promiscuously ‘cruising’ through all manner of clothing and musical styleworlds - one month (or, indeed, one evening) plunging headfirst into the 70s, the next going Gothic or Techno or Fetish or New Romantic or Punk or Cowboy/girl or Hawaiian. It is this ‘surfing’ (as in ‘Channel Surfing’ or ‘Surfing the Internet’) that most tellingly identifies ‘clubbing’ as a post-subculture phenomenon. And which, in so doing, defines this world and those within it as Post-Modern. . . Clubland know no time or place. . . This is what Post-Modern theorists term ‘synchronicity’ - parallel universes all out of ‘real time’ sync, all existing side by side in a past-present-future which stretches horizontally into infinity. Linear history trashed and irrelevant, everything is simultaneously available and possible - on line. On a given night in the Clubland International Departures Lounge you can take a trip to any place or any time you wish. Pre-Revolutionary Paris? Gate 26. LA in 2016? Gate 18. Swinging London 1965? Gate 22. Haight-Ashbury 1967? Gate 7. The Primordial Rain Forest? Gate 14. The choice is yours.’ p. 91 ‘Clubland is a Supermarket of Style where every world and every era you dreamed of (and these are, of course, all mythologized places and times) is on offer like tins of soup on a supermarket shelf. You can try ‘Cream of the 70s’ one night, then switch to ‘Chunky Heavy Metal’ the next night. Or, alternatively, you can ‘sample & mix’ your own brand of Gazpacho - throwing, say, a Hippy tie-dyed bandanna, a pair of Skinhead DMs, a 50s leopard-print cocktail dress, a Punk mohican and Swinging London mascara into the pot. Give it a good stir and, presto, you’ve got your own, synchronic take on fifty years of popular culture. Clubland thrives on plundering and pastiche. Nothing is what it seems. Everything is effect: Punk Effect, 60s Effect, Gothic Effect, Modern Jazz Effect, Psychedelic Effect, Back To Nature Effect, Smells Like Teen Spirit Effect, Slut Effect, Psycho Killer Effect, Sweet Innocent Effect, Sporty Effect, Caribbean Effect, Tacky Effect, Get Real Effect, Kinky Effect, Primitive Effect, Macho Effect, Babe Effect, Street Fighter Effect, Nerd Effect, Beat Effect and, of course, Ecstasy Effect. But rather than being swept under the semiological carpet, this simulation and artifice is celebrated. (Because in a Post-Modern age only the patently incredible is credible.) Clubland is a place where the Replicants, rather than living in fear of the (now unemployable) Blade Runners, have come out of the closet to exalt in their artifice.’ p. 93 ‘This is the hallmark of Clubland - a place where Glam becomes ‘Glam’, Hippies become ‘Hippies’, cowboys become ‘cowboys’ and fetishists become ‘fetishists’. Like camp, Clubland accomplishes this by stepping back, putting everything within a boarder contextual frame. Everything. Even ‘perversity’. Even ‘sex’. For in Clubland - which is to say, in the Post-Modern age - everything has a meaning beyond itself; everything looks back upon itself reflexively and nothing is simply what it is.’ p. 115 ‘Whether gay or ‘straight’, the transvestite pinpoints vividly this Post-Modern estrangement/liberation from ‘The Real World’. While the transsexual seeks a physical solution to correct a ‘mistake of nature’, the ‘drag artist’ scoffs at the very idea of ‘The Natural’ - delighting in artifice, exaggeration, the ‘off’, always proudly proclaiming, ‘I am not what I seem.’ More ‘woman’ than a real woman, more ‘man’ than a real man, the male-to-female or female-to-male cross-dresser exhibits precisely those qualities (hyperreality, the dislocation of image and meaning, quotation, playful semantic cruising) that define camp, Clubland and Post-Modernity. The ultimate Style Surfer, the transvestite cruises gender identity as well as all the other universes of style as meaning. p.120 ‘Towards the end of the year AD 999 much of Europe, young and old, rich and poor, thronged the churches, monasteries and cathedrals to await the Day of Judgement - the end of the world, the prophesied doomsday. Anyone glancing around such a gathering would have found differences of class, wealth, profession and gender immediately evident from the different clothing and adornment styles - appearance a symbolic reflection of the social order. Precisely the social order which was about to end. But which, to everyone’s surprise, didn’t. . . At the end of the year AD 1999 the urbanised, Westernised inhabitants of planet Earth will throng the great cathedrals of Clubland to await a new beginning. They, too, will probably exhibit extraordinary stylistic diversity. Rather than a reflection of a complex social order, however, this diversity will reflect a lack of social order - each personalised, surfed identity a different vision of how the new order might be. If there is fear here, it is simply a nagging anxiety that somehow, magically, at the stroke of midnight on 31 January 1999 everything will not change. Back forty years ago, when fashion ruled, the farsighted could hope to predict ‘The Next Big Thing’. Also, as we have seen, tribal styles - in the days before Punk exploded in myriad different directions - tended towards a singular, cohesive subcultural consensus of style and worldview, and ‘alternative’ linear history. Our current Post-Fashion, Post-Punk, Post-Modern Age, however, is defined in large part by its fragmented simultaneity, with all sorts of startlingly different possibilities shooting off in different directions. This is where we are coming from as we prepare for the next millennium and this also - presumably - defines much of what will happen when the cosmic clock reaches midnight on the fateful day. Instead of The New Age, countless different (often completely contradictory) New Ages - each with its own, ideal idiosyncratic vision embodied in clothes and flesh. While the Christians of Europe in AD 999 may not have been able to agree on just how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, they did have a reasonably cohesive vision of how things would be after the Day of Judgement. In our case, on the other hand, our visions of the new millennium are fractured and bent according to each and every subjective prism. And our heterogeneity of appearances - our supermarket of styles - precisely reflects this diversity of vision. The problem of what to wear to the 1999 New Year’s Eve Party is anything but an inconsequential side-issue. Our separate, distinct visions of the New Age all need to be articulated - our one and only common ground, the fact that our appearances, rather than our words, will be called upon to serve as the primary medium of expression. We will each go to the party dressed in our own vision of how it should be in the next millennium. Our visual cacophony will be unresolvable, but this won’t matter - indeed, this clash of stylistic visions will constitute the defining feature of the Post-Modern millennium.’ pp. 125-126 |
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