90s Archives:
"Fashion: Punk already?: British, 'orrible and coming back: Marion Hume and Tamsin Blanchard take evidence"
The Independent, published 23 June 1993
JOHN RICHMOND, designer:
'Punk? Yeah, it's coming back this week, just for a week and then you'll want something else. Everything is being consumed so quickly by the media, which is a nightmare for fashion designers. The Seventies revival was about energy, but it has been killed by people stamping a label on it.
For me, it is very hard to re-explore punk's visual symbols, such as safety pins, because they still mean something to me. It is easier for those too young to have been through it before to use the symbols.
One way the punk attitude is coming back is body piercing. It is not something you can commercialise or fake, although I do expect to see jewellery that looks like piercing.
What I'm trying to find is the spirit, the energy of punk, without having to go back. I just hope it's not killed straight away.'
Malcolm McLaren, father of punk and entrepreneur:
'The Eighties' media onslaught of the designer as star has faded now. Designers are not as important as they were, therefore all those other people who make clothes that don't conform, that just do what they find exciting, can be seen.
In the scene I was very responsible for with Vivienne (Westwood), there were symbols I was very conscious of: black leather, unwashed hair, symbols of outlawlessness, Juliette Greco keeping white mice in her pocket. The Eighties was about etiquette, couture rules and star designers who were heralded as philosophers of our age. That's faded. Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix . . . they are no longer as important as they were.
In the Seventies, the last thing I would allow was Vogue to photograph the clothes. I kept us out of the news, only letting out images of our stuff on the Pistols and on kids on the street wearing the stuff in a real way. It was never rubber-stamped by fashion journalists. It's a terrible, terrible thing the media wanting to get inside something before it has really happened. (As for new punk coming back) I think you look first at the travellers, Mad Max coming to your village green. To the brave, noble people who are doing it now, I say, to initiate great ideas is a perfect way to begin a wonderful life.'
Gianni Versace, designer, the first to re-explore punk bondage in haute couture, 1991:
'Punk has not been out of fashion. It has survived through the years. If we talk about fashion, with a bit of mood and humour, we will find punk forever.'
Stephen Sprouse, New York punk designer since the Seventies, who re- launched his name for the umpteenth time with an autumn 1993 collection called Cyber Glitter. The designer who put Axl Rose in a kilt:
'Punk, punk now, yeah, it's been pretty absorbed into urban culture. You guys invented it, then we got New York punk with Patti Smith and Television. With cyber punk, I'm trying to move it in to the future. My clothes can be ripped apart. They are Velcro and stretch, glitter, velvet, so you wake up, pull them on, come home and rip them off. It's modern.'
Vivienne Westwood, designer and mother of punk clothing:
'Destroy] Fuck Up] Put a spanner in the works and give the Queen a safety-pin in her lip. It was very stylish and very heroic. I am still sure that the only possibility of subversion lies in unpopular ideas and I am working on this.
This interest in punk now has something to do with my retrospective show in Bordeaux (November 1992). The current Seventies revival has nothing to do with me. The Seventies were a joke then and an even bigger joke now. Malcolm (McLaren) and I wanted to rebel. It was an examination in confronting the establishment. Now I'm only interested in elegance and culture. I'm not interested in attacking the establishment. I simply ignore it.'
Rei Kawakubo, designer Comme des Garcons:
'Chic punk . . . that was the collection I did two years ago and even now I continue to work in that spirit.'
Jimmy Pursey, singer and songwriter for Sham 69 and creator of punk chant, 'If the kids are united':
'I've watched a culture that belongs to me turned inside out.
The media said punk was dead because they wanted something else to write about and it was too real to categorise. The media tried to commit the Great English Murder, but punk never died. In every village, there is always the loner who was the punk and still is. Now the travellers are a mongrel breed of hippies and punks.
Grunge was bubble gum. It was chewed up and spat out. But the fashion world can't grab hold of punk, now it is split into such a vast array of symbols, especially among the new girl groups. Armani will never get hold of it and kill it.'
Christian Lacroix:
'Of course punk will be back, because different fashion trends are coming back chronologically (after the Seventies we will rediscover the Eighties) and because the coming generation can say more than ever: 'No Future'. And today's violence corresponds to the form of dandyism that one finds in punkitude.'
Jean Paul Gaultier:
'I believe in the punk comeback and it is in my autumn collection. People need something or someone to push against the establishment feelings in Europe where nothing is changing. We need something like the punk of the Seventies now.'
Mark Jackson, fashion graduate, St Martin's, whose collection included bondage dresses, trousers, trousers with skirts. safety pins in faces (not really pierced):
'When punk hit London, I was seven years old, and felt I'd missed out. I wanted to relive it my way by basing my collection on it. I think the whole anarchic attitude is coming around again slowly. The styling ideas are going to come back in jewellery and make-up.'
Bella Freud, designer:
'My experience of punk was with Westwood - hers was incredibly elegant and has metamorphosed into couture. I found punk exhilarating when I was 16 - it was wonderful to leave school and jump into that, to have something to wrap around yourself and have an identity, young and pure and wild.
Politically it's so vacuous at the moment, maybe something like punk could happen as reaction to that. Marketing mania has taken over the world - the Seventies was so easy to market and now, perhaps they're looking for something new to market. Punk could be it. That's what's so boring about revivals. I'd like to think things would go more upmarket - that people would be more antagonistic, provocative and elegant in a modern, hard-looking way.
Jamie Reid, graphic artist who created God Save the Queen newspaper cutouts for the Sex Pistols:
'Has punk gone away? Has Dadaism gone away? No, I think punk is very much a continuing story.
Edward Enninful, fashion editor, i-D magazine:
'The most important thing is the punk idea of recycling - that same ethos is what's really happening now.
In our April issue, I used clothes by Michiko Koshino's Re-Psyche which re-uses old buttons and fabrics. Neo- punks are not so much 'fuck the government', as 'protect the planet'.'
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