Punk: An Exhibit

Although I didn’t score an invite to rub shoulders with Hollywood’s elite and fashion insiders this year, I did venture to the MET to see the “Punk: Chaos to Couture” exposition. Upon entering the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest fashion installation, one is faced with a floor to ceiling projection showcasing manic moshers rocking out in the late 1970′s.  The video is flanked on either side by mannequins facing each other with Guido Palau head pieces to artfully replicate the wild and crazy punk hair style we all know and love. While one of them is clad in an all red buckled Galliano ensemble the other is in head to toe Vivienne Westwood, they give not so subtle hand gestures to each other, and I realize I’m about to fall down a rabbit hole into a mixed-media wonder world of punk rock.

Depending on whom you ask, punk was born in New York City at clubs like CBGBs in the Lower East Side in 1974 as well as or in London on Kings Road in 1975. Punk culture may have been created in NYC, but its style, which became the expression of their attitude, was birthed in London. Pioneers like Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Blondie, The Clash, The Ramones, Richard Hell, and Patti Smith lead the charge in this multi-dimensional and defiant counter culture.

Where punk was conceived is debatable, which is depicted in the exhibit itself, with text reading: “New York or London?” What is clear, though, is that punks made use of a wide range of objects collaged together into entirely original creations, and I can see why punk rock was chosen as the theme this year for the MET Costume Ball. Fashion is all about self-expression, even if you are sporting the same hair cut and wearing over-sized sunglasses for decades – accessorizing your looks, be it with a $750 Chanel brooch or 25 safety pins, fashion is expression.

As you journey through the rooms, the exhibit increasingly unfolds itself to the captive viewer.  Appropriately, the room is set to initiate you into the punk-rock world which is dedicated to Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren – who according to Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders, “Punk would not exist without them.” Mannequins are clad in everything from studded leather moto jackets, safety pinned ripped mini-skirts, and defaced printed tees all perfectly complimented by ripped fishnets. They stand in a circle as a 360 degree cubed video display hangs above them depicting a man in a latex costume as sounds of whips play through the speakers. To top it off, there’s a replica of Westwood’s famous store, bringing us back to 430 Kings Road and allowing for the entire room to speak to the uprise of rebellion against British etiquette.

As the cultural theorist Dick Hebdige observed, “Punk style was defined principally through the violence of its ‘cut ups.’ Like Duchamp’s ‘ready-mades’ – manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such – the most unremarkable and inappropriate items could be brought within the province of punk (un) fashion.”

 

Punks appropriated objects––from the basest of contexts like tampons and lavatory chains––but they favored articles associated with trash and consumer culture, often as an ironic statement of the political and economic conditions of the times. Continuing this tradition, the designers featured at the Metropolitan Museum are recognized for their recycling of old elements in the formation of new fashions. Often taken from domestic, practical contexts, their “punk collages” present self-conscious commentaries not only on the nature of consumerism but also the notion of good taste.

In allowing fashion to embrace the ephemeral and the everyday, they offer a reappraisal of the definition of value as promoted by large luxury fashion brands. As you come across the final mannequin in the exhibit, it sports a frontless Maison Martin Margiela gown. As it quite literally flips you off, how could anyone help but smile at the lifeless doll in front of them, as the images of the amazingly inventive and imaginative collection of designs they have just had the opportunity to view so up close and personal dance through their minds. While separately there is certainly chaos amongst the designs – however, once the pieces are put together, there is an artful cohesion to it all: a passion for the abandonment of rules, the bravery of being an individual, and under no circumstances conforming to anyone else’s ideals of what is right and what is wrong––which is exactly the definition of punk rock.

PUNK: Chaos to Couture runs through August 14th.  For more information, visit MetMuseum.org

 

by Alan Diamond