Punk

Punk is a rebellious, deliberately aggressive style that grew out of the mid-1970s punk-rock scene of London and New York as a radical challenge to society and 'respectable' fashion. Its aesthetic is ripped jeans and T-shirts, leather biker jackets, Scottish tartan, safety pins, chains, studs, spikes, army boots and outrageous mohawk hairstyles. Punk professes the DIY principle: clothing is torn, painted over, pinned together, turning it into a manifesto of protest and individuality. A key figure was the designer Vivienne Westwood, together with the band the Sex Pistols, who brought punk into high fashion. Despite its 'anti-fashion' pathos, punk gave world fashion a powerful vocabulary that still feeds designers. It is a style of resistance, freedom and uncompromising self-expression.