Table of contentsStreetwearQuestionnaireMy brand and what I doConclusionBobby Hundreds, the founding father of The Hundreds, said that “streetwear is a culture, not just a product” . A subculture is a group that often has beliefs or interests that vary with those of the larger culture, usually involving recognizable tastes in fashion and music. Many subcultures also disdain and reject the mainstream and commercialization of the majority. Subcultures are able to strengthen and intensify because of people's need to feel part of something larger than themselves, especially among young people. It is because youth constitute a particular target market that many brands/companies have noticed them and started to impose and profit from the musical tastes and fashion of this subculture. This can often lead to the subculture's original intentions falling apart and killing the group altogether. In summary, a subculture is a group that breaks away from a dominant society and responds to the ideologies and preferences of certain people. I research and write about this topic because I'm very interested in subcultures. Since growing up with a father heavily involved in the punk scene, I have always loved watching the culture and the way it behaves. Say no. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay. Another factor that sparked my interest was skateboarding and the streetwear scene which is arguably one of the biggest subcultures today thanks to mass consumerism. and exorbitant prices. This research will also give me good insight into how I can involve my brand in a streetwear subculture that we see with companies like Off-White, McQ, Palace and Supreme dominating the scene today, but without the high prices or in a way that would prove beneficial to others. This essay is about how fashion and design also influence and take influence from subcultures and also focuses on how subcultures adapt over time and social changes since the 70s to the present day, focusing largely on punk and today's subcultures. Punk The punk subculture is considered to have been established in England. After World War II, England experienced a severe economic crisis and enormous social collapses. Punk was largely influenced by teddy boys and rockers. Conservative elements of British society rejected the subculture style of left-wing movements and politics of the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, the British economy was stuck in a rut and unemployment, particularly among young people , was quickly becoming an epidemic. British punks displayed the sense of disappointment, despair and failure that many young people felt on their bodies for all to see. Bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash suddenly became centerpieces of a new British subculture that exposed the chaos, ugliness and outrage of 1970s British culture. Punk was chaos. Chaos became extremely evident in everything punks had anything to do with, such as their behaviors, aggressive attitudes, and clothing styles. Punk was a culture that opposed the social imprisonment of certain people, such as the working class who are arguably the origins of all punk culture. One of its main causes was the rejection of the mainstream, of business andits values. As it continued to evolve its ideology, punk adopted a wide range of anti-racist and anti-sexist belief systems. Although the punks' views were strongly left-wing, they also had right-wing views, such as lack of remorse, and apolitical views, such as being misfits and not following order. Punks wore anything that would make them different. The Sex Pistols coined the slogan that summed up the British punk movement as a whole: No Future. While the hippies and flower children of the 1960s sang of the arrival of a new era of peace and love, the punks cried of apocalypse, decadence and failure. In his seminal analysis of British subcultures of the 1970s, cultural theorist Dick Hebdige writes of punk: "Clothed in chaos, they produced noise in the calmly orchestrated crisis of everyday life in the 1970s." Chaos, The obscenity and transgression created by the subcultural style of punk outraged conservative British society, while being exploited by record labels and the culture industry. Many punks fell in love with bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash, viewing them as sell-out headliners and rock stars who had conformed to society's norms by accepting such record deals. Punk Fashion Punk fashion was a counter-movement and reaction against the hippie ways of the late sixties such as waves, flares, curtains, peace and love clothes that they all adored. Punk came along and demolished the sense of style with super tight jeans, leather jackets, ripped t-shirts, sweat and anger. “Soft lines have been replaced by clean cuts; 15-minute progressive rock jams hit with distorted two-minute bursts. Punk fashion was very limited in color and the majority of clothing was black and white, often with splashes of communist red or union jacks stamped on jackets. Vivienne Westwood One of the main contributors to punk's iconic look was Vivienne Westwood, a "punk guru". Vivienne met Malcolm Mclaren, art student and future manager of the Sex Pistols. Thanks to Mclaren, Vivienne started making jewelry on the side. It was the first time she was introduced to a new world of creative freedom and showed her the power of art on the political landscape. “I clung to Malcolm as someone who opened doors for me,” Westwood said. “I mean, he seemed to know everything I needed at the time.” In 1971, Mclaren opened a store at 430 Kings Road in London and began filling it with Westwood clothing and jewelry. The name of this store has remained in almost constant fluctuation. changed five times, although the store managed to prove itself as an important fashion center for the punk movement. When Mclaren became manager of the Sex Pistols, it was Westwood's designs that were used to dress the group and give it its identity. gave way to the style that the punk movement would follow in the years to come. Many people consider Westwood to be the pioneer of the punk movement, giving it the look it needed to represent exactly what it stood for in the late 'Clash.' In the 70s, the biggest punk band in the world was The Clash. The Clash provided musical experiments and showed the rest of the world that punk rock could have songs longer than two minutes and use more than three chords. The Clash had all the urgency and importance of the Sex Pistols, however, the musical differences between The Clash and the Sex Pistols were vast. The Clash, although not very elegant instrumentalists,makes the music much better than the Sex Pistols. The music they produced rocks, the songs, full of threats and challenges, never want to threaten. Rather, it is about anger and despair, about violence as a condition rather than a prescription. The Clash sang and spoke directly to a generation of working-class teenagers who were cut off from the social mainstream and who were also disaffected by the smug, cushy sounds of much contemporary pop. The biggest challenge The Clash faced was that they couldn't maintain their rebellious, anti-business stance while earning £1million a year, leaving them stuck in a situation they couldn't afford. couldn't really go out. many hardcore punk fans abandon them. How Subcultures Formed Subcultures, particularly in the UK, typically formed during a time of social change and austerity usually inflicted by right-wing conservatives, which gave way to many subcultures seen in the UK. However, the first really known subculture was that of the Teddy Boys. Media featuring American music and films was being introduced to the UK, allowing teenagers who, for the first time, had money in their pockets to spend it on something that made them want to live. they could belong to a group and also create a uniform themselves that was individual to them and that people could look up and know what group or subculture they belonged to. Now that the military was out of the equation due to the eradication of conscription for the first time, teenagers began to care more about their appearance, which created a gateway for marketing and opportunity for companies to target specific ages and groups, this also helped. creating niche groups and allowing people to start developing their own individual styles with expressions of freedom. The Teddy Boys uniform played a vital role in showing that a man could, in essence, be a peacock, it was about rejecting the things around you, such as new American influences, while keeping things inherently British. The uniform most often consisted of a draped jacket and brothel Creepers (heeled shoes), they used every opportunity they had to use accessories and make themselves more flamboyant. It was an Edwardian style inspired by guard officers, “the ultimate English aristocrat”. The Teddy Boy was a sharp look that the working class parodied with pink socks or lining in their jacket as well as huge pompadour hairstyles to almost take on the upper class. by taking their uniform and turning it upside down trying to “fuck up” the class system. “you couldn’t change houses or classes but you could change threads.” Working-class culture relied on a very tight, carefully rehearsed outlook. Rockers wore leather jackets, string shirts, motorcycles, giving themselves a very utilitarian look, borrowing American culture from films like The Wild and using it in English. Rockers were the first to create a real generation gap by wearing oil-smeared jeans, heavy boots and dirty leather jackets, with parents starting to ask questions like: What are you listening to? Media is fundamental in the formation of subcultures. They gave people a set of ideas and inspiration for clothes from people they've never met. The role of the media in the creation of subcultures is very mixed, however, because they always hunger for thenext teenager. sensation, especially if they are able to associate it with violence like the mods fighting the rockers on the seafront or describing the punks as completely destructive, it's obvious they enjoy doing that, but it also gave the government administrations the opportunity to point the finger and say that they do not agree with what is happening and that they want to try to prevent it from getting any worse before the movement wins more ground, but it's just promotion in most cases and gives the movement an epic rise in popularity which also isn't what the movement might have wanted, to move from niche status, elitist and exclusive to suddenly incredibly popular, it can ultimately kill the subculture. Today, in modern society, it is easy to say that subcultures don't stand a chance. creating friction without being immediately stopped and eliminated. They don't even take off before being poached by consumerism and social media, without it being possible to create a small niche group. “There are very limited factors that we can consider unique to the culture and times we currently find ourselves in that make it almost virtually impossible to create an authentic subculture.” It's also impossible to ignore the instant gratification that the consumer desperately desires, leaving even less room for subcultures, like fast fashion, provided by brands around the world, from Topman and H&M to Supreme and Palace, style changing so quickly now almost. every season that doesn't give enough time to allow a subculture to evolve with us, with consumers almost becoming vultures and always wanting the newest things on the market. We now know what we want and we want it as soon as possible. With brands becoming more and more important in our lives, whether due to extremely high demand like Supreme with hordes of people queuing outside stores and refreshing their laptops at 11am. morning or companies like Apple with their incredible amounts of advertising that is simply impossible to miss, it becomes abundantly clear that we as a consumer can create a kind of culture with the power in our hands, we leaving the freedom to choose what we should do. can become more powerful than any advertising, because without our will, any brand can easily disappear. This created culture cannot, however, be considered a subculture like those we have seen in the past, because it lacks the opposition, fighting and rebellion of those who wanted to change the world for what they considered appropriate. that we see and wear, combined with social media, allows us to connect and see what people are currently wearing and doing constantly, this gives us the opportunity to make friends with people on the other side of the planet with the click of a button, however this also means that trends can disappear just as quickly, leaving them...trends. Subcultures don't have enough time to develop naturally, which means the newly discovered subgenre is suddenly all over Facebook, Twitter, and blowing up at a club the following Saturday. The real question is how does this happen, and it's as simple as: if you have a question you would ask Google, if you heard a song you liked you would use Shazam, if you want to talk to your friends , you now have Messenger, Snapchat, SMS and it is the social life that now exists onsocial media, this It is quite ironic that, thanks to the easy accessibility of a subculture, it is now harder than ever for them to take off. We also need to ask whether subcultures have lost the shock factor they once had, like the way the Teddy Boys distorted the class system, the way punks and skinheads shaved their hair, what It's just not as exciting to know that our parents have already done everything. Subcultures exist in certain forms, whether because people grew up still immersed in that subculture and are more than happy to continue to lobby to keep it alive or by groups that still carry part of the ethos and core values ​​of the subcultures we saw. in the past. It is more than clear to see that Northern Soul is still active in some scattered forms in clubs such as Soul Shack and Stables Soul Club. It's also not hard to find rock influence in bands like Arctic Monkeys and Imagine Dragons, but also in bands like Kaiser Chiefs, Destruction Unit and Downtown Boys who all try to help perpetuate punk in their way and keep it alive. bands like Green Day that emulate past bands like The Clash. But subcultures don't just require style and music, they need the driving force behind them, namely people, and people need a reason to fight back. But we now live in a time where incredibly horrific news and events are spreading through our mobiles, laptops and iPads at an incredible rate, everything now seems to be happening too fast, we may have tragic world events and a week more late, no one cares about this generation of quickly processed information have no apathy for the events around them, we are all guilty of things like this, seeing a person who has to sleep on the street should be heartbreaking and we should naturally want to help people but we are all willing to ignore it and just keep walking, we show no concern for those around us and always assume that they did this to themselves through horrible means, even if it doesn't. is generally not reality. And if we are people who can't come together and help each other first, how can we be expected to come together and fight against social and political issues when we are guilty of being as ignorant as the people sitting in the big chairs.StreetwearStreetwear has a distinctive visual identity and also has connections to the hip-hop/rap scene, but it has nothing to do with the hip-hop/rap scene. I don't make it a subculture because "streetwear represents nothing other than the brand and the product". Streetwear isn't fighting any political issues and seems happy with the way things are. Skinheads had working-class pride in representing a rejection of the British class system. Punks opposed everything that polite society deemed right and proper. By taking an active and public stance against dominant social values, subcultures offer an alternative and encourage others to do the same. Streetwear, on the other hand, may represent an underground approach to fashion, but that doesn't separate it from mainstream values. The central pillar of streetwear isn't really sneakers or clothes, it's consumption. “Brands cannot survive without profiting from their products, and streetwear cannot exist without the brands that make it up. Streetwear is the engine of consumption, which is the beating heart of consumer capitalism..