Table of ContentsPunkThe ClashHow Subcultures FormWhere Subcultures Are TodayBobby Hundreds, founding father of The Hundreds, said that “streetwear is a culture, not just a product. »[1]Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay 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 is a particular target market that many brands/companies have taken note and started imposing and profiting from the music and fashion tastes of the 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 am very interested in subcultures, since growing up with a father heavily involved in the punk scene, I have always loved looking at culture and how it is includes. Another factor that piqued my interest is skateboarding and the street wear scene which is arguably one of the biggest subcultures today through mass consumerism and exorbitant prices. This research will also give me good insight into how I can engage my brand. by being part of a subculture of street wear that we see with companies like Off-White, McQ, Palace and Supreme dominating the scene today, but without having high prices or in a way that would prove beneficial to others. how fashion and design also influence and take influence from subcultures, and also focuses on how subcultures adapt over time and social changes from the 70s to the present day , focusing largely on punk and subcultures today. 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. 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 British culture in the 1970s. 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 like the working class which arguably started the entire punk culture, one of its main causes was the rejection of the mainstream, corporations and their 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 in 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."[2 ] The pandemonium, obscenity and transgression created by the subcultural style of punk outraged conservative British society, while being capitalized on 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 was a counter-movement and backlash against the late sixties. the love of summer and hippie ways like waves, flares, curtains, clothes of peace and love that they all loved. Punk came along and demolished the feeling of elegance 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. Vivienne Westwood, a "punk guru", contributed greatly to punk's iconic look. 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 that moment.” [3]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 remained in almost constant fluctuation, changing five times, although the store managed to prove itself. 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. This gave rise to the style that the punk movement would follow. 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. The ClashIn the late 70s, the biggest punk band in the world was The Clash, The. Clash provided musical experimentation and showed the rest of the world that punk rock could contain songs longer than two minutes and use more than three chords. The Clash had all the urgency and importance of the Sex Pistols, despite the musical differences between The. Clash and the Sex Pistols were vast. The Clash, even if they are not very elegant instrumentalists, make music much better conceived than that of the Pistols. The music they produced rocks, the songs, full of threats and challenges, never want to threaten. Theyspeak instead of anger and despair, of violence as a condition rather than a prescription. The Clash sang directly and spoke for a generation of working class teenagers who were cut off from the social mainstream and who were also disaffected by complacency, the biggest challenge the Clash faced was that they did not couldn't maintain their position as rebels and anti-corporate while earning £1 million a year, leaving them stuck in a situation where they couldn't really leave many fans of hardcore punk abandon them. How Subcultures Form Subcultures, particularly in the UK, typically form during a time of social change and austerity usually inflicted by right-wing conservatives, which has given way to many subcultures. -cultures seen in the United Kingdom, but the first truly 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 feel empowered. belong to a group and create a group themselves. uniform 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 in particular began to care more about their appearance. , this created a gateway for marketing and the ability for businesses to target specific ages and groups, it also helped create niche groups and allowed 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 chance they had to use accessories and make themselves more flamboyant. It was an Edwardian style inspired by guard officers "the ultimate English aristocrat".[5] 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 prey on the upper classes by taking their uniform and subverting it by trying to " screw up”[5] the class system. “You couldn't change your house or your class, but you could change your sons.”[5]Working culture relied on a very tight, carefully rehearsed gaze. Rockers wore leather jackets, string shirts, motorcycles, giving themselves a very utilitarian look, taking American culture from films like The Wild and anglicizing it. Rockers were the first to create a true generation gap by wearing oil-smeared jeans, heavy boots and dirty leather jackets, with parents starting to ask questions like: what are you listen? The media is fundamental in the formation of subcultures, it has given people a set of values. ideas and inspiration for clothes from people they've never met. The media's role in creating subcultures is very mixed, however, as they are always hungry for the next teenage sensation, especially if they are able to associate it with violence, like the mods fighting the rockers on the front lines. sea ​​or describing punks ascompletely destructive. , it's obvious that they like to do this, but it has also given government administrations an opportunity to point the finger and say that they don't agree with what is happening and they want to try to to prevent this from getting worse before the movement wins. more traction, but it's just promotion in most cases and gives the movement an epic rise in popularity which is also not what the movement could have wanted, going from niche status, elitist and exclusive to suddenly incredibly popular, it can ultimately kill the subculture. Where are the subcultures today? Today, in modern society, it is easy to argue that subcultures do not have the ability to create friction without immediately being shut down 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. »[6] It is also impossible to ignore the immediate gratification that the consumer provides. desperately desires to leave even less room for subcultures to exist with fast fashion offered by brands around the world, from Topman and H&M to Supreme and Palace, style changes so quickly now almost every season that it doesn't leave enough time to allow a subculture that evolves with us, consumers becoming almost vultures and always wanting the new 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 their 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 to do we can become more powerful than any advertisement, 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, fight 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, but that also means that trends can die out just as quickly, leaving them at this point…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, texting and this is where social life now exists on social media, this It is quite ironic that thanks to the easy accessibility of a subculture, it is nowharder 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 live on in certain forms, whether it's people who grew up still immersed in that subculture and are more than happy to continue to push to keep it alive or groups who still carry some of the l ethos and fundamental values. subcultures that we have seen 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. You also have groups. like Green Day who imitate bands from the past, but subcultures don't just require style and music, they need the driving force behind them, which is 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 mobiles, laptops and iPads at an incredible rate, everything now seems to be happening too fast, we can have tragic world events and a week later no one cares this generation of information processed quickly has 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 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 is generally not reality. And if we are people who cannot come together and help each other first, how can we hope to do so? come together and fight against social and political issues when we are guilty of being as ignorant as those who occupy the big chairs. Streetwear has a distinctive visual identity and also has ties to the hip hop/rap scene, but that doesn't make it a subculture because "streetwear represents nothing other than the brand and the product" .[1] Streetwear isn't fighting any political issues and seems happy with the way things are. Skinheads had their working-class pride: they represented 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 does not 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.[1] Streetwear is the engine of consumption, which is the beating heart of consumer capitalism. As such, streetwear does not contradict dominant values, it represents them. “In reality, streetwear is actually a market segment rather than a.