Is Anarchy Passé?

[*sayan]

i think its interesting to discuss the contact between youth subcultures and luxury houses. At the begining luxury houses were not even trying to see what wah happenning in the youth wardrobe, therefore leaving them in peace to mix match any clothes they felt like. But since theres such a constant need for luxuy to get "inspired" by youth style, seems like there barely is any time to make up a trend within a subculture.
I thought P. Doherty's style was interesting, and i think it could've develloped among his followers into something new. But Hedi Slimane took it to the catwalk so fast, i feel it killed it.

 

[tricotineacetat]

Rebelion should be manifestated in clothes, life style, music, poetry... It should have no cause at all, it is about individuals, way of feeling. It's romantic:-)

I def. prefer rebelious att. in clothes than, let's say burning cars and destroying shops. What is rebelious in demanding for "pernament employment"?

There´s a difference between rebeliousness and individuality, mainly in the fact that in order to be rebelious, there must be a need and urge to change certain circumstances that are wrong. If you want to, than call it political ambitions that drive rebelion. Individuality asks for a free-spirited attitude but does not require rebelious tendencies.

If the first is what you are looking out for, than I must say that clothing in itself is a fairly difficult thing to transport a (political) message with... if you really have the desire to rebel against something... and when you goal is to transport a statement, I´d much rather write books or essays, do a movie/documentary/theatre play or write songs, than giving priority to a rebelious look.

 

[Deleted member 7575]

There´s a difference between rebeliousness and individuality, mainly in the fact that in order to be rebelious, there must be a need and urge to change certain circumstances that are wrong. If you want to, than call it political ambitions that drive rebelion. Individuality asks for a free-spirited attitude but does not require rebelious tendencies.

If the first is what you are looking out for, than I must say that clothing in itself is a fairly difficult thing to transport a (political) message with... if you really have the desire to rebel against something... and when you goal is to transport a statement, I´d much rather write books or essays, do a movie/documentary/theatre play or write songs, than giving priority to a rebelious look.

Agreed.

 

[faust]

Maybe youth fighting for high social security is the next subculture. Or trade union fighting for higher payment and less work hours:-P

I thinh we live in an interesting time. in the 70s when one didn't have job youth went anarchy. Now they burn cars to get job.

Lena, I think not only the Japanese are repeating themself. Everybody else is.

Unfortunately, this is even more passe than punk at this point - the trend is going in the exact reverse direction. With globalism and emergence of China & Co., trade unions are conceding on all fronts - or their members will lose their jobs (witness concessions by auto trade unions in the US and Germany, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago). Students in Paris can protest all they want - they just don't get it - their country is in deep economic and social doodoo, and it will stay that way unless something happens.

 

[nqth]

There´s a difference between rebeliousness and individuality, mainly in the fact that in order to be rebelious, there must be a need and urge to change certain circumstances that are wrong. If you want to, than call it political ambitions that drive rebelion. Individuality asks for a free-spirited attitude but does not require rebelious tendencies.

If the first is what you are looking out for, than I must say that clothing in itself is a fairly difficult thing to transport a (political) message with... if you really have the desire to rebel against something... and when you goal is to transport a statement, I´d much rather write books or essays, do a movie/documentary/theatre play or write songs, than giving priority to a rebelious look.

If we are talking fashion, it is obvious, that fashion designers use clothes to give the messages. I'd rather be attractive to a rebelious msgs, than, let's say "cowboys are having sunbathing":-P

What can be a rebolious mesgs in fashion? Imo, different beauty, man or woman, youth vs. old, free sewing vs. tailoring, blk vs. colours, synthetic vs. natural, dirt vs. clean... Aren't they interesting?

If we are talking about rebellions in general, of course, it is about participating in various fields of life. Not every body can write a book, a play, publish them, a lot of ppl work in "devil":-P companies... Do you refuse their right to have "rebelious feeling"?

Now are clothes are "proper" substance to make a statement, revel thinking or what ever? I'd say yes. Always were and will be. It's not an incident that in communistic countries ppl have the same wadrobe and the same haircut. Even in films if you see ppl wearing the same clothes you know that ppl live under repression. Ppl are not allowed to dress diff., because the clothes can "destroy" the system. Sounds like absurd? Nop, it is real. Clothes express individuality, and individuality, in a dictatorial system, leads to rebelious thinking and "revolution":-)

Even when you live in a society that everybody wears Hermes and Chanel, dress diff. is an act of rebelion. You can write a book or make a play. No one will read or see them. But if your trouser is diff. everybody notices:-P OK it is easy, but it works.

 

[Multitudes]

Rebelion should be manifestated in clothes, life style, music, poetry... It should have no cause at all, it is about individuals, way of feeling. It's romantic:-)

I def. prefer rebelious att. in clothes than, let's say burning cars and destroying shops. What is rebelious in demanding for "pernament employment"?

How Yoga can make you think, It so rebelious...

ngth.. what I especially like about this is "It's romantic"...
I got this qoute from Estella Mare......

"I think of nothing but love. The continual amusement I derive from intellectual pursuits, for which I am always being reproached as if it were a crime, finds its very justification in this singular and unceasing taste for love. For me there is no idea that is not eclipsed by love.If it were up to me, everything opposed to love would be abolished. That is roughly what I mean when I claim to be an anarchist."
-Louis Aragon

It's all about desires,Love.. the connectedness of desires that is, as you also put it Faust in the "Avant garde" thread..."What's your pleasure?"... Yes let's connect that whith another pleasure machine...and another.. in the infinte.. to create a multiple assemblage of desires, the "multitude".. that is rebelious..

And indeed this time is an exciting one, because it's a "Deleuzean One" as Foucault states in his preface "Anti Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizofrenia"(Deleuze/Guattari)... there is a prospect in our time, in this Globalization, which is not eroding sovereignty but transforming it into a system of diffuse national and supranational institution, what Negri&Hardt Refers to as a new "empire"... but within this empire, the living alternative grows, the multitude, which is not the matter of everyone becomes the same; rather it provides the possibility that, while remaining different, we discover the commonality that enables us to communicate and act together..an open and expansive network in which all differnces can be expressed freely and equally...

What I find really bad about this article, or this discussion on rebelion and anarchy on a larger scale is to refer it as "punk", indeed we find references to the punk movement in fashion etc.., since the 80s, but what is happening is not 'punk" at all, and I think Watnabe, Hedi Slimane and who ever has been refered to is clever enough to not define there clothes "punk"... and to even limit Anarchy to the "punk-movement" is exactly that, a limitation..
And to say that they are just repeating them selfs is very "superficial"... because in the repetion the prospect of difference is available...
As for the notion, what I call modernistic idealism, the prospect of the new and this moving forward to some artistic ideal is Carried forward in the personalized subject(based on language)... come on throw out Wiki-Pidias definition of the avant-garde and lets create some other ones, multiple ones... what a limitation that is... It's in the connection of multiple subjects that creates the possibility of the "new"... creative connections.. in all aspects of the social field.. it's there we find the rebelious... or "anarchy"... and that is indeed "romantic"... filled with desires...

 

[Lena]

to make sone thing clear, French youth is not fighting for their right to social security or retirement benefits, they just fight for their right to work when they finish studies..

as for 'everyone' being repetitive, well, there are some designers bringing in new ideas, too unfair to flatten out the whole industry...
as for the japanese design houses, pretending you are making a difference while you are mainly recycling YOUR OWN cliches.. not my cup of tea, so sorry zzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Multitudes]

to make sone thing clear, French youth is not fighting for their right to social security or retirement benefits, they just fight for their right to work when they finish studies..

as for 'everyone' being repetitive, well, there are some designers bringing in new ideas, too unfair to flatten out the whole industry...
as for the japanese design houses, pretending you are making a difference while you are mainly recycling YOUR OWN cliches.. not my cup of tea, so sorry zzzzzzzzzzzz

Ooh lena... but what is the prospect of recycling?... In all it's biological glory of processes, isn't it exactly that, to create something again, I might even be so bold to call it "new"....

 

[Scott]

I agree with Lena,indefinitely.

Btw,what does being an anarchist have to do with being specifically punk,anyway? "Is anarchy passe?" This title is extremely narrow minded. Anarchy has moved beyond being typically punk now.

edit: multitudes,seems we have the same feelings about that.

 

[nqth]

Lena, polish tv said that students in Paris are protesting the possible new regulation, which allows companies to fire students without indicating the cause during the practicing period of two years.

I mean two years of "job trying", and they are all young. And the firms are private owned. It should be like in the US. You leave the job soon, you find the job sooner. (As far as I have heard:-P)

 

[Zazie]

I don't think rebellion = anarchy. It is a way of undermining the legitimate cause and meaning of rebellion, eg, US embassy issue warnings of Americans travelling in Italy to avoid the "anarchic" political rallies of the opposition to Berlusconi to help boost the Italian rightwing. Of course sometimes anarchy and chaos ensue, but they are not the same. Rebellion carries a political message against the mainstream power, so if anything one does, from dressing to other personal acts or expressions communicate this message, it's a form of rebellion. And yes, there are a lot to rebel against, wars, torture, mountains of debt, draconian laws, globalwarming. It doesn't make it "fashion", however.

 

[mellowdrama]

At the end of the day, as long as there is food on the table and a steady stream of images of objects/fantasies of desire, anything supposedly anarchic can be co-opted into a fashion statement. This is none-too-surprising. Give me a full belly and fashion magazines, or give me death!

 

[Whitelinen]

At least punk and all the "traditional" ways of anarchy have been commercialised to death, they've lost their point. But in the other hand, there are many ways to be anarchistic

 

[renferme]

I think people need to learn what 'anarchy' actually means - it does not mean punk , it is not rebellion or burning cars. It actually means that everyone shares the responsibility of governing themselves, with no main leader. The definition has been twisted a lot to mean something that it's not.

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves.

 

[mellowdrama]

^ Yes, I was thinking about that, myself. Rebellion posits that one is against some authority, while an anarchist wouldn't waste time fighting against an authority, rather just not recognize it. Translated to fashion, a "rebel" would take whatever status quo and wear the opposite, whereas a fashion "anarchist" wouldn't bother memorizing sartorial rules so as to break them.

Quoting Dinesh D'Souza: "Political scientist Edward Banfield once observed that a riot is a failed revolution. People who know how to take over the government don't throw stones at a bus." This is responding to what's going on in Paris.

Thinking about another quote from L.A. musician Stew, "Don't you wish there was, like, another picture of Che Guevara? Like, one of him, like, at a birthday party with a bunch of 9-year-olds, with milk coming out his nose 'cos he just laughed at a joke somebody told." This comes up for me, in terms of "revolutionary" images on stuff like T-shirts. Fashion and politics, strange bedfellows.

 

[Melisande]

I think people need to learn what 'anarchy' actually means - it does not mean punk , it is not rebellion or burning cars. It actually means that everyone shares the responsibility of governing themselves, with no main leader. The definition has been twisted a lot to mean something that it's not.

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves.

Phew, finally!

As Zazie says, there is a lot to be rebellious about. And yes, fashion--as with any other artistic medium--can be used to express rebellion, anarchy, or any other idea. I like how nqth put it. But one of my pet peeves is when people dress vaguely punk and claim they are being rebellious when they have no strong ideological stand besides trying to look cool. A friend recently put it very well: "If you want your clothes to make a statement against the establishment, don't be half-baked about it; have the guts to put it in your own words, create your own look; if you want to confront the establishment, have the guts to attend work topless for instance and take full responsibility for it."

In his own way, I think Gaultier was being sincerely rebellious when he intentionally appeared at a formal event in shorts and took a stand when he got refused entry. Coco Chanel was being rebellious when she emancipated womenswear. Vivienne is expressing her own punk spirit in her clothes. If we really want to rebel we must be our own thinker, our own artist, live the statement and take full responsibility for it. Only then will it never be passé.

 

[Whitelinen]

I was meaning more the way "anarchy" is expressed (falsely) in clothing today.

But you are all right, especially Melisande had a good point.

 

[Melisande]

I was meaning more the way "anarchy" is expressed (falsely) in clothing today.

But you are all right, especially Melisande had a good point.

Thanks WhiteLinen! I agree with you about "commodified anarchy"

 

[Bidwell]

I would never equate anarchy with punk, there's been too many a revolt in history. Punk however, has been the going formula for far too long and simply doesn't have a place anymore (as a subversive movement). I believe Ms. Westwood would even agree with that.
Perhaps modern day anarchy is well hidden. Part of the force is to blend in and infeltrate.

 

[spiralsnowman]

I think punk lost its ability to make a serious statement when it started being advertised as in Japanese teen mags next to press-one glitter fingernails and black contacts... Punk had its time, and that was as a subculture in the 1970s and 80s, not on the backs of 15-year-olds in mohawks and Billionaire Boys Club sweatshirts...