Music, fashion and documenting their shared ideologies......
Music and fashion have an intense relationship. Both are cultural art forms concerned with expression of the self through identity and image (Clarke 2009; Segal 2013). Their mutual aim with creating of iconic images has blurred the lines of where one art form starts and the other ends (MTV 2014) making their combination explanatory and universally understood (Clarke 2009).
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| British Mod group, The Kinks - 1964 |
Stage, Star and Stylist
Throughout time, many performers have immortalised their image with the use of fashion, particularly in their stage costumes, such as David Bowie, Madonna and Freddie Mercury (Clarke 2009). The importance of image became even more valuable at the start of the 1980s with the advent of MTV; musicians needed a strong, fashionable image to make an impact in the video age (Stanfill 2013). Stylists became a crucial factor in helping musicians establish their image with style magazines integrating themselves into the mix and musician image influencing what appeared on the catwalk (Stanfill 2013) and filtering down into everyday dress (Polhemus 2010).
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| David Bowie's alter ego 'Ziggy Stardust' - 1972 |
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| Freddie Mercury during Queen's 'Magic' tour - 1986 |
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| Madonna 'Blonde Ambition' tour - 1990 |
Today, the trend of musicians working and collaborating with designers and stylists continues such as Florence Welch opening the Chanel S/S 2012 show at Paris Fashion Week (below) and Lady Gaga's previous working relationship with stylist Nicola Formichetti (MTV 2013; Segal 2013). Many artists have taken their relationship with fashion further and started their own fashion labels like Jay-Z and his Rocawear line and, Victoria Beckham, who has established herself as a designer of her eponymous luxury brand (MTV 2013).
Image remains commercially viable for artists. Many continue to work with stylists due to the enormous pressure to be fashionable. However, musicians haven't always relied on stylists to help formulate their image. Most have been responsible for creating their own image, with many taking part of their inspiration from street style (Polhemus 2010).
The Birth of Street Style & Shared Ideologies
In the early years of the post-war period, signalled a shift in society and a rise in consumerism. As society became less strict, music became more experimental. The pop charts began and the 'teenager' category appeared for the first time, both of which were boosted by this new, consumerist, post-war society . Fashions too were changing as cheaper, mass produced goods became available whilst before there was 'no alternative' (Polhemus 2010).
Musicians used this period of change to their advantage, with artists like Elvis, creating new looks which were seen as revolutionary for the time such as '
rockabilly' (Polhemus 2010). Their image was trickling down to the street at the same time as street fashion was inspiring artists. This set the pattern for music and street style to lend cultural looks to each other, a pattern which has continued for many years (Breward 2013).
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| Elvis - 1956 |
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| 'Rockabillies' - 1950s |
Fashion and Fanzines
Aside from a sharing an ideology of creating the perfect image, music and fashion are both ways of challenging the ideals and conformity issues surrounding class, gender, sexual and social issues (Bernard 2002). From the 1970s onwards, fanzines became the main medium for fans of certain genres of music to debate the constraints of modern society which affected their identity (Hodkinson 2006). Originally produced as literature by fans, for fans in the 1940s, fanzines underwent a rival during the onset of the punk movement in 1976 (Hewitt and Baxter 2012). Although predominantly about music, fanzines also reflected the fashions of the genre as a subculture of the music (Childs and Storry 1999). Fanzines played a role in creating communities of shared identity (Hodkinson 2006), facilitating a channel which allowed fans to express their identity to their peers (Childs and Storry 1999).
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| 'Ripped and Torn' punk fanzine - 1976 |
Cult fashion and style magazine, i-D, began as a quarterly street style fanzine following the DIY ethics of fanzine production. The zine was showcase for the fashion tribes emerging from London's post-punk music scene (Schneier 2013). When i-D first appeared in 1980 the documentation of fashion tribes through street style photography was a relatively new concept (Wang 2012).
Jamal Shabazz, began documenting early hip-hop street cultures in New York in the mid-70s whilst, infamous street style photographer, Bill Cunningham started his column, in the New York Times in 1978; although the subjects of Cunningham's photographs are not linked to music subcultures (Wang 2012).
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| i-d Issue 1 - 1980 |
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| Brooklyn Street Style by Jamal Shabazz - early 1980s |
The Digital Age
By the late 1990s, as the internet became more mainstream, fanzine culture waned as blogs provided a new medium for people to express and document their image and identity (Hodkinson 2006). Street style photography has successfully made the progression from print to digital with street style blogs leading the way in fashion blogging (Wang 2012). However, despite technological advances, blogging remains close to the ideology of fanzines. It allows bloggers to create communities and share their identity whilst production remains close to the fanzine's DIY ethic permitting anyone, who has access to the internet, to become a blogger.
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| 'Rockabilly' street style, China - 2010 |
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