IndexPunkThe ClashHow subcultures are formedWhere are subcultures nowBobby Hundreds, founding father of The Hundreds, declared that "streetwear is a culture, not just a product".[1]Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't 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 fashion and musical tastes. Many subcultures also despise and reject the mainstream and the commercialization of the majority. Subcultures are able to strengthen and intensify because of the need for people to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, particularly among young people. It is because young people are a particular large target market that many brands/companies have taken notice and started to impose and profit from the subculture's musical and fashion tastes. This can often lead to the downfall of the subculture's original intentions and the complete extinction of the group. In summary, a subculture is a group that is detached from mainstream society and that satisfies the ideologies and preferences of some people. I am researching and writing about this topic because I am strongly interested in subcultures, ever since I was a child with a father heavily involved in the punk scene I have always enjoyed looking at culture and the way it behaves. Another factor that piqued my interest is the skateboarding and streetwear scene which is undoubtedly one of the biggest subcultures today through the means of high consumerism and exorbitant prices. Research in this field will also give me an in-depth idea of ​​how I can involve my brand in being part of a street wear subculture that we see with companies like Off-White, McQ, Palace and Supreme dominating the scene today, but without high prices or in a way that could prove beneficial to others. This essay is about how fashion and design influence and also take influence from subcultures, and also focuses on how subcultures adapt through time and social changes from the 1970s to the present day, focusing largely on punk and about subcultures today.PunkThe punk subculture is believed to have been established in England. After the Second World War England had experienced severe economic decline and enormous social collapse. Punk had a major influence from teddy boys and rockers. Conservative elements of British society rejected the subcultural style of left-wing movements and politics of the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, the British economy was stuck in a rut and unemployment, especially among young people, was fast becoming an epidemic. British punks showed everyone the sense of disappointment, desperation and failure that many young people felt in their bodies. See. Bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash suddenly became the hub of a new British subculture that highlighted the chaos, ugliness and outrage of 1970s British culture. Punk was chaos. The chaos became extremely evident in everything the punks had to deal with, such as their behaviors, aggressive attitudes, and clothing styles. Punk was a culture against the social confinement of certain people such as the working class which probably started the entire punk culture, one of its main causes was the rejection of the mainstream, corporate enterprises and its values. It continued to evolve its ideology, punk embraced a wide range of anti-racist and anti-sexist belief systems. Although the opinions of the punks were strongly ofleft, they also had right-wing views, such as no remorse, and apolitical views such as being misfits and not following the order. Punks wore anything that would make them look 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 '60s sang of the coming of a new era of peace and love, the punks screamed of apocalypse, decadence and failure. In his seminal analysis of British subcultures in the 1970s, cultural theorist Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style, writes of punk: "Clothed in chaos, they produced noise in the quietly 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 companies and the culture industry. Many punks fell out of love with bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash, viewing them as sellouts and rock stars who had conformed to society's norms by accepting such recording contracts. Punk fashion was a countermovement and reaction against the late sixties. summer love and hippie ways like the waves, the bell bottoms, the drapes, the peace and love dresses that everyone loved. Punk came along and demolished the stye with super tight jeans, leather jackets, torn t-shirts, sweat and anger. “The smooth lines have been replaced by sharp cuts; 15 minutes of prog-rock jams hit by two-minute distorted blasts. The main contributor to the iconic appearance of punk was Vivienne Westwood, a "punk guru". Vivienne met Malcolm Mclaren, an art student and future manager of the Sex Pistols. Through Mclaren, Vivienne began creating jewelery in parallel, this was the first time she was introduced to a new world of creative freedom and showed her the power art had in the political landscape. “I connected with Malcolm as someone who opened doors for me,” Westwood said. “I mean, he seemed to know everything I needed at the time.” [3]In 1971, Mclaren opened a shop at 430 Kings Road in London and began filling it with Westwood clothes and jewellery. The name of this store remained in almost constant fluctuation, changing 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 band and help give it its identity the punk movement would follow in the years to come Many people call Westwood the pioneer of the punk movement giving him the look of that he needed to represent exactly what he represented. The Clash In the late 70s, the biggest punk band in the world. the world was The Clash, The Clash provided musical experimentation and showed the rest of the world that punk rock could consist of songs over two minutes long and use more than just three chords. The Clash had all the urgency and importance of the Sex Pistols, yet the musical differences between the Clash and the Sex Pistols were enormous. The Clash, although not very elegant instrumentalists, produced much better music than the Pistols. The music they made is wild, the songs, full of menace and challenge, never intended to threaten. They speak rather of anger and desperation, of violence as a condition rather than a prescription. The Clash sang directly and spoke on behalf of a generation of working-class teenagers cut off from the social mainstream and who were also disaffected by the smug, smooth sounds of most contemporary pop. The biggest challenge the Clash had to facedeal was that they couldn't maintain the position they had as rebellious and anti-corporate while earning £1 million a year, leaving them stuck in a situation where I really couldn't help but let many hardcore punk fans abandon them. How Subcultures Form Subcultures, especially in the UK, commonly form in times of social change and austerity which is usually inflicted by right-wing conservatives, this has given way to many subcultures seen in the UK, however, the The first truly known subculture was the Teddy Boys. Media containing music and films from the US were brought to the UK, this gave teenagers who for the first time had money in their pockets to spend it on something that made them feel like they could belong to a group and even make themselves a group . uniform that was individual to them and that people could look up and know which 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, teenage boys especially began to care more about their appearance, this created a gateway to marketing and the ability for companies to targeting specific ages and groups, this also helped create niche groups and allowed people to start developing their own individual styles with expressions of freedom. The Teddy Boys uniform was instrumental in demonstrating that a man could in essence be a peacock, it was about rejecting things around you such as new American influences whilst keeping things intrinsically British, the uniform most commonly consisted of a jacket draped and brothel shoes (heeled shoes), they used every occasion they had to use accessories and make themselves more flashy. It was an Edwardian style inspired by the officers of the guards “the English aristocrat par excellence”[5]. The Teddy boy had a sharp look that the working class parodied with pink socks or lining in the jacket along with huge pompadour hairstyles to almost mock the upper class by taking their uniform and subverting it by trying to "mess up" [5] the system of classes. “You couldn't change your house or your class but you could change your threads.”[5]Working class culture was based on a very tight and carefully rehearsed gaze. The rockers wore leather jackets, striped t-shirts, had motorcycles which gave them a very utilitarian look, taking American culture from films like The Wild Ones and Englishising it. Rockers were the first to create a real generation gap by wearing oil-covered jeans, big boots and dirty leather jackets, with parents starting to ask questions like: what the hell are you listening to? The media is crucial to the formation of subcultures, it has given people a set of ideas and inspiration for clothing from people they have never even met. The role of the media in creating subcultures is however very mixed, as they are always hungry for the next teenage phenomenon, especially if they are able to pair it with violence, such as mods fighting rockers on the beach or portraying punks as completely destructive. , it's clear that they enjoy doing it, but this has also given government administrations the opportunity to point the finger and say that they don't agree with what's happening and want to try to prevent further escalation before the movement takes hold foot. more traction, however this is just promotion in most cases and gives the movement an epic surge in popularity which is not even what the movement would have wanted to go from being niche, elitist and exclusive to suddenlyincredibly popular, this 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 being immediately shut down and eliminated. They don't even take off before being taken for a ride by consumerism and social media without the possibility of a small niche group actually forming. “There are very limited factors that we can consider unique to the culture and time we are in now that make it almost virtually impossible to succeed in creating an authentic subculture.”[6] It's also impossible to ignore the instant gratification the consumer desperately wants leaving even less room for subcultures to exist with the likes of fast fashion provided by brands around the world, from Topman and H&M to Supreme and Palace, style changes so quickly now almost every season that doesn't give enough time allows a subculture that evolves together with us consumers becoming almost vultures and always eager for new things on the market. Now we 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 laptops at 11am every morning morning or companies like Apple with their incredible quantities of advertising that is simply impossible not to see it becomes quite clear that we as consumers can create a kind of culture with the power in our hands giving us the freedom to choose what to do we can become more powerful than any advertising, because without our will any brand it can easily fade. This culture that is created, however, cannot be considered a subculture like those we have seen in the past because it lacks the opposition, struggle and rebellion of those who first wanted to change the world for what they saw fit. Using the brands we see and wear combined with social media allows us to connect and see what people are currently wearing and what they are constantly doing, this gives us the opportunity to make friends with people on the other side of the planet with just a click of a button. a button, however it also means that trends can die out just as quickly leaving them to those... trends. Subcultures don't have enough time to grow naturally, which means the newly discovered subgenre is suddenly all over Facebook, Twitter, and exploding in a club by the following Saturday. The real question is how is this happening, and it's as easy as: if you have a question ask Google, if you heard a song you like you would use Shazam, if you want to talk to your friends now you have Messenger, Snapchat, messages and this is the place where social lives now exist on social media, this makes it rather ironic that, through the easy accessibility of a subculture, it is now harder than ever for them to take off. We also need to consider whether subcultures have lost the shock factor they once had, like the way teddy boys distorted the class system, the way punks and skinheads shaved their hair. It's not as exciting to know that our parents have already done it all. Subcultures live on in some forms, whether people grew up immersed in that subculture and are more than happy to continue pushing to keep it alive or bands that still carry some of the core ethics and values. of the subcultures 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 like Soul Shack and Stables soul club. Furthermore, it is not difficult to find rock influences in bands like Arctic Monkeys and ImagineDragons, and also bands like Kaiser Chiefs, Destruction Unit and Downtown Boys all try to help push punk forward in their own way, to keep it alive, there are bands too. like Green Day imitating past bands like But subcultures don't just require style and music, they need the driving force behind them which is the people, and the people need a reason to react. But now we live in an era where incredibly horrible information and events spread through cell phones, laptops and Ipads at an incredible rate, everything now seems to happen 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 it, we are all guilty of things like this, seeing a person having to sleep on the street should be heartbreaking and we should naturally want to help people but we are all willing to ignore and keep walking , we show no concern for those around us and always assume that they have done it to themselves through horrible means, even though that's usually not the reality. And if we are people who can't come together and help each other first, how can we expect to do so? Let's come together and fight against social and political issues when we are guilty of being just as ignorant as the people sitting in the big chairs. Streetwear has a distinctive visual identity and also has ties to the hip hop/rap scene, but this does not make it a subculture because “streetwear represents nothing more than the brand and the product”.[1] Streetwear doesn't fight any political issues and seems to be happy with the way things are. Skinheads had their own working class pride and represented a rejection of the British class system. Punks opposed everything that polite society deemed right and appropriate. By taking an active and public stand against prevailing 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 traditional values. The central pillar of streetwear is not really sneakers or clothes, but consumption. “Brands cannot survive without profiting from their products, and streetwear cannot exist without the brands that comprise it.[1] Streetwear drives consumption, which is the beating heart of consumer capitalism. As such, streetwear does not contradict prevailing values, it represents them. “Realistically, streetwear is actually a market segment rather than a subculture.”[1]Stores and brands like Supreme and Santa Cruz started with core values ​​that allowed marginalized groups of societies to gather, wear, and be part of the same society. group, Supreme was started by a group of skaters who say they took influence in their style from punk music and values. They were a brand that only a small group of people who knew the shop would go there, however it is not difficult to understand that the situation has changed radically and now it is certainly not a brand with punk values ​​or even those of a skate shop, but now it is a company that shows off and flaunts their extremely expensive clothing and miscellaneous items around without thinking twice about how they used to hold themselves and now they seem to jump on the bandwagon saying they belong to the punk subculture without holding any of their values ​​to try to lure disaffected and disassociated young people like me into their company to gain street credibility and a so-called "HYPEBEAST" title. I created a questionnaire based on subcultures and how they function, analyzing how people interact.