Hi-Fashion Ironic Vintage Metal/Punk Kitsch

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Missy Elliot wearing a Motorhead t-shirt in her new video, "Get Ur Freak Om," waifish stick-figure supermodels sporting rhinestone-spangled vintage Slayer t-shirts, high end fashion magazines espousing the visual virtues of sporting vintage punk/new wave lapel pins by Gang of Four and Public Image Ltd. as the zenith of neo-retro-kitsch hip.

AM I ON THE ONLY ONE OFFENDED BY THIS DISRESPECTFUL APPROPRIATION OF ICONIC IMAGES FROM MUSIC'S PAST THAT I PERSONALLY HOLD VERY DEAR THAT VACCUOUS FASHIONISTAS ARE MERELY CO-OPTING AS A PASSING PHASE?

I accosted as bleach-blonde whistlehead in a bar last week who was sporting a sleeveles black t-shirt from my once-beloved Plasmatics (the cover of METAL PRIESTESS, if you must know) to quiz her on her affinity to Wendy O Williams and Co. She didn't even know they *WERE* a band.It was merely a hollow fashion statement. My point: IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE BAND, DON'T ADVERTISE THEM IN A VAIN ATTEMPT TO SEEM HIP! Grrrrrrr!!!!!!

― alex in nyc, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I really like meaningless fashion gestures.

If this look irritate you, the best retort is "god thats so three years ago" ( the heavy metal chic look is really that passe). Interestingly the revival began in literature - Dennis Cooper is the source for this one.

― Guy, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

It seems to me as though the punk appropriation is mroe in earnest and the metal appropriation is more ironized. Which is actually fine by me, as I still appretiate punk more earnestly than metal. Uh, I like it that people are paying heaps of cash for nasty old torn up metal shirts. Better than for handmade straw guatamalan handbags of other "multicultural" hipster feelgood accessories or fancy Gucci shit. Mamet wrote about how society's fashion trends reflected what people really yearned to be. I guess hipsters wish they liked music which moved their hips, or at least which called them to action.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I think it's funny. It's not as though it has anything to do with the music, and next week they will have moved on to something else. Amusing article in today's Guardian claiming 1981Koppite casualism is the next port of call for the style slaves, and Tacchini shares are going through the roof. Who woulda thunk it? My prediction for summer 2001? The hooded top and flares revival.

― stevie, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm getting my hooded top now - if Stevie says so - he the king o'fashion. I'll dust off my very faded PWEI T-Shirts too.

Surely the point is that the Motorhead T-Shirts are actually quite a good design, i've not noted Top Shop selling Number Of The Beast Iron Maiden T-Shirts recently. Werely as an iconic design the Motorhead logo (repleat with nonsense umlauts) just look good. Especially in skinny fit. Equally a lot of cut'n'paste punk artwork is both resonant for what it stands for (ie the punk attitude) and rather good design.

If James "Come Home" T-shirts come back in though I moving to Papua New Guinea.

― Pete, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm not talking to anyone tonight unless they're in a hooded top.

― Tom, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I don't understand the vitriol here. I mean, I do not personally walk around sporting t-shirts of any band, but I don't see the harm in if someone likes the way a t-shirt looks or they see a look in a magazine and like it, that they shouldn't wear it. Since when do you have to be an immortal follower of a musical genre to appreciate style or fashion? Your "bleach-blonde whistlehead" might just have had an appreciation for that particular t-shirt, the artwork on it, rather than anything else, and quite frankly I think I appreciate that sort of idea more than I do some "whistlehead" wearing a band t- shirt because they actually are die-hards for the band. As they say in PCU: DON'T BE THAT GUY.

If you're going to be offended by fashion statements, be offended by something worth being offended over, ie not prior music styles, which are just as much about fashion and image as wearing them now is about. Get offended by the appropriation of military gear being disrespectful towards veterans or some crap like that. I mean, clearly I'm not offended by it (I've done it, though not now because it's so wrong to wear what every teenage girl is wearing), but if you're going to be offended by something as inoffensive as fashionable expression, that's the one to go for.

― Ally, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Oh it's allright if a bit passe, as are those dreadful mullets. But metal iconography can use a bit of irony. The statement "holow fashion statement" can be cut 'n pasted right to that Use other words please-thread.

― Omar, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I thought Missy was trying to look like Triple H (the wrestler) with the Motorhead, denim, and studs thing. Vince McMahon is brainwashing all of you. As far as the punk thing, why shouldn't a culture that treated culture as trash be treated as trash by culture in turn? Isn't it the judicious thing to do? Perhaps you should kill your idols *before* someone else gets to them.

― Kris, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

My biggest problem with the afore-mentioned whistlehead was that during their brief tenure, the Plasmatics never got any respect to begin with. To see them paraded about as merely an object of intended ironic kitsch is to further disrespect them in my mind. And as a one of those guys who actaully appreciated the band while they were a going concern, I take objection to that final insult. Perhaps I take the music I listen to more seriously than I ought, but I'd rather be a zealous fanboy than a fucking poser.

― alex in nyc, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

All things go round. When I was a teenager the first time round, my pet peeve was New Kids On The Block in Bauhaus t-shirts as fashion accessories cause one of them wore the Conrad Veidt shirt in a video.

It's a horrid trend, as were the ironic metal 3/4 sleeve baseball jerseys with 80s metal bands emblazonned on them so fasionable in Hoxton last year and Camden last month. To wear one is to wear a badge saying "I am an unbearably pretentious twat who aspires to be as cool as Nathan Barley, don't bother talking to me" and sporting a mullet.

Oh dear, I'm still drunk and it won't stop. Help.

― kate the saint, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Oh yeah, I hold The Face responsible for this whole trend, but that doesn't matter cause we pulled A Fast One on them and faked their entire fucking coke issue over a few drinks at the Sunday Vodka Syndicate last month, mwah hah hah hah.

― kate the saint, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Well, Alex, you apparently have seen a much cooler group doing the retro irony thing. I was recently in Kensington Market scouting around the used/vintage clothing places, and the retro music shirts there were simply apalling: Kiss from the non-makeup phase, Journey, and Winger. FUCKING WINGER. I mean, at least Slayer is somewhat cool, but the idea of some 14 year old walking in and plopping down 20 bucks on a previously sweat-soaked Winger shirt is just wrong in so many ways, I don't even want to think about it.

― Sean Carruthers, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

If the guys in Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor took to sporting Yngwie Malmsteen t-shirts, I'm certain that they could elevate him to the proper god/icon stature he deserves to be in the post-rock circles.

The Gang of Four is doing far too well in the Cultural Revolution, aren't they? What would the Great Helmsman say?

― badger, Friday, 27 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

On Children's BBC one of the presenters was wearing a Europe T-shirt! A Europe T-Shirt...Sweden's greatest ever hard rock band...I actually thought it'd be kinda funny if some kid later saw a Europe CD and bought it coz this presenter was weraing their T-shirt! I still have my Iron Maiden T-shirt but unfortunately it's from the Sevnth Son era and doesn't fit anymore...I could sell it some trendy I guess! :)

― james e l, Saturday, 28 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

four years pass...

Martha Stewart Living Magazine, April, 2005, Page 21, California Closets Ad

Pre-teen boy playing his drums in front of a highly organized closet wearing a Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power t-shirt!

― Dennis, Thursday, 5 May 2005 15:13 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm a streetwalkin cheetah with a shelf full of shoe horns!

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 5 May 2005 15:15 (eighteen years ago) link

a runaway son with a closet full of iZods/
I'm the town's preppiest guy/
I'm the one who's shops and who buys/

― Lord Custos Omicron (Lord Custos Omicron), Thursday, 5 May 2005 16:00 (eighteen years ago) link

five years pass...

My prediction for summer 2001? The hooded top and flares revival.
― stevie, Friday, 27 April 2001 01:00 (9 years ago)

awesome call on the hooded top

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Thursday, 10 March 2011 21:02 (thirteen years ago) link

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