While visiting New York City recently, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as per usual, and while there, I took a gander at their punk rock fashion show. I was a punk rock fan myself (I was an elementary school punker in the late 70s), and although I missed seeing the first generation of punk rock bands live in the 1970s (as well as being too young to play in one of them), I played in some punk bands myself in the 80s and 90s, and played at CBGBs and many similar New York City clubs.
Now, it's funny to me to see a show about punk rock fashion in the museum, largely because it's not the sort of thing they'd deign to show unless it was hoity toity fashion designers borrowing inspiration from the punk aesthetic to make absurdly expensive clothes that rip off the punk look, and that's exactly what this is. In fact, we get a sense of what the museum thinks of punk rock immediately upon entering the exhibit, for the very first thing one sees is a re-creation of the CBGBs men's bathroom circa mid 1970s. If memory serves it was far more colorful in the 1980s and 90s, and in fact it's so blasé that the only message they're really sending the visitor is that the museum considers punk rock to be excrement. Well, for many punks, that sentiment is probably mutual. (Not for me, though: I love the Met!) But why the hell didn't they re-create the stage and surrounding area of CBGBs instead of the bathroom, and have mannequins of the Ramones playing on the stage, with a looped concert performance of theirs from around 1977 or something? Oh, but then they'd have to get the right vintage instruments, and they can be very expensive, whereas toilets are probably pretty cheap (plus, incidentally, they send that disdainful punk = crap message, don't they? And that may have been refuted by an accurate re-creation of a punk rock show, so we only get the bathroom, and several artsy video loops which show us snips and snaps of an old punk show here & there, but not enough to get the feel of it at all, really.).
In fact, now that I think about it, why didn't they re-create the front entrance of CBGBs, with that world-famous awning, and with lots of mannequins of punk rockers hanging around outside the front of the club like they all used to do between sets and when it got too hot or crowded or violent inside? That would have shown off what real punk rock fashion was like! Oh, but I guess this show is not really about the real do-it-yourself punk rock fashion aesthetic, and the Met Museum curators may not even know what it was like, nor do they care, I'd venture to guess, so long as their own kids don't start dressing that way.
Well, then the show has another re-creation, this time of Malcolm McLaren's London clothing shop circa 1976, I believe. The blurbs on the walls leave out an awful lot of stuff that happened in New York, basically insulting the New York scene and claiming New York simply inspired London to really create punk. (My ass it did! Yes, London was inspired, but really just to create their own brand of more overtly political punk rock {which then came back to the United States and inspired the more overtly political anti-Reagan hardcore punk scene in America in and around the early 1980s.}. Punk rock was invented by Americans in the good old U.S.A. From what I understand from many English bands, what happened is that the Ramones went over to play in England in the mid 70s, and everyone who saw them was inspired to start a band {sort of like that Sex Pistols show everyone talks about in Manchester which purportedly inspired all those Manchester bands like Joy Division, et. al.}. And then when the Ramones went back to play that famous New Years Eve concert at the Rainbow, which constitutes their first live album: "It's Alive", they were already being hailed as heroes.) But at least we get to see a lot of the ideas of the mixing all different stuff together, the intentionally trashy look, and the blurbs admit that punk style in London was really more of a do-it-yourself grass-roots expression of the disgruntled and unemployed youth during the recession of 1970s London. So the very idea that punks could afford nice expensive designer clothes is a ridiculous premise on its face, and yet it still managed to inspire some real design aristocracy to try to rip it off for enormous price tags.
Yes, they very fact that something costs wads of money is proof positive that it is not punk whatsoever, but that didn't stop designers from copping the shabby chic aura anyway, and the fact that it's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art proves that at least some people like it and think it's "great art". It's funny, because the couture clothes are actually quite pretentious, which was the opposite of what punk was. And so it's odd to have a show that's called "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" at all. And yet there is one, which just goes to show you that even the most arrogant fashion designers still can't ignore the styles conjured up by the unwashed masses, and they'll cop those looks to make clothes that the original inspiration can not only not afford to ever wear, never mind buy, but which they must actually go to a museum in order to see in it the flesh, as it were. (Flesh being the kind of base stuff punk was all about; although for this show, the museum has what look to be sterile mannequins instead. I guess punk kids are too unpredictable, disrespectful of authority, and hostile towards commercialism to ever be allowed to model such couture homages to their subculture, especially with what their purported astronomical price tag is.)
Ah, but for me the most fun of the whole thing was what I'd like to call the Sid Vicious Room. In this room, which ended with a giant full-wall-sized black & white video loop of Sid Vicious playing the bass in concert with the Sex Pistols probably circa 1977, there was a series of mannequins with what looked like a combination of a black spiky punk rock hairdo and that black British guard hat you see guards at Buckingham Palace wear upon their heads. And this is really quite clever as an in-joke for those who know, because as we all know, Sid Vicious is famous for his black spiky hairdo, and as not everyone knows, his father was one of those British palace guards who would have worn that big fuzzy black hat on guard duty. This combination of looks could not have been accidental, in my view, due to these facts; although I suppose sometimes coincidences occur with a certain unknowing synchronicity. But I'd sure like to know if it was indeed intentional for the reasons I suggest.
But if you're at all interested at how a do-it-yourself fashion statement/personal expression by authentic disaffected artistic youths gets perverted into crass mass consumerism and then somehow morphs into high fashion to be worn by the very people punks would have hated the most, then by all means come down to the museum and check it out! But be aware that any resemblance to actual punk rock fashion is purely superficial, especially once you get into the couture stuff. The show isn't bad, but it's a shame that the do-it-yourself stuff that was really well done isn't the focus here instead of the products of capitalistic ventures by rich & famous punk wannabes hoping the authenticity might rub off a bit (which it didn't). The only semi-authentic stuff on display here* is the Malcolm McLaren store displays, and if you know anything about that guy, I think the authenticity is questionable, as he was only in it for the $. In fact, I'm frankly surprised they didn't include a re-creation of the punky clothing store Zipperhead from South Street, Philadelphia, which became the model for mass-marketed "punk rock" clothing to suburban American teens across the country as a sign of pseudo middle-class rebellion. (The woman who was the brains behind that store, Margaret somebody, was really a marketing genius in figuring out that rebellion would sell well as a de facto uniform for disaffected misfits and anti-preppies, as well as a ubiquitous Halloween costume for frat parties and such, and she deserves some credit for that too, if they're going to discuss punk rock fashion going mainstream. But then again, that stuff's not exactly art, so that's most likely the reason it ain't here.)
But it's especially amusing to me that punk rock is considered in some circles to have been born in England, because the very term punk rock was reportedly coined right there in New York City especially for the band The Ramones, who wore a uniform of street punk clothing like torn bluejeans and tough looking leather biker jackets, and they sang songs related to their personal experiences, such as vandalism, hooliganism, bullying, drug addiction, substance abuse, psychiatric treatment (and its related facilities), horror movies, etc. And that's what the term punk really refers to, I believe. Had this form of music been born independently in England, I believe it would have been called something else, and I think it is the very fact that New York City punk rock music inspired the British scene that this music and fashion phenomenon is even referred to as punk rock at all in England. But even so, the New York fashion aspect of punk rock is almost entirely eschewed in this exhibit.
Here's a link to the Met's webpage for the "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" show (You can see the "Sid Vicious Room" I mentioned here, as well as the wigs on the mannequins, in the middle of the page on the right side.):
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/PUNK
And here's some information about Sid Vicious (check out his hair):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Vicious
And here's what those fuzzy Buckingham Palace guard hats look like (imagine this hat as a spiky Sid Vicious hairdo, and you've got those mannequin wigs at the Met exhibit down to a T):
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00798/bearskin_798548c.jpg
Oh, and this was the Zipperhead store on South Street, Philadelphia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zipperhead_south_street_philly.jpg
* I am, of course, referring here to the clothes on display. The video loops are great (although too short to let people really see what a punk rock show was like), and the music was certainly legitimate enough as far as I could tell when I was there. In fact, I was singing along to most of it.
