- For several years, I wanted to do an exhibition on punk--
its origins, but primarily punk as an aesthetic
and how that aesthetic has impacted on high fashion.
Anyway, punk introduced
the language of postmodernism into fashion.
The idea of eclecticism, the idea of deconstructionism,
the idea of mixing different stylistic references
into one ensemble
actually evolved from the punk aesthetic of the 1970s.
We've always thought that punks were heroic,
they were these brave characters,
and its impact not just on fashion
but on the cultural landscape in general is so enormous
that we wanted to showcase it and give it its authority
with prestige that we feel it deserves.
In the entrance way, we see a video of punks pogo-ing,
which was a dance that was jumping up and down.
So it's basically punks in a mosh pit.
And straddling the video on either side
is an original punk garment
by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren,
and on the other side is an ensemble by John Galliano
for Christian Dior Couture.
And I think more than any other designer,
John Galliano has taken on the mantle of punk
in terms of his clothes being about provocation,
being about confrontation.
It's really about the story from the sidewalk to the catwalk.
The punk ethos of do-it-yourself
does seem, you know, on the surface,
at odds with the couture ethos of made to measure,
but I think both are defined and driven by these impulses
of originality and individuality.
The first three galleries are an origin story
and the tale of two cities,
where we focus on the origins of punk in London and New York.
The first gallery you enter is New York,
where we've recreated the toilets at a club, CBGB's.
The toilets were always a place
that all the action occurred in them--
a famous quotation by Patti Smith.
And CBGB's was really the center in which punk rose up
with bands like Television, the Ramones,
Debbie Harry, and Patti Smith.
The focus was music rather than fashion,
and it had more intellectual and artistic underpinnings
than it had in London.
The seeds of the look of punk
very much were germinating in New York at the time,
and Malcolm McLaren took it back to London
and gave it much more of a British spin.
After CBGB's,
we go into a gallery called Clothes for Heroes,
which also has another period room, 430 Kings Road,
which was the boutique owned
by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.
In New York, punk very much centered around a club, CBGB's,
a nighttime sort of movement.
In London, people lived and breathed punk in the daytime.
You saw them on the Kings Road,
and these extraordinary characters
with their tribal makeup
and tribal hair and tribal body piercings.
They were these extraordinary peacocks.
To me, the look of punk, or what we know as the look of punk,
very much was crystalized in London, so in a way,
I wanted the first fashions that you saw in the exhibition
to be those created
by the designers Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.
Hair and makeup was something we thought about long and hard.
We had artist Guido Palau,
who came up with this extraordinary haircut
based on Sid Vicious and Debbie Juvenile--
again, this idea of do-it-yourself,
getting scissors and hacking at your hair.
And on the perimeter of the gallery, we have t-shirts
with overt sexual and political imagery and slogans.
Punks used t-shirts about sex, about politics
as a deliberate provocation and deliberate confrontation.
Punks were, in a way, very brave.
They were these people who didn't really care.
They broke all the rules
in terms of age or gender or even sexuality.
So I think that punks became these sort of rebellious heroes,
anti-heroes.
In Clothes for Heroes,
there is a 60-foot monitor showing Jordan,
in a way the queen of punk, a highly original dresser,
and she was also the main shop assistant at 430 Kings Road.
She certainly had a huge influence
on how punks looked in London.
After A Tale of Two Cites,
we now have a suite of four galleries
in which we have four different manifestations
of the do-it-yourself aesthetic
that was created by punks in the mid to late '70s
and its impact on high fashion.
Hardware is actually presented as a sculpture corridor
made out of Styrofoam, where we look at designers
who've co-opted the spikes, safety pins,
the studs, the chains, the hardware of punk
and adapted it into couture and high fashion.
In a way, punks originally adopted
this sort of sadomasochistic, rather brutish hardware
as a symbol of violence, even of cruelty,
and of course whenever fashion co-opts street style,
it inevitably sanitizes the origins and the meanings
of its original manifestation.
I think with designers like Versace, Thom Browne, Givenchy,
they'd adopted these trappings in a way to imbue their fashions
with a sort of beautiful rebelliousness.
I think, perhaps,
two of the most famous pieces in this gallery,
the dress by Versace from 1994,
forever going to be known as the Liz Hurley dress,
as she wore it to the premiere of "Four Weddings and Funeral."
And it's a sheath dress with enlarged safety pins
in gilds running down the side of it.
It's this couture version of the safety pin.
And the other dress, and two dresses actually,
by Zandra Rhodes.
Zandra Rhodes was the first designer to co-opt fashion
for the runway in 1977
as part of a conceptual sheet collection.
And it was very much influenced by punks on the street,
but it also referenced dress history.
It also referenced Renaissance slashing,
and also the famous tear dress by Schiaparelli
that she created in the late '30s.
And at the end of the corridor,
we have another large screen showcasing Sid Vicious,
actually the very last performance of the Sex Pistols,
performing in San Francisco in the '70s.
And it shows him bare chest with his famous lock and chain
that was used by several designers,
particularly Dolce & Gabbana, as inspiration.
After you walk through Hardware,
we come to a gallery called Bricolage,
and the idea of Bricolage
in a way strikes at the heart of what punk is all about.
A bricoleur was an amateur
who found objects in everyday life
and created something new from them.
And the architecture of this space is vacuum-packed trash
in this sort of Pepto-Bismol pink.
Punk appropriated objects, often from domestic contexts.
Punk was about artificiality.
It's about creating looks from trash culture,
from consumer culture.
Really, it's a critique of it.
And this gallery looks at designers who are also known
for recycling everyday objects
and creating new fashions out of them.
Martin Margiela in a way is the consummate bricoleur
in terms of using objects like broken plates,
found posters on the street, cheap necklaces, paper,
and creating extraordinary fashions out of them,
in a way as a critique of the excesses of fashion.
And the hero of this gallery is Wayne County, now Jayne County,
who was known for wearing found objects
and incorporating them into her fashions.
After Bricolage, we come into a gallery
called DIY Graffiti and Agitprop,
and it looks at the images and slogans
that punks incorporated into their fashions,
which in a way is the most self-evident expression
of do-it-yourself.
And the gallery itself looks like a bombed-out building.
In terms of the whole suite of galleries,
it looks the most like a club.
In the center of the gallery
are four ball gowns by Dolce & Gabbana,
which were actually inspired by Julian Schnabel's paintings.
In terms of the manifestation of the do-it-yourself aesthetic,
graffiti was certainty in a way the most political.
While many types of graffiti were popular among punks,
one of the most famous was a splatter or flicker painting,
and in this gallery, we have designers
who have looked to these punk scrawlings
and incorporated them into their clothing--
people like Alexander McQueen,
a dress that was worn by Shalom Harlow
in the collection called Number 13
in which she rotated like a doll and she was sprayed
with acid green and black paint by the car sprayer.
And we also have people like Stephen Sprouse,
who is very well known
for incorporating graffiti into his clothing,
less politically, more as an aesthetic expression.
We also have designers who have used the t-shirt
as a vehicle for propaganda,
people like Vivienne Westwood and Moschino, Martin Margiela.
Punks often used t-shirts and their clothing as banners,
and designers have continued that tradition
often for political and environmental purposes.
The final gallery in the exhibition
is called DIY Destroy,
and I wanted to end the exhibition with this concept.
I think perhaps more than any other aspect
of the punk ethos of do-it-yourself
is the practice of destroy, or deconstruction,
that's had the greatest impact on fashion.
And for punks,
this practice manifested itself in rips and tears.
These flashes became the ultimate emblems
of urban dereliction or disaffection.
And there are designers,
Hussein Chalayan and Martin Margiela,
who have taken on the political underpinnings
of rips and tears where it is a political statement
about poverty and about disaffection.
On the whole, for designers in the exhibition,
it's more about an aesthetic of poverty.
And you think about the Chanel suit by Karl Lagerfeld,
in a way the ultimate symbol of bourgeois fashionability.
And by slashing it, he turned that idea on its head,
but at the same time,
he still retained the symbols of the Chanel suit.
But Lagerfeld is a postmodernist in the fact that he constantly
goes back into the history of Chanel
and reinterprets it with a very modern sensibility.
The ultimate deconstructionist
is Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons,
and I think more than any other designer,
Rei Kawakubo constantly changes your eye
in terms of collections.
She's also somebody who offers a critique
of platonic ideals of beauty,
and she turns them all on its head
to present new definitions of beauty,
new definitions of fashion.
And that's really what punk was all about,
to expand the parameters of fashion
and to question fashion in general.
Rei Kawakubo is as brave and as heroic in her creativity
as punks were.
In a way, nothing's come since then
that's been as radical, which is probably why designers
still look to punk, because of its innovation.