Punk is fashion as a raised middle finger. A battered leather jacket covered in studs and badges, a ripped T-shirt held together with safety pins, tartan trousers, heavy boots and hair that defies gravity. It began in the mid-1970s in New York and London as a reaction against boring music, a stagnant economy and polite society, and it changed fashion more than almost any other youth movement. Its most important idea, that anyone can make their own clothes, music and rules, is still radical today.
What is punk?
Punk is a music genre, a subculture and a philosophy. The music is fast, loud, short and simple; you do not need to be a virtuoso to play it. The philosophy is DIY (do it yourself): start your own band, print your own magazine, make your own clothes, and question authority. The fashion follows from both. Punk clothes are customised, destroyed and rebuilt, and they are designed to shock, provoke or simply refuse to please.
Punk has influenced many later styles in this series, including grunge, goth, emo and scene, and its signature pieces have become permanent parts of mainstream fashion.
Where it came from
New York and CBGB
Punk’s first home was a scruffy club in New York’s Bowery called CBGB, where, from 1974, bands such as Television, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie and Talking Heads played. The Ramones created a uniform of leather jackets, ripped jeans and sneakers. Richard Hell, of Television and later the Voidoids, wore torn T-shirts held together with safety pins and spiky, chopped hair, a look that would travel across the Atlantic and become iconic.
London, King’s Road and Vivienne Westwood
In London, the story centres on a small shop at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea, run by designer Vivienne Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren. It changed names and styles several times; in 1974 it became SEX, selling rubber and fetish-inspired clothing alongside provocative T-shirts, and in 1976 it was renamed Seditionaries. Westwood created many of punk’s defining designs there: bondage trousers with straps linking the legs, slashed and safety-pinned T-shirts, muslin shirts printed with slogans, and tartan used in a rebellious new way.
McLaren managed the Sex Pistols, the band that became the face of British punk. Their single “God Save the Queen”, released in 1977 during Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, was banned by the BBC and still became a huge hit. Jamie Reid’s artwork for the band, using cut-out ransom-note lettering, became one of the most copied graphic styles in the world.
Around them, a crowd of young fans, including the group known as the Bromley Contingent (Siouxsie Sioux among them), turned their own bodies into art. The Clash wore paint-splattered, stencilled clothes. Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and the members of The Slits created bold, playful looks that challenged ideas about how women in rock should appear.
After 1977
Punk’s first wave burned out quickly, but it split into many branches. Anarcho-punk, led by the band Crass, wore all black and focused on politics. American hardcore, from bands such as Black Flag and Minor Threat, went for short hair, plain T-shirts and a stripped-down look. The 1980s brought the tall, colourful mohawks and studded jackets that most people now picture as “punk”. Later came pop-punk, crust punk, skate punk and riot grrrl, each with its own version of the style.
The codes
- Jackets: leather biker jackets (especially the Perfecto style) and denim vests covered in studs, patches, badges and hand-painted band names.
- Tops: ripped and safety-pinned T-shirts, band tees, slogan shirts, mesh, mohair jumpers.
- Bottoms: tartan and bondage trousers, skinny ripped jeans, kilts, mini skirts over torn fishnets.
- Shoes: Dr. Martens, combat boots, brothel creepers, Converse.
- Accessories: safety pins, chains, padlocks, spiked collars and cuffs, studded belts, many earrings.
- Hair and make-up: mohawks, liberty spikes, bleached and brightly dyed hair, heavy dark eye make-up.
- Colours: black, red, tartan, with neon hair colours as accents.
The deeper code is customisation. Every punk jacket is different because its owner made it so. The same is true of zines, the photocopied fan magazines (such as Sniffin’ Glue) that spread punk ideas without needing a publisher.
See the mood
IMAGES: PINTEREST. TAP ANY IMAGE TO SEE IT ON PINTEREST AND ITS ORIGINAL SOURCE.
The references
Music: the Ramones’ first album (1976); the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks (1977); The Clash’s London Calling (1979); Patti Smith’s Horses (1975); Blondie; Siouxsie and the Banshees; X-Ray Spex; The Slits; Black Flag; Dead Kennedys; Bikini Kill.
Film: Jubilee (1978) by Derek Jarman; The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980); Sid and Nancy (1986); Danny Boyle’s TV series Pistol (2022); and Cruella (2021), whose young heroine dresses in Westwood-inspired punk.
Fashion: Vivienne Westwood above all; Zandra Rhodes, whose 1977 “Conceptual Chic” collection turned punk safety pins and tears into couture; Gianni Versace’s safety-pin dress, worn by Elizabeth Hurley in 1994; Jean Paul Gaultier; Alexander McQueen; and, more recently, Junya Watanabe, Undercover’s Jun Takahashi and Dilara Findikoglu. In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute staged the exhibition Punk: Chaos to Couture, the theme of that year’s Met Gala.
Why it caught on
Mid-1970s Britain was in a deep economic crisis, with high unemployment and strikes, and many young people felt they had no future. Punk turned that frustration into energy. It was cheap to join: a second-hand jacket, a few safety pins and a marker pen were enough. It was also democratic. Punk said that you did not need training, money or permission to make music, art or fashion, and that message inspired a generation of designers, photographers, writers and musicians.
Punk was also one of the first youth cultures in which women were front and centre, as singers, designers and style leaders, and many of them deliberately broke the rules about what was “pretty” or “feminine”.
The debate
The biggest argument about punk fashion is whether it can survive being sold. Within a couple of years of 1977, high street shops were selling pre-ripped T-shirts and plastic safety pins, and by the 2010s a punk-themed Met Gala saw celebrities in designer gowns paying tribute to a movement that had mocked exactly that world. Many original punks felt the exhibition missed the point, while others saw it as recognition that punk had changed fashion for good.
There are also uncomfortable chapters. Some early punks wore offensive symbols, including the swastika, purely to shock, a choice that was widely criticised then and now, and that many of those involved later regretted. Punk also had to confront racism and sexism within its own scenes, leading to movements such as Rock Against Racism in the late 1970s and riot grrrl in the 1990s.
How to wear it now
Start with a black leather or faux-leather biker jacket and customise it: badges, studs, a painted back panel. Add a band T-shirt (ideally from a band you actually listen to), tartan trousers or a mini skirt with ripped tights, and a pair of Dr. Martens. For a more polished look, borrow one punk element and wear it with something unexpected, such as a tartan suit, a safety-pin earring with a white shirt, or a mohair jumper with tailored trousers. And remember the most punk thing of all is to make something yourself.
Where it is now
Vivienne Westwood died in December 2022, and the tributes showed how deeply punk shaped modern fashion. Her house continues under Andreas Kronthaler. Punk’s pieces, the leather jacket, the boots, the tartan, the safety pin, are permanent fixtures in fashion, and every few seasons a new designer rediscovers its energy. Meanwhile, small punk scenes around the world, including in Indian cities, keep the music and the DIY ethic alive in basements and small venues.
Related aesthetics
Grunge · Goth · Emo · Skater · Indie Sleaze
Learn more: hear from more voices
A quick, witty guide to punk fashion, and a long video essay on the contradiction at its heart: how do you sell anti-fashion?
Read more
- Vivienne Westwood (born 1941) and the Postmodern Legacy of Punk Style — The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A curator’s essay on Westwood’s punk designs.
- An oral history of Vivienne Westwood’s complicated relationship with punk — Far Out. Westwood’s own words on the movement she helped create.
Sources: music and fashion histories of 1970s punk; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Punk: Chaos to Couture (2013); Vivienne Westwood archive history. Instagram post embedded from @viviennewestwood. Videos are embedded from YouTube and remain the work of their creators. Linked articles belong to their publishers.
Leave a Reply