Margaret Rose Jaster in an article in The Irish Review argues that Gaelic Lords in Ireland deliberately defied (or obeyed) English rules around the wearing of traditional Irish dress, which was frequently banned in some capacity, as a means of sending a message to both their English rulers and the wider public and that they create a political spectacle as a means of resistance to English colonialism (Jaster, 2006). In exploring the importance of traditional dress in Irish society as well as the views of the ruling English with regards to clothing that differed from their own, Jaster exposes how the wearing of traditional dress could be used as a political statement. Particularly telling is one encounter where traditional dress is very deliberately not worn:
“the instance when the Irish chiefs encountered Prince John may have taught the Irish elite not to wear their revered garb in times of political spectacle, because when the O'Neills submit to the Tudors, they do not. To their own people the Irish elite consistently send a sartorial message that sabotages their verbal messages: read my clothes, not my lips” (Jaster, 2006)
This is contrasted against the throwing down of the mantle (a traditional Irish cloak) that was seen when Irish soldiers submitted to their own Lords (Jaster, 2006). In these examples of the political and cultural significance of both particular items of clothing (the mantle) and dress as a whole, we can begin to see how style can serve as a way of making a political statement, even when that statement is not or cannot be explicitly stated.
This idea, of dress as a political critique is something that Dick Hebdige argues for in his book ‘Subculture. The Meaning of Style’ specifically in regards to youth subcultures in Britain in the late 60s and the 70s while Betty Luther Hillman makes a similar argument in ‘Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style and the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s and 1970s’ in which she analyses the impact of style on political movements in America during the 1960s and 70s. It is no coincidence that both books address the tumultuous period of the 60s and 70s, as these decades were times of great political and social changes, changes that were accompanied by the emergence of various new subcultures and modes of dressing. Hillman explores how left-wing and progressive groups such as the hippies, black power activists and gay liberationists used styles that fell outside of the cultural norm at the time to level various critiques at that same culture while also examining the backlash from various conservative political groups, not just to the progressive messaging of these movements but to what their ways of dressing represented but I will pay particular attention to the hippies in this essay:
“The hairstyles and modes of dress adopted by some youths and activists were thus interpreted and portrayed as symbols of their fundamental threats to traditional American society. To opponents, these styles came to symbolize rebellion, dirtiness, overt sexuality, gender- role confusion, and lack of middle- class “respectability,” mirroring the fundamental threats that other changes in America seemed to hold for the traditional social order that they prized.” (Hillman, 2015)
Extracts such as this illustrate the symbolic and cultural power that style has, particularly in a society that, exiting the 1950s had extremely rigid and gendered social norms. Any perceived variation from these norms was viewed by conservatives as a threat to the status quo, which made the choices of these activists a powerful political statement but also a source of a large amount of backlash, as well as internal strife within each respective movement (Hillman, 2015) and this phenomenon of style or fashion, becoming a topic of public discussion and outrage is a point I will return to later on this essay.
Hebdige explores these style choices as statements not just for politically leftwards groups such as punks but also by groups with much more socially conservative values such as skinheads and teddy boys. The politics of the various subcultures discussed in Subculture. The Meaning of Style range from the nihilism and anarchism of punk to the explicit neo-fascism of skinheads but all take on a distinct style and aesthetic, drawing on various influences, but particularly on working-class British culture and the turmoil going on in the country at that particular time (Hebdige, 1979). However, it is punk in particular that will be discussed here. The aesthetic of punk was dirty, D.I.Y. and distinctly proletarian, just as its politics were explicitly anarchistic and pro-working class, but it often co-opted symbols that clashed with straight-forward or traditional leftist politics, with one example being the swastika.
“The punks were not generally sympathetic to the parties of the extreme right … seem to indicate that the punk subculture grew up partly as an antithetical response to the reemergence of racism in the mid-70s. We must resort, then, to the most obvious of explanations – that the swastika was worn because it was guaranteed to shock.” (Hebdige, 1979)
The use of symbols such as the swastika was for shock value more than any real political symbolism and the muddling of these symbols and the defacing of them by combing them with the bondage wear and torn-up union jacks renders them so abstracted from their original context that they lose much of their inherent meaning. This defacement is not without its complications, however, as the loss of inherent meaning for these symbols allows them to be interpreted, sometimes in ways that clash explicitly with the politics of the punk bands who originated the styling of them. This projection of fascism onto punk would eventually lead some bands to state their politics explicitly: “Accusations of fascism soon led bands such as The Clash to better define their stance, presenting themselves as, ‘anti-fascist, anti-violence, anti-racist and pro-creative’” (Worley, 2017). The use of provocative dress and symbolism gave punk a particularly heightened political and social power but it may have allowed some of its messaging to get lost, and as Worley suggests, led to its fracturing into many smaller subgroups (Worley, 2017). This was one of the downsides of the punks' penchant for shock value and its mismatched array of influences but it was the shocking nature of punk, as well as debates around what its critiques might be that gave it such visceral potential to affect political and cultural change.
Hillman and Hebdige both discuss the use of these countercultural styles as a means of creating community or in finding common ground with others within their respective books:
“Another individual explained, “When I show up anyplace, I don’t need to tell my brothers and sisters, or my enemies, ‘Hey look, I’m against the Vietnam War, racism, poverty and pollution. I dig grass, black power and revolution.’ They look at me and they know. . . . My hair tells the story.” Long hair and nonconformist dress thus provided a symbol, at least in theory, to identify like- minded dissenters and activists” (Hillman, 2015).
This idea of style as a means of building community gives another insight into why it has such cultural power, and why many politically minded groups are drawn to it as a means of expressing their views. What may otherwise have been arbitrary choices gain significance and meaning due to the groups they become associated with, and this allows various group members to identify each other, building a community around shared ideas or politics without having explicitly communicate them upon first meaning. This idea is amplified when the choices themselves carry a message that furthers the ideas of a particular group, acting as both a means of political expression as well as a signifier as a part of a particular group or subculture. One example of this is the penchant of hippie men for long hair and beards, something that was not only in opposition to the traditional, clean-cut look of the decades preceding but antithetical to the rigid buzzcuts and clean shave that was enforced by the American military. This allowed the look to become a sort of allegory for not only the hippies' embrace of a more naturalistic aesthetic and way of living but for their anti-war political views (Hillman, 2015).
The styles of the hippies and the punks deviated deliberately from the mainstream fashions of their time and this became an increasing source of outrage for conservative politicians and the press. In particular, the associations that were made between these groups and gender or sexual ‘deviancy’ resulted in great outrage, whether it was the implication of sexual promiscuity or homosexual relationships around the hippies (Hillman, 2015) or the allusions to kink and fetish in the punk community (Hebdige, 1979). The associations between hippie style in particular and anti-war rhetoric, muddied gender roles and communism or radical leftism became so prevalent that, the reality of the allegations aside, it resulted in the targeting of hippies for very real harassment, as The Walker Commission Report would later find (Hillman, 2015). The backlash to the departure from ‘mainstream’ ways of dressing illustrates that these engrained norms can carry just as much political or social messaging as subcultural or countercultural fashions do. In fact, the ‘mainstream’ style of the 1960s became a political statement in and of itself in the United States with conservative and liberal politicians alike explicitly enforcing it upon their staff and Eugene McCarthy even using the idea of the clean-cut, All-American youth as a campaign tactic through the ‘Clean for Gene’ slogan (Hillman, 2015). This notion that the normal way of dressing (i.e. the style of hegemony) held some sort of moral or political righteousness, and that to dress in another way was a sign of some deviancy or made one in some way dangerous bears remarkable similarity to the attitudes of English colonial officials discussed in the first section of this essay, and only further illustrates the power that these stylistic norms hold (and the reasons for breaking them).
In the final part of this essay, I wish to briefly discuss the way in which consumerism and the fashion industry have affected the way that countercultural or politically charged styles and their potency to incite political or social change. The movements I have previously discussed in this essay occurred, for the most part, before the widespread adoption of fast fashion and, in all cases, before the rise of the internet and social media. This gave these style movements a very different environment in which to grow than the one that exists now. We live now in an era of social media, increasingly fast-paced trend cycles and an ever-increasing cycle of consumerism. The modern fashion industry, particularly its reliance on the mass consumption and then disposal of cheap clothing, would be antithetical to the punks and their D.I.Y. ethos and to the hippies and their anti-materialism, but this has not stopped major fashion brands from co-opting the aesthetics and styles of these movements to generate a profit.
“Processes of commodification within consumer society enclose and coopt radical actions, giving rise among many cultural critics to a cluster of propositions about postmodern culture: there is no outside of commodity capital; revolution (a modern notion) is dead; internal transformation and strategic reinscription constitute viable political projects; and social contradictions offer productive sites for inquiry and activism. In this postmodern scenario, grandiose political schemes have had their day, although capitalism has without question recently entered upon another stage of grandiose global financial expansion” (Leitch, 1996)
Fashion as an industry cannot be extracted from the hegemonic capitalist system with which it is so entangled but this does not necessarily mean that style cannot be used for liberatory or radical purposes. It merely means that in our modern times, we must be increasingly aware of the commodification and absorption of initially radical ideas into the hegemonic mainstream, and be willing to adapt to these tactics, rather than being tricked into the idea that consuming style that was once worn by those with radical values means that we ourselves are radicals. This does not mean that we cannot draw on the lessons or the aesthetics of the past, indeed all of the groups I have discussed have, to some degree, drawn on the past, but by recontextualising it, collaging it or inverting it, they have twisted out new meanings and subversions from otherwise incoherent choices. They have also used those meanings to build communities and express their discontent with politics and culture in a way that was pointed and powerful in the setting it was in.
In conclusion, yes style can be a means for expressing political and social critique when that style can effectively visualise the criticism it is meant to be making and stand in opposition to the hegemonic norms that it protests. Style can also be a tool for conservative politics or hegemonic forces. It does this by enforcing rigid norms around what is an acceptable way of dressing, or by using mainstream style to enforce hegemonic views around gender, sex, class and sexuality. In addition to this, style can be an effective way of building community around particular political ideas, and for members of that community to identify those with similar politics or outlooks. It is important to note, however, that style as political critique is effective due to it being built upon the critiques it is making and the context in which they are made, and that when it is divorced from that (by hegemonic forces and major fashion houses) it loses much of its potency. It is also of note that capitalist forces often seek to subsume these styles and strip them of their political potency by making them palatable for mass consumption, and that if style is to retain any real critique of the status quo they must be built outside of the rapid trend cycles and mass consumerism of late-stage capitalism.
Hebdige, D., 1979. Subculture. The Meaning of Style. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002 ed. London and New York: Routledge.
Hillman, B. L., 2015. Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style and the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s and 1970s. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Jaster, M. R., 2006. ‘Out of All Frame and Good Fashion’: Sartorial Resistance as Political Spectacle.. The Irish Review, Issue no. 34, p. 44–57.
Leitch, V. B., 1996. Review: COSTLY COMPENSATIONS: POSTMODERN FASHION, POLITICS, IDENTITY. Modern Fiction Studies, 42(1), pp. 111-128.
Worley, M., 2017. No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.