Subcultural Style Research Articles

Pretty in pink vs pretty in black: blogs as gendered avatars

Blogs are usually treated as texts, despite the expressive potential of their visual elements through which ideology is often not expressed straightforwardly, but encoded in the imagery. This study offers an analysis of blog design themes and blog sidebar ‘badges’ produced by Jewish-Israeli girls aged 11 to 16 on Israblog, Israel’s largest blogging community. By looking at the blog as a ‘digital body’ or an avatar of the blogger, the author examines design elements as resources of identity performance and contextualizes the findings within the fields of girl studies and feminist theory. She argues that under the surface of the distinctive subcultural styles often presented as adversarial lies the same hegemonic Western girlhood model; however, global girlhood models may be interpreted as subversive in the Israeli cultural context.

In your face: Dress of the Dunedin underground music scene, 1985–1996

Abstract This article traces changing styles of dress in Dunedin’s underground music scene between the years 1985 and 1996, identifying themes, patterns and notable features, as represented in photographs by notable Dunedin identity Gaylene.1 Situating punk as an important foundation of a continuing Dunedin music scene, this article considers subcultural style as a means of expressing both individuality (against the perceived mainstream) and solidarity (within the subculture). This article presents a trajectory for the ways subsequent sartorial styles have been informed by punk in Dunedin. Recognizing Malcolm Barnard’s suggestion that dress can ‘challenge both bourgeois culture and the capitalist system’ (Barnard 2002: 136), we position the subjects of Gaylene’s photographs, and the manner of their dress, within the wider social, political and geographical context of the time. Analysis is presented from both subcultural and post-subcultural frameworks. This analysis is considered and supported through the testimonies of active participants in the scene, notably interviews with Gaylene herself and with reference to a locally produced documentary. While it is acknowledged that both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, we, the authors, suggest that these strengths and weaknesses must be recognized in relation to the context of time; the specific practices, beliefs and appearance of subcultures are context dependent and therefore lend themselves to specific analytical methodologies.

Collective identity in the Ducktail subculture in post-World War II South Africa

South Africa in the 1950s not only witnessed the rise of apartheid, but the spread of black and white youth gang subcultures (tsotsis and Ducktails). This article is limited to white youths. It focuses on subcultural style and heterogeneity in collective identity. There has been a tendency in subcultural studies to homogenise members of subcultures in the search for a unique subcultural style. Although the Ducktail subculture was comprised of multifarious identities (gendered, racial and ethnic), it is contended here that the Ducktails’ subcultural template is displayed through a heterogeneous collective identity which is visible in their stylistic tastes, language preferences and ritualistic socialising. It suggests that subcultural identities exist in an individual and collective form and urges scholars to allow for diversity and heterogeneity in subcultural accounts by drawing on the personal testimonies of ‘subculturalists’.

Sartorial symbiosis or creative commensalism? Collaborations between Japanese fashion designers and Western apparel makers

In recent years the creative outputs of a cohort of Japanese fashion designers have engendered widespread interest in the country's street and sub-cultural styles. This article charts the trajectories followed by these innovators in the early 21st century, making particular reference to cross-cultural collaborations undertaken with Western apparel makers. An introductory section documents a 'design diaspora' operating in sites ranging from the British high street to the centre of the bespoke tailoring trade. The main discussion compares early strategies facilitating entry to European markets with those mobilised for survival during a period of retrenchment - focusing on the commensal aspects of encounters with Western fashion that have reiterated a global cachet and reinvented local credibility. The conclusion suggests that a reverence for tradition, craft and the 'rag-picking' abilities displayed by these designers has facilitated colonisation of commercial niches dedicated to the resuscitation of certain classic marques of sartorial culture.

Lowlife: Men’s style and clothing in the Atlanta Punk scene

Abstract From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Atlanta, Georgia, played host to a thriving Punk scene that developed its own varied and unique way of navigating within both dominant hegemonic southern culture and the established Punk subcultural style. In terms of dress, the Atlanta scene featured elements of global Punk style such as spiked and studded leather jackets and brightly coloured Mohawks alongside regional-style variations. This article aims to shed light on the way the Atlanta Punk scene worked off a balance between the influence of global Punk fashion and locally initiated style trends that responded to the specific characteristics of youth cultures and society in the south of the United States. The beginning of the Atlanta Punk scene may be tied to the US debut of the Sex Pistols, who played the Great Southeast Music Hall on 5 January 1978. At the time of the concert Atlanta Punk rock fans did not yet constitute a particular subculture. After the seminal Sex Pistols concert, however, a Punk scene quickly developed in the neighbourhood of Little Five Points where two major Punk clubs, Metroplex and 688, were located. Newspaper and magazine articles of the period described the clothing choices of performers and fans emphasizing how Atlanta punks differentiated themselves from the conservative southern concert. Punk acts and fans adopted a variety of trends including the do-it-yourself (DIY) culture and a revival of rockabilly fashion, best demonstrated by the home-grown band The Restraints. Perhaps just as telling were specific elements that were absent from the scene such as skinhead motifs and any indication of gender interplay or androgynous clothing. An exception was singer Phreddy Vomit, who often wore feminine make-up and fur. This article narrates the early development and basic characteristics of the Atlanta Punk scene describing some of the venues and the clothing pieces present and absent from some of the local Punk acts and their fans.

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies

‘This ain’t no love-in, this ain’t no happenin’: Misfits, Detroit hardcore and the performance of zombie scenarios

This article explores the (ever changing) manifestation of the living dead as iconographic metaphor and performance scenario in Detroit’s hardcore punk scene in the early 1980s. Focusing in particular on B-movie references by the Misfits, it will discuss how a shared transamerican vocabulary and image bank was used to respond to a national, cultural and economic landscape that played itself out in diverse ways on local and tribal levels. Here, low-budget atomic age zombie flicks of the 1950s and 1960s were made, as Dick Hebdige suggests they should, ‘to mean and mean again’ as a process of subcultural style. They hysterically re-performed the ‘real’ post-apocalyptic world of unemployment, fuel shortages, nuclear threat, curfews and pollution that was being portrayed contemporaneously in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). Although it is commonly argued that zombies, like all monsters, are manifestations of ‘collective nightmares’, for hardcore punks hanging out in Detroit in the early 1980s the performance of zombie scenarios can be better understood as the theatricalization of lived experience and an attempt to work through the fluid relationships between roles and participants.

A Taste for the Transgressive: Pushing Body Limits in Contemporary Performance Art

A Taste for the Transgressive: Pushing Body Limits in Contemporary Performance Art

Hip-Hop Dance Theatre in London: Legitimising an Art Form

Programming schedules in the West End and other prominent London venues are increasingly featuring hip-hop dance productions, marking innovative forays into the mainstream performance field by a former subcultural style. Choreography by Rennie Harris in the USA and Jonzi D, Kate Prince, Sandy ‘H20’ Kendrick and composer Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante in London offers material through which to consider developments in the theatricalisation of hip hop culture. Discussion also centres on mass media dissemination through television talent shows, films and cultural festivals such as the Olympic Games ceremonies. Analysis of reviews by professional critics reveals how some stereotypes are disrupted as the cultural capital of hip-hop dance rises. Key themes, including the use of narrative, characterisation and the disruption of dominant gender expectations, are drawn from a Society for Dance Research Study Day on ZooNation Dance Company in 2011. *

하이패션에 나타난 고딕 시크

As style is the center of subcultural identity and the clothes and adornments are the most visible symbol of its membership, the style of Goth symbolizes the strong subcultural identity and acts as the practical basis to demonstrate commitment to the subculture. In the turn of the third millennium, fashion designers have drawn upon and extracted elements from many subcultures to use in their collections. High fashion designers have introduced the Goth style since its inception in the 1980s. The energy and authenticity of Goth has been considered to be desirable in high fashion. The aesthetic property of Goth subcultural style defeats the established notion of standardized fashion and stimulates new consciousness, which makes room for diversification and subdivision. This study attempts to forecast the trends of the 21st century via researching the diffusion of Goth style in high fashion. In order to investigate the aesthetics and styles of Gothic chic, along with literature research, this study investigates the fashion collections from the late 1990s to 2000s as well as the images of street fashion magazines.

Resisting and Conforming to the ‘Lesbian Look’: The Importance of Appearance Norms for Lesbian and Bisexual Women

ABSTRACTAppearance is one way in which lesbian and bisexual identities and affiliation to lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) subculture can be demonstrated. ‘Butch’ and ‘androgynous’ styles have been used by lesbian women to communicate a non‐heterosexual identity. However, some LGB appearance researchers have argued that there has been a mainstreaming and diversification of lesbian style in the last couple of decades, which has resulted in less distinction between lesbian and straight looks. This research draws on the Social Identity approach to explore contemporary style in lesbian and bisexual communities. Fifteen lesbian and bisexual women took part in semi‐structured interviews which were analysed using thematic analysis. Although some participants reported a diversification of lesbian style, most used the term ‘butch’ to describe lesbian style, and a ‘boyish’ look was viewed as the most common contemporary lesbian style. By contrast, most participants could not identify distinct bisexual appearance norms. The data provide evidence of conflicting desires (and expectations) to visibly project social identity by conforming to specific lesbian styles, and to be an authentic, unique individual by resisting these subcultural styles. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

고스 하위문화 스타일의 미적 특성

Subcultural style is the center of subcultural identity and the clothes and adornments are the most visible symbol of membership. The Goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The style symbolized the strong subjective subcultural identity held by most Goths and acted as the practical basis to demonstrate their commitment to the subculture. This study investigates the aesthetic and the style of Goth subculture in its heyday of 1980s which has continued to affect mainstream fashion and culture since its birth. In order to inquire the concept of subculture and its style, this study executes literature survey as well as investigates the images of street style magazines to analyze the visual elements. The stylistic and the aesthetic characteristics of Goth subcultural style analyzed in this study are grouped into four categories as follows: first, Victoriana, which embodies the fear of death and the nostalgia for the past using Victorian morning dresses and corsets, second, vampirism, in that some Goths who are fascinated by vampires are costumed in vampire figures to advocate diabolism and decadence, third, sexual ambiguity of male Goths which emphasizes feminine appearance in the pursuit of androgyny, and fourth, sexual fetish of female Goths which represents aggressive eroticism utilizing fetish paraphernalia.

‘Fashionable pockets’: The transnational rise of cargo pants into popular culture

During the twentieth century, cargo pants have gone from a traditional military uniform to a popular casual pant worn by almost every segment in the global consumer market. Since the 1970s, when hippies wore army surplus vintage styles as a sign of protesting the Vietnam War until today, cargo pants have undergone a considerable transformation, changing in both fabrications and form. This article will examine the origins, histories and myths surrounding the development of cargo pants as a military garment. It will highlight the rise of cargo pants into mass culture through various popular culture intermediaries such as the military, subcultural style, film, media, retail and merchandising; demonstrating how this garment has become part of world dress and transnational mass fashion, as well as an icon in global popular culture.

From bag ladies to bathing apes: Japanese interventions in British sartorial culture

Abstract Since 1980 Japanese designers have built a solid, if understated, presence in the United Kingdom. This chapter examines the country’s interventions in British sartorial culture in the arenas of designer fashion, high-street apparel and sub-cultural style from three inter-related perspectives. The first considers the curatorial context of exhibitions that featured a cohort of avant-garde designers. The second addresses contrasting commercial strategies adopted by Japanese designers that involved mobilizations of traditional culture as ‘unique selling points’ and infiltration of the domestic market through collaborations with British apparel makers. The third documents visual consumption of creative outputs mediated through the styling regimes of the fashion periodical, and identifies a gendered differentiation in representations of Japanese fashion design. The conclusion suggests that, in an increasingly cosmopolitan creative milieu, interpretations of British sartorial heritage have become the province of ‘outsiders looking in’.

Cut, Layer, Break, Fold: Fashioning Gendered Difference, 1970s to the Present

Cut, Layer, Break, Fold:Fashioning Gendered Difference, 1970s to the Present Shehnaz Suterwalla (bio) Create glitches, gashes, ruptures, punctures, gaps, edges.Disrupt the smooth operation that creates linear narrative.Stop the smooth flow of history.Revel in the fracture.Tear at the seams.Stare at the seam.Fetishize the seam. Become fascinated with the seam. —Rosetta Brooks, "Rip It Up, Cut it Off, Rend It Asunder" Countercultural dress that has used the body as the critical site of resistance since the 1960s has refashioned the personal and the political as well as the personal as the political.1 In particular it is through style as antifashion, as a rebuke to the fashion system, that evidence of the productive operations of dress in creating difference becomes pronounced (Wilson 1985; Polhemus 1994). Oppositional dress has challenged power hierarchies to expose issues of class, race, and gender, of history itself (Styles 1998; Hall and Jefferson 1976; Partington 1992). The way in which alternative or oppositional style has subverted traditional identities and politics has been heavily theorized (Hebdige 1979; Hall and Jefferson 1976), yet its meanings remain ever open to interpretation, to contradiction. Attempts were pioneered by subcultural theory, especially the scholarship coming from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in the 1970s, to decipher the codes of subcultural behavior and dress through sociological, textual, and semiotic analysis. [End Page 267] Despite their groundbreaking role, these soon drew heavy criticism for their antimaterialist position that tended to ignore subjectivity. The CCCS's approach had failed to empirically study the groups it sought to explain, claimed its critics.2 A new wave rejected the Marxist/class-based frameworks that ignored race and gender and seemed to create a self-referential, looping reification of the concept of subculture (Muggleton 2000; Gilroy 1993; McRobbie 1991). Critics called for an about-face. They rejected homogenous interpretations of groups. Instead, they prioritized the participant's view in subcultural quests for authenticity and paid attention to the individualistic, fragmented, and heterogeneous natures of subcultures (Muggleton 2000; Rose 1994; Grossberg 1992). Within these reconceptualizations it was for some the overemphasis on style that troubled. For scholars like David Muggleton (2000), postmodern views of subcultures highlighted individualism as opposed to group affiliation. The worry was that overemphasizing style fetishizes material culture and its consumption as indispensible dimensions of youth culture. My emphasis, however, is particularly on style in an analysis exploring how British women from subcultural and alternative groups since the 1970s have used style to resist mainstream ideals of femininity in subjective articulations of identity. I examine the postmodern techniques of subcultural style, such as do-it-yourself, cut-and-paste, bricolage, appropriation, parody and sign entropy, the raiding of fashion history. However I present a post-postmodern analysis that moves beyond postmodern theory's focus on image and spectacle, on surface, on hyperreality in commercial culture and mass media to locate behavior in situated bodily practice. The theory of the 1980s determined postmodernism in terms of "a whole pornography of information and communication" (Baudrillard 1985, 130), with the world becoming oversaturated with images. Reality and representation had therefore become impossible to tell apart. In fact in postmodernism's cut-and-paste techniques that layered image upon image, reality had become, according to Hebdige, "as thin as the paper it is printed on" (1988, 159). Within this situation the subject, in Jean Baudrillard's view, "becomes a pure screen, a pure absorption and re-absorption surface of the influent networks" (1988, 27). In other words an individual in a postmodern world becomes merely an entity influenced by media, technology and the hyperreal. My analysis differs from this perspective by prioritizing embodiment. It is from the point of view of lived reality that I explore in this essay how [End Page 268] gender is manipulated and how gendered realities and women's politics of location have an impact on the way that style is embodied as gendered. Just as theorist Michel de Certeau problematized how tactics in everyday practice can become "clever tricks of the 'weak' within the order established by the 'strong,' an art of putting one over on the adversary on his own turf" (1984, 40...

Claiming Queer Territory in the Study of Subcultures and Popular Music

AbstractFor both the heterosexual and queer subject, subcultural participation and stylistic modes of cultural production and consumption, including popular music, are critical mechanisms aiding in the construction and expression of identity. Yet, in spite of abundant empirical examples of queer music cultures, subcultural studies scholars have paid minimal attention to queer sexualities and their concomitant stylistic modalities. In this article, I claim the importance of queer subterranean music cultures by synthesising significant literatures from various fields of inquiry including cultural sociology, popular musicology and queer studies. To begin, I will briefly clarify to whom and about what queer (theory) speaks. I then go on to offer an overview of subcultural and popular music research paying particular attention to the subaltern queer subject and surveying queer criticism within each field. Accordingly, I discuss various sites of popular music production and subcultural style such as punk and hip‐hop, to show how non‐heterosexual subjects carve space for resistant queer sexualities and merge queer sensibilities with pre‐existing cultural forms. This article consolidates interdisciplinary approaches that will benefit scholars invested in the study of queer subcultures and popular music.

Beyond spectacular specifics in the study of youth (sub)cultures

This paper examines how much we can learn about youth music and style groupings from the detail of the spectacular content and practices which most obviously distinguish such groups. First, I consider an apparent revival in theoretically driven interpretations of subcultural style, music and content in recent work on the goth scene, arguing that, for all their sophistication, such studies seem liable to reproduce some of the difficulties of earlier studies of spectacular symbolic meanings unless their findings are connected with other kinds of evidence. The paper then examines recent calls for greater focus on the minutiae of participants' sensory experience of distinct subcultural practices. I discuss case studies of promising work in the area, while emphasising the need to avoid reducing subcultures to the specificities of selected spectacular experience. Drawing the two parts together, I suggest many elements of subcultures are neither imprinted in spectacular sounds and texts nor discernable from the immediate sensations spectacular practices give rise to. In order to enhance our overall understanding it is important, therefore, that our examination of the distinct and extra-ordinary features of subcultures is contextualised in relation to broader understandings of a range of other properties and patterns which may be less distinct, unique or extra-ordinary.

존 카메론 밋첼의 영화 <헤드윅>에 나타난 복식에 관한 연구

Among diverse cultural types which can be shown in movie, 'Subculture' is young culture that resist to major culture. It shows its belief and identity via its own style. Their 'Subcultural Style' became popular with mass media and has been affected to major cultures. Therefore, in this research, with times background as postmodernism in end of 20th century and mainly with movie <Hedwig And The Angry Inch> which is about sexual minorities, I analyzed categories of costumes in the movie. Hedwig's rock costume shows combined fashion with hippie, punk, glam, kitsch, goth styles from the impact of postmodernism in mid 20th century. Tommy, showed his relief and defiant intention against old generations with grunge casual and graffiti styles. After he realized Hedwig's identity and showed defiant goth rock style as a famous rocker. The band, "Angry Inch", showed dissatisfaction and cynical attitude against the American society through subculture styles. Through this research, the fact that movie costume used a tool to show human's identity and value. Also, I can see that movie costume shows times and cultural phenomenon in the end of 20th century and through this, it was confirmed that this contributes to crease new fashion style through them.

Gatekeeping Night Spaces: the role of booking agents in creating ‘local’ live music venues and scenes

A complex relationship exists between music scenes and the infrastructure in which they are located. This article focuses on the rise and fall of the Oxford Tavern, a live music venue in the Australian city of Wollongong. Pivotal in this venue was the role that booking agents played in developing what they perceived as an inclusive, self-sufficient and vibrant music scene—by generating and then consistently implementing a strict philosophy on what music and which bands performed there. Bookings were not based on reputation, and potentially better known or more lucrative bands were regularly denied access in favour of ‘local’ bands socially connected to the music scene. These bands were authenticated as ‘local’ because of social and geographical proximity—not because of any innate musicological distinctiveness connected to Wollongong. This social geographical emphasis on ‘local’ and ‘original’ music transcended musical genre and subcultural style. Although in one sense ‘exclusionary’, gatekeeping also fostered bonds of community and belonging, creating a perceived haven for diverse local cultures within a monopolised urban nightscape. Such gatekeeping practices—explored here through interviews with booking agents and music scene participants—were pivotal to the longevity of the music venue and scene. Only when booking agents with a strong ‘local’ ethos were removed from the venue did it struggle to survive, and ultimately collapse.

Hybridization, Youth Subculture, and the Self-making of Senior Muslim Students in a Philippine Public High School

Public schools are spaces for producing self-disciplined “pedagogized” bodies. But they are also a niche for students to create various subcultures that are different from the official school culture. When Muslim students enroll in public schools, they are positioned within these heterogenous spaces, yet as the present study shows, following the Foucauldian approach that ties culture to power and resistance, Muslim students are also able to create their own “techniques” of self-making that allow them to avoid the panoptic surveillance of the school while also blending, though not completely, with the mainstream culture of the students. This study, by focusing on senior Muslim students, maps out the various subcultural styles within the Makabayan school by relying exclusively on the emic categories of the students.