Fashion Has Always Been a Catalyst for Change

Anarchy in the UK 
The sartorial linchpin of punk rock, it would be impossible to inspect fashion’s relationship to revolution without citing Vivienne Westwood. 

Designer and co-manager of the legendary ‘SEX’ boutique store, Westwood shaped the reverberating punk aesthetic of the UK. Tailoring the wardrobe of angry, disillusioned British youths, it’s perhaps Westwood’s polarising anarchist t-shirt from 1977 that best articulates her unique voice during the 1970s. 

Emblazoned with the word ‘DESTROY’, the t-shirt featured lyrics by The Sex Pistols alongside a flipped crucifix. Intended to disrupt facist structures across the globe (the t-shirt was created during the reign of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet), Westwood later acknowledged that the design was one of her most controversial. 

The resolute Westwood refused to take her foot off the pedal over the next four decades, launching climate revolutions during the London Paralympics, impersonating Margaret Thatcher in Tatler magazine, and supporting Scottish independence with her Red Label SS15 show. 

Armed with all kinds of accessories (e.g. safety pins, studs, and dog collars), Westwood and her pilgrims of punk still march to the beat of their very own – and very loud – drums. 

The Seattle Sound
By the mid 1980s and 1990s, punk’s sartorial attitude would live on in the raspy, angst-driven anthems and thrift shop wardrobes emerging from Seattle’s underground music scene. 

Ripped jeans, beat-up leather jackets, forgotten woolen sweaters, Timberlands, and religiously-venerated threadbare flanelletes all became the stylistic hallmarks of the Pacific Northwestern ‘boho-hobo’ (bohemian hobo). Condemned to crash on your couch through much of the 1990s, Seattle’s pilgrims of grunge stuffed their bags full of clothes from thrift shops and copies of Nevermind. 

Lauding asceticism (Bleach by Nirvana was recorded for just $606.17 in 1989), it didn’t take long for high-end designers to catch on, with Marc Jacobs famously sending models like Kate Moss down the runway in Robert Crumb tees and Carla Bruni in Dr. Martens. Polarising critics, some viewed Jacobs’ show, and the whole grunge aesthetic, as offensive to the doctrines of real fashion. 

Indeed, the runway often provides us with some of the most daring sartorial insights and socially subversive ideas in history. 

Enfant Terrible 
Who better to examine the explosive politics of the runway than fashion’s l'enfant terrible: Jean Paul Gaultier. 

Gaultier shocked the fashion world when he first introduced ‘And God Created Man’. The master of androgynous style provoked scorn and applause in equal measure (several Vogue editors left the show), dressing his models in wide plaid wrap-arounds and so-called ‘skirt suits’.

Preempting the loaded gender politics and expectations of men’s fashion in the 21st century, Gaultier reappropriated Scottish kilts, samurai hakamas, and the elongated aprons of French waiters for his 1985 show, emblazoning the decade with an attitude that would inform the rest of his legendary career. 

Whether your garments are Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, or someone else entirely, they will always be stitched together from the broader social fabric. At its most revolutionary, fashion can provide real and tangible pathways for change, and help expose rigid or regressive institutions. If your jackets are vintage Westwood, or held together by safety pins, it really doesn’t matter. We’re all part of the conversation.