hipsters, graffiti & cyberpunk (Fashion Only Forum 2/23/00)

Recently glommed on to a fair book called Surfers Soulies Skinheads & Skaters subtitled Subcultural Style from the Forties to the Nineties, by La Haye and Dingwall. Discounted at Bookstar to about $10.

Great photography - great streetstyle. Most of the streetstyle was absent from rural North Dakota during the period of my youth, though it's possible it's finally arrived there along with crystal meth and street crime.

I've determined through a careful reading of this book that I'm pretty close in self-determined style to what is called "Workwear Rockabilly." Or possibly "Surfer Rockabilly Cyberpunk." In any case, the Rockabilly part seems to be a constant. If I could still fit into my old leathers it might be "Rockabilly Greaser Punk" if I just had a few really big safety pins.

The photographs in this book are of the clothes. No models, but really good headless wooden dummies. Exquisite pictures that idealize, without perverting, the genres, by showing clothes provided by aficionados of the various styles. Much comes from Great Britain, but most is also applicable to styles identified with Haight-Ashbury and other really cool places in neither England nor North Dakota.

Pretty recently I'd tried to get some of the spirit of this book on film, but was met by one insurmountable problem...I have no style sense at all...at least as far as clothes are concerned. Certainly not as far as my own clothes are concerned. (Thought about spray painting my Domke jacket once, but then I'd stand out, and it's a fervent desire of those of us of Norwegian descent to never stand out...though that doesn't very well explain why I had my head shaved again last weekend...wish the barber had just left my eyebrows and mustache alone...the nosehair trim was fine...)

And I wasn't very successful in transmitting to the models, who do have better style sense than I, the radical funkiness that was wanted. It's relatively easy to style the usual groomed sort of funk, but very difficult to achieve the casual ungroomed flair that reeks of authenticity. And if that authenticity was actually achieved, I'd probably not know exactly how to photograph it anyway. (Early postscript - actually I would know how to handle it.)

The book, hereinafter referred to as S S S & S, also showed the designers' works inspired by street. Most of the interpretations were pretty lame, taking maybe a cue or two, but ignoring entirely the basis of the style itself - usually poverty combined with a sense of belonging to the fringe. This is the biggest disappointment of S S S & S - the lame translation from the street to the catwalk.

All in all, the book was a fine buy, a great read, and an historical reference.

Models in or about San Diego who think they can do credible street are encouraged to contact me and we'll go make some rockin' pix.

-Don

P.S. I was going to mention graffiti, but never got around to it.