FASHION Magazine

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When the Sex Pistols burst onto the scene in 1976, their spitting anarchist anthems were the antithesis of high fashion. But these days, a studded leather motorcycle jacket is as covet-worthy as a designer bag.

Opening on May 7, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shines the spotlight on this rebellious movement with its latest Costume Institute exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture. In its early days, British punk rock bands like The Clash forced safety pins through leather while Patti Smith, The Ramones and Blondie’s Debbie Harry holed up at New York’s legendary dive bar CBGB in tattered T-shirts and ripped jeans as a protest against the city’s glitzy disco scene.

Designer Vivienne Westwood’s punk roots also run deep—in 1976 she cultivated many of this era’s DIY hallmarks at her London boutique, Seditionaries, which she owned with then-boyfriend, visual artist and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. The duo’s endlessly creative takes on rebellion helped shape the unofficial punk uniform, with reappropriated patriotic symbols including Queen Elizabeth II’s face and the Union Jack. The movement’s raw aesthetic gained mainstream appeal in 1977, when British designer Zandra Rhodes used exposed seams, strategic rips and bondage-like accents on her floor-length dresses.

Regardless of whether you were actually lugging any textbooks down the hall, this week certainly has the back-to-school feel for everyone. What with New York Fashion Week and the Toronto International Film Festival underway, it feels like everyone is working for (and during) the weekend. To help ease you in, one of our favourite contributors […]

The post TGIF Mixtape: Sarah Nicole Prickett’s 16 favourite back-to-cool tunes appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

The princess of London is Lily Allen. She is—no exaggeration—everywhere: on enormous billboards, on the radio, on every gossip page, on catwalk playlists, on the February cover of Spin. (She makes a charming appearance in FASHION’s latest issue, too!) And just when you’re starting to feel a bit bothered, she does something you can’t deny is brill. Like cover “Straight To Hell” by The Clash with all the insouciance she can muster, turning a punk classic into ska-lite delight (with the help of one Mick Jones, by the way). The song is a smash, the first whopping success from the covers album Heroes for humanitarian charity War Child. It starts playing in your head every time you see War Child posters on the subway and you think two things: 1. Is there anything Lily can’t get away with? And 2. Oh, right. I was supposed to blog about that album.