PUNK

British punk takes shape in London between 1974 and 1976, in a UK marked by recession, high unemployment, and a generation without much visible future ahead. The scene grows around a shop on King's Road — first called "Let It Rock", later "SEX" — run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.

In 1975, McLaren starts managing a band formed by shop regulars: the Sex Pistols. Within little more than a year, punk goes from a small cluster of bands to the UK's biggest talking point.

Punk is, first and foremost, an ethic: anyone can start a band, record a single, publish a fanzine. The distance between who makes and who consumes disappears on purpose. "Sniffin' Glue", Mark Perry's fanzine launched in 1976, sums it up with its most-quoted line: learn three chords, form a band.

It's also a direct response to the era's progressive rock — seen as distant, technical, elitist — and to 1970s pop consumerism. Noise, deliberate amateurism, and aggression are choices, not limitations.

Punk fashion is born inside Westwood and McLaren's own shop: fetish and bondage pieces repurposed for the street, chained and buckled trousers, hand-torn and hand-mended t-shirts, provocative slogans printed or hand-painted on.

The safety pin — originally used to hold torn fabric together — becomes an accessory, then a symbol. Tartan, leather, spikes, and mohawks round out a wardrobe assembled by collage: secondhand pieces, hand-customized, never bought ready-made for the purpose.

It's a deliberately bricolage aesthetic — take what already exists (a school uniform, fetish wear, a flag) and recontextualize it into something else.

DIY punk carries across decades: it resurfaces in post-punk, straight edge, 1990s riot grrrl, and grunge's anti-glamour stance. The idea that clothing can be made, broken, and rebuilt by the person wearing it — not just bought finished — becomes a permanent tool of street fashion.

Westwood keeps using punk's codes (tartan, asymmetric cut, appropriation) after establishing herself as one of Britain's major designers, carrying that street vocabulary onto the runway.