Reflecting on punk, fashion, and capitalism.

At a young age, I grew an interest in and quickly attached myself to my local community’s small but flourishing punk scene. While the music, the community, and the message were certainly what took hold of me and largely molded me into the person I am today, what particularly enamored me was the fashion--- an element of the subculture that no punk wants to admit they enjoy.

Yet, to claim that punk is not even partly about fashion is to contradict the very history of the subculture. In New York, the Ramones were known for their distinctive matching biker jackets and Converse sneakers, and the Sex Pistols of the United Kingdom would not have even existed if not for designer Vivienne Westwood. While punk is fundamentally a music-based subculture, fashion is a core element of the scene whether anyone wants to admit it or not. I quickly fell in love with the style: the do-it-yourself ethos; the handmade jackets adorned with pins, patches, and spikes; the boots; the loud, confident energy that it projected. I received my fair share of teasing in school, but I loved customizing my clothes. Soon I began learning how to sew, the science behind different fabrics, and process of garment design--- it wasn’t long before my interest in punk became an interest in fashion. Black Flag became Yohji Yamamoto, and the Ramones became Rick Owens. Somewhere along the line, sewing my custom-printed patches onto a leather jacket I dug out of a bin at a thrift store became saving up my money for months on end just to afford a single pair of Rick Owens Geobasket sneakers.

I have struggled to reconcile my love for fashion with the inherent consumerism and materialism that permeates the industry. While many of my favorite designers came from punk or alternative backgrounds themselves, it has become increasingly difficult to appreciate their art as something separate from their blatant exploitation of our capitalist system. In Capital, Marx argues that commodities, alienated from the social relationships that produced them, take on an artificial and even mystical power that he describes as commodity fetishism. Marx points to the common table as an example, which, once carved out of wood, “changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness... it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas” (Marx 163). Idiosyncratic metaphorical language aside, Marx’s central argument is that once the table becomes a commodity, and not just a functional object, it takes on a level of perceived artificial value that has no real connection to its functional purpose.

This analogy stood out to me immediately upon reading it. In our capitalist world and especially within fashion, objects are imbued with mystical qualities by those that worship them, regardless of its actual qualities or the labor involved in its production. The aforementioned fashion designer Rick Owens’ most popular product is a pair of sneakers that, for all realistic intents and purpose, are visually and functionally identical to a pair of ubiquitous Converse sneakers. Despite this, the four or five minor differences in Owens’ design has resulted in a price tag distinction of more than eight hundred American dollars and a coveted spot as an essential item for fashion enthusiasts in online circles. The same is true, on even more egregious terms, for fashion house Balenciaga, of whom the current creative director has openly admitted to looking towards poor people and working-class attire for inspiration. Such products are fiercely battled for on secondhand online markets and auction sites, despite being visually and functionally identical to the accessible, everyday garments from which they are cloned.

Of course, it can (and is) frequently argued that such drastic differences in price are to account for the quality materials and handmade workmanship that comes from a designer garment. While the production of Converse sneakers is outsourced to automated Nike factories in Vietnam, Rick Owens sneakers are made by hand in a small Italian factory. While Converse are made from cheap canvas, Owens’ sneakers are manufactured using vegetable-tanned leather. These factors would undeniably drive up the price of production, however, this argument fundamentally fails to address the root of what causes commodity fetishism as defined by Marx—alienation.

Marx writes: “The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labor as objective products of labor themselves” (164). When I peruse online fashion and enthusiast forums online, I am struck with a sense of increasingly disgruntled cognitive dissonance. Fashion enthusiasts will spend hours debating the quality of a certain material; the merits of canvas versus nylon; polyamide versus cotton; all to glean a rational explanation as to why one t-shirt is fifteen dollars, and another is four hundred. Yet no one admits the real, meaningless reason, which is that one is a utilitarian object while another is a societal marker that aligns the owner with haute couture. The laborers who produce the garments that enthusiasts seek are alienated from the fruits of their efforts, making clothing worn by the rich yet receiving none of the appropriate compensation. Meanwhile, consumers are alienated from a relationship with the producers of their belongings through money and currency, clawing and begging to be seen as one with the upper class.

While I will always have an appreciation for and interest in fashion, I am no longer sure where I stand in terms of participating in its endless cycle of consumption. In our world, the ability for something as intrinsic and creatively endless as art and personal expression to become commodified is, for me, one of the most compelling arguments for why I’ll be deleting my Grailed account.