Prospero pans the 2013 Met Ball, designed to celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition “Punk: Chaos to Couture”:
It was a silly idea to begin with. Doing punk through the clothes is like trying to do hippiedom with peace symbols.
Punk was never about the threads. The clothes, the hair, the makeup, the sewn-on patches and the badges conveyed a message about who you were and what you stood for. For those who were not interested in punk’s message, the clothes served as a warning. But punk was always more than a fashion statement. …
To look at punk viewed only through the attire, rather than the beliefs, is to make a cultural error. Punk wasn’t “chaotic”, as the title of the Met’s new fashion exhibit suggests. Some punks were anarchists, but anarchy and chaos are not synonyms. The anarcho-punks believed that an absence of government would produce harmony. They were libertarians who believed in personal freedom and individualism—a bit like Texans, but unwashed and smelling of petunia oil. An exhibition that juxtaposes the idea of chaos and punk makes it appear that punk was about nothing. The establishment often undermines youth movements this way. Dismissing them as incoherent is easier than answering angry questions.
Or maybe, as Morgan Meis argues, “Punk was about fashion from the beginning”:
The bored, blank stare of the punk rocker can be seen most clearly in one other place of popular culture: the catwalk. … Punk was important not because it was more than a fashidon, but because it was the soul of fashion. In exploring the dark side of fashion it explored the dark side of modern life … Usually we don’t have the strength to take a good look at our empty, death-driven culture. For a short time in the 1970s, punk rockers did just that. Then they died. Literally or figuratively.
(Photo: Paloma Faith attends the Costume Institute Gala for the ‘PUNK: Chaos to Couture’ exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2013 in New York City. By Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for People.com)
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