So
with Fashion Week fully under way it
seems a fitting time to have a little dwell on it’s unbreakable link with
music, and look at the considerable irony that music and fashion are so inextricably
joined.  After all, shouldn’t music be
all about the music (man)?  It’s an art
form (dude) and the way we look doesn’t matter right? (Oh fuck off).

        

Every band this side of Baghdad
has hired goons to dress them appropriately, make their hair look just the right sort of
scruffy/sculpted/greasy , and generally make them appeal to the people with the
wonga.  I’m not slating this.  At the end of the day bands- despite what
they like to believe- are a vehicle for the dreaded dollar.  So they need to be attired in a way that will
appeal to their target audience and make people want to spend money with them;
you don’t put on Bermuda shorts before going to a big meeting with a client do
you?  

            

But the most enjoyable and
joke-worthy side of this is that there is an insistence by bands that they did,
you know, just put all this together and that image is, like, so totally
unimportant.  Erm....don’t think so buddy
boy.  Image is everything. Having just
moved to East London it has been impossible to miss the waves of skinny jeaned
clones, the short side/long top hair and the ubiquitous checked shirt on the
lads.  Obviously the skinny jeans are a
requisite of any self-respecting band planning to bother the charts whilst really not being bothered about it, but
the second two are relatively recent fads and are now so popular that they are
in serious danger of becoming a worn out suburban fashion nightmare.  And if we are to look at the most popular,
used-to-be-indie band of the last few years, who do we come up with?

      

The Kings Of Leon of course,
purveyors of the classic all-American check. 
And what haircut does the lead singer Caleb Followhill have?  Why, only a professionally styled short
side/long top!

       

The point in this is not to
instigate some half-baked attack at The Kings (who are actually very good) or
the people that follow them, but to demonstrate the links between them.  A popular band looks like this, therefore the
people who like them want to look like them. 
That’s a given.  Now it seems
every new band is rocking the whimpy cowboy look, with varying degrees of
success.  Why? Because the people that
are going to be buying their music look at them, like them, register some kind
of connection and dip a hand into those pockets (gingerly- those skinny pockets
are pretty tight after all).

      

We can apply the same logic to any
number of artists and their imitations; from Pete Doherty and the trilby that
is worn by any singer with vaguely whimsical/ romantic aspirations, to Judas
Priest and the homo-erotic studs and leather which came to help define metal,
to surely the most embraced off all, The Ramones and Converse.  Each of these is now a given, a classic, and
record labels want artists ploughing a similar path to look like this. Humans are creatures of routine, and we like to be able to categorize out potential idols in as short a time as possible

Subsequently musicians are dressed in the right attire by the powers that be though, in most cases,
the artist won’t mind dressing like because he likes that music and as a
result- dum dum dum!- will be dressing like it anyway.  Now, just try and tell me there ain’t a
beautiful symmetry to all of that...

Fashion and music friends forever?  Does a new band have to look a certain way? Do you care how your bands look?

Posted In Comment, Feb 25 2009. Words - Terry