Fifteen up. This week, Connah Roberts explores the history of clothing brands and musicians. The winners and losers. Profits and loss. Trying to explain what is happening when clothing brands collaborate with a subculture and why.
I visited Highgate Cemetery for the first time the other week and saw, among the graves of Jeremy Beadle and the unmarked grave of George Michael, Malcolm McLaren’s headstone. McLaren has done a lot for today’s culture, and particularly that of the relationship between clothing labels and musicians. Manager of The Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, producer in his own right (many DJs including Ruff Dug, DK and Ben UFO continue to play his tracks), and, of course, boutique owner who clothed the punk subculture with ex-partner Vivienne Westwood, he created a model for how music and clothes now work in a consumerist marriage.
Many studies have already focussed upon the relationship between fashion and music. Think of all the previous subcultures of the 20th Century too, each had a style: teddies; mods and rockers; punks; new romantics; acid house; brit pop; trance; garage; indie; dubstep. Of course, many of these styles were linked to the birth of a fashion brand closely linked to that of the music scene. McLaren owned a boutique in Chelsea, SEX. It was the first to have such close links to a music scene without the fashion itself typically being known as merch. Punk’s aesthetic was the clothing sold in the shop, including that of Westwood’s.
The clothing labels doing something similar have close links to, what we might come to think of as, the ‘underground’. Carhart, Adidas, Uniqlo, Vans, and one of the latest, Joy O collaborating with Cav Empt. Regardless whether they are all friends or not, there is something to unpack on what the reason is and what the benefits are for each. The main reason is to drive profit using one another. What we are left with is further erosion of spaces that may once have been considered ‘underground’ with homogenised audiences wearing clothing collaborations.
Countering the argument rests on a musician's reality in the streamed, online consumed world. Fewer record sales and a lack of gigs the past year, could well have further allowed other forms of capital to root. NTS famously having that line of: commercial radio still sucks. Which ties into how Sarah Thornton defines the ‘underground’ here in her excellent work, Club Cultures:
The term ‘underground’ is the expression by which clubbers refer to things subcultural. More than fashionable or trendy, ‘underground’ sounds and styles are ‘authentic’ and pitted against the mass-produced and mass-consumed. Undergrounds denote exclusive worlds whose main point may not be elitism but whose parameters often relate to particular crowds.
The changing nature of what might have been considered underground becoming mainstream, commercial, consumed.
The idea of making merch has been questioned by a few. Dean Blunt knew the absurdity too, one would assume, by charging close to £500, if memory serves me correctly, for a fruit of the loom merch jumper. A bit more fool you, or more fool them, paying ridiculous amounts for merchandised products. In a recent interview with Complex magazine Tyler, The Creator talks about not wanting his Golf Wang label to be merch. He also points out that he has only ever put his face on clothing a handful of times. In the same interview, he then talks about loving Cartier watches and why he advertised Gucci with Asap Rocky and Iggy Pop. This seems to be the merch itself. The promotion of conspicuous consumption. A blurred association of what is art, or acceptable to him, while consumerism still hangs over it all.
Is it any surprise that such answers go unquestioned in a magazine like Complex? A glossy hybrid of what to wear and listen to. The cultural theorist Angela McRobbie critiqued what these types of magazines offer when writing about The Face in 1989 (which recently relaunched). They offer a ‘conservative unity,’ McRobbie states, which ‘depends upon the reader being exhorted to display his or her taste and knowledge through old-fashioned consumption. You are what you buy, or what you aspire to buy.’ Reminding me of Barbara Kruger’s I shop therefore I am, bringing us full circle to the culture of Cav Empt.
It is said the clothing label Supreme took inspiration from Kruger when creating their logo. The brand has featured a wide range of musicians, everyone from Nas to Morrissey, on their tees to popular excitement. Artists bought to create hype. Like the streetwear brand that Supreme is, Cav Empt is similar but it bridges the gap into the “underground” further than any brand I have seen in the past. With close links to Rezzett and TTT, who have close links to Palace, there is a new form of merchandise as the music is so embedded in the aesthetic. Musical taste etched in the clothes seen in club spaces or venues as a direct link. When Cav Empt took over Tate Britain, and Rezzett played, the gallery was littered with the red logo stitched on the left arm. Football fans attending a match, in their team colours.
Tracing this lineage seems we arrive at a moment in which the industry has fewer avenues to keep a radio station, or yourself, afloat. You have to be open to working with the likes of Uniqlo for profiles on ‘how you got here’ or ‘what your background is’; have to be open to having clothing shops sell mixtapes and making limited editions t-shirts for a night or album. A given, given how the industry has been gutted. However, we should be aware this is what is happening. Thinking about Westwood and McLaren again, and the clothing she made which created the punk image, all now relics in museums, Westwood’s brand is still going strong, while The Sex Pistols flog butter.
Each week we will share some tracks that the contributers to Laughing Stock currently have on heavy rotation. You can follow the rolling playlist on Apple or Spotify.
ICYMI: More from Laughing Stock
Edition 14 - Sam Hartford on anachronistic music in films
Edition 13 - Our Half Year Review 2021
Edition 12 - Will Palmer on lesser know football references in music
Edition 11 - Rich Walker on boring anniversary pieces
Edition 10 - Connah Roberts on culture wars, and Kes
Edition 9 - Rich Walker on trains, music, music on trains, and HS2
Edition 8 - Connah Roberts channeling Adiran Chiles on Karaoke
Edition 7 - Rich Walker on nihilism in music
Edition 6 - Connah Roberts on producers of imagination
Edition 5 - Sam Hartford on Spotify’s all seeing eye
Edition 4 - Rich Walker on how amazing organ music is
Edtion 3 - Will Palmer on Music as Muscle Memory
Edition 2 - Connah Roberts on Arctic Monkeys and Quantitative Easing
Edition 1 - Rich Walker on Dua Lipa and the new pop vanguard