“A remarkable social and cultural inversion has occurred in the last fifty years: where once culture was the monopoly of the upper classes, it now, more often than not, bubbles up from those on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. This transformation has been especially evident in the world of style – with the authenticity of streetstyle challenging and then toppling the dictatorship of High Fashion.”
– Ted Polhemus on Punks and Street Style
American photographer and anthropologist Ted Polhemus was on London’s Kings Road in the early 1980s watching the punks hanging out.
“Hanging out, is best done in the company of those from the wrong side of the tracks. Some low life is essential. That, and youth: juvenile delinquents. In this sense, the street is a dead end – the place to go when you aren’t old enough or rich enough to get in somewhere. But while practical necessity may make the street a last resort for some, it is precisely this quality which makes it so seductive for many who could be elsewhere.”
– Ted Pollemus, Style Surfing
“When I was studying anthropology at University College London in the mid-1970s, my professors were saying to me that I should be studying something important, not youth style,” he said. “Now you get people doing PhDs on street style in Japan, so people are catching up.”
Via: YOUTH CLUB, www.lomography.com.
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