Music and Fashion - two sides of the same coin!

Music and fashion go hand in hand since always. As soon as a band or a music genre becomes popular, the fashion industry follows the trend to use it for its own good. As music is the one expression that the youth survives on and speak their emotions through it, similarly fashion is an expression intermingled with everything popular. Here, we bring you some times where music majorly influenced fashion.

Rock'n'Roll

With the birth of rock'n'roll in 1951, youth culture and popular culture gained impetus. In the 1940s, American teenage girls known as bobby-soxers, became famous not only for their fashions, but for their fanatical adulation of male crooners such as Frank Sinatra. Bobby-soxers wore ankle socks, hair ribbons, denim rolled-up jeans, felt poodle skirts with an embroidered and appliquéd French poodle, and blouses with small flounced edging, sloppy sweaters, and saddle shoes. Bobby-soxers were rare in music fashion cultures because males usually led most innovations. (source: www.lovetoknow.com)

The Beatles and the mini-skirts

As sixties were a decade of change, of revolution in the society. So was the music scenario, changing and becoming the voice of youth. Even fashion wasn't restricted to the elite but became a voice to the youth who demanded freedom and inclined towards liberation of thoughts and views of the society as a whole.

"The first major fashion movement of the Sixties emerged from Great Britain. This was when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and various other pop bands were seeing a growth in their popularity. Their music was different and the capital became known as ‘Swinging London’. It was at this time that the fashion designer Mary Quant created the iconic miniskirt in response to the youthful, fun-loving attitude that was spreading throughout the country. As a result fashion became a lot more colourful and made its way over to mainland Europe and America." (source: www.theidleman.com) ​

The Hippies and the Sixties

During the second half of the Sixties Woodstock festival and artists such as Jimi Hendrix began to come to the fore of the music industry. The Hippie movement that began in San Fransisco began to spread and music became a whole lot more about free love, recreational drugs and was instantly more psychedelic. As a result this became more apparent in the fashion of the time as well. Clothes for men and women became loose and relaxed, with brightly coloured prints and patterns influenced by other cultures. It was at this time that tie-dye prints became extremely prevalent. This was the ‘Summer of Love’ period which had a major influence on fashion, and it all started with what the music industry was churning out. It’s safe to say that the music of the Sixties has been a major influence on fashion right up to this day. (source: www.theidleman.com)

Punk

Without the Punk movement, you probably would not have heard of one of Britain’s biggest fashion designers. Vivienne Westwood epitomises what Punk means and she basically was born out of the movement in the 1970s. Not only that, but she essentially crafted the movement. She is thanked for bringing the movement into mainstream fashion, allowing the masses to get involved. (source: www.idleman.com)

Rave

Techno music was an inheritor of Kratfwerk's music. Techno became a cornerstone of British Rave in the late 1980s. Rave, a loose symbiosis of Chicago House, Electro, and Balearic Beat, started as Acid House in Manchester during 1987. Known for impromptu "happenings" at motorway service stations and on farmland, raves were notorious for the popularization of the drug Ecstasy, which became the essential accompaniment to the movement. Despite an indefinable constituency, Rave began to define itself as a fashion expression. Girls wore tight leather or denim pants, waistcoats, fitted T-shirts, and long-sleeved jerkins. Accessories included large silver rings often worn on the thumb and index finger, masses of silver bracelets, and friendship bracelets and leather wristbands like those that hippies wore. Long, lank hair became de rigueur. (source: www.lovetoknow.com) ​

Grunge Music - The Fashion Movement

You have the grunge movement and Kurt Cobain to thank for ripped jeans and grandad cardigans too. Ripped jeans have become a staple in menswear, and cardigans are now seeing a revival, as brands like Gucci look back at the era for inspiration in their latest collections. When it comes to extreme layering, again you have no one to thank but the grunge stalwarts such as Kurt Cobain. Their laid back, throw on everything attitude has inspired the likes of Balenciaga, Gosha Rubchinskiy and Vetements. (source: www.theidleman.com)

The fashion and music industry have always joined hands in the past and the evolution is still ongoing. We are curious as to what next fashion-music movement will we witness!