Culture Sign Post Activity - Youth Culture

Over the last week our class has been researching different "Culture Sign Posts" and how the media has influenced a trend in fashion. Our group choose to do Youth Culture, so here is our presentation on youth culture.

(Image from gbradford.wordpress.com)

We decided to first try and define what Youth Culture is.
Youth Culture is "a group of young people considered to be a culture class or subculture, with their own distinct styles, behaviours and interests".
 
We were then asked to go into detail about what sort of Media influenced the "Trend"(Youth Culture) and what has appeared because of it (subcultures). Our group made a list of what Media was most popular each decade along with what subcultures emerged.

{on a side note from 1910's to the 1940's there was no real Youth Culture}

1910's - Mainly newspapers and magazines. After WW1 radio emerged as a new choice, this shaped public perception of the news.

1920's - Radio, newspapers, bulletins, advertising and music.

1930's - Radio, Film and the introduction of the television

1940's - Film, theatre, radio, newspaper. Further development of the television declined due to WW2. Notable youth subcultures would be Zazou from France. Hipsters first appeared

1950's - Television. Known as the decade of the "Golden age of Television". Rock and  Roll emerged creating the "Teddy boy" youth subculture in the UK. In Japan bōsōzoku youth subculture was emerging based around motorcycle clubs and gangs.

 Youths posing in a bomb site in England

(Photo from voicesofpostwarengland.wordpress.com)

 bōsōzoku 

(photo from rakoonia.wordpress.com)

1960's - Time of political, social, cultural and psychological change. including the coverage of man on the moon's space race, civil rights issues, women's rights, student protests and TV coverage of the war in Vietnam. This was all reflected in the Media of the time such as TV, radio and advertising, with cinema being the most popular form of advertising of the time.

 Mods and Rockers

(photo from www.guardian.co.uk)

Notable youth subcultures from the US and the UK were the Mods, Rockers, Hippies, skin heads, the Freak scene and the Yippie. We also have the emergence of the Rude boy from Jamaica. The beginning of the hacker subculture in the US as well.

Hippies

(Photos from kingydesignhistory.blogspot.com)

Rude Boy

(Photo from www.stephenmalkmus.com)

1970's - Newspapers, Womens Magazines published by women, and film. (News) reporters took a stronger stance in uncovering news and revealing corruption of the government.

Punks

 (Photo from germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org)

  

Glam rock

(Photo from demasiadoscolores.blogspot.com 

and acidcow.com)

The hippies, the mods and rocker subculture continued to grow and change. Hacker culture changed to be referred to as "Geek culture" for a short period of time. Glam rock became the alternative for the freak scene. Skin heads split into Oi!(a punk youth based subculture) and white power skin heads (a political white supremacist and anti-semitic group). At the height of the disco era, punk rock and heavy metal music became the alternative for youths, creating two more youth subcultures, Punk and Metalhead. In Japan Lolita fashion emgered, as well as youth subculture Gyaru/Gyaruo,

 Lolita Fashion/Youth Culture

(photo from viewhair.co.cc)

Fad, Trend and Classic

What is a Fad?
An item of clothing or accessory that is regarded with greater enthusiasm  for a brief period of time, a current fad would be Jeggings. Jeggings are legging made to look like jeans, some times with fake pockets and zips added to make them look even closer to real jeans. When worn right they can look rather cute but when worn wrong they look just horrible. Jeggings bubbled up from the streets of Japan and became a major fashion fad in 2009. They are no longer sold in stores but you can still see people wandering around in them.

 

(Images from www.vacavoyeur.com.br and www.refinery29.com)

What is a Trend?
A Trend is the general direction fashion is moving towards. A current trend would be 70's fashion. 70's fashion is currently invading the catwalks again, but with a modern twist of course. Bell bottoms are back, bell bottoms came from the late 60s. Coco Chanel took sailors bell bottoms and re-created them into loose flowing flared pants for women and became a massive hit with the Hippies subculture.

(Images from frostmagazine.com and theprofashional.blogspot.com)

What is a Classic?
A classic is something that will always be in fashion. There are a wide range of classics in fashion such as the little black dress, scarfs, jeans, etc. A must needed classic for winter would be a scarf, scarves first came to being in ancient Rome and were made from woven cotton. They bubbled up from the farmers and soldiers. who wore scarves to shield their neck and faces from the elements, and to wipe away any sweat or dirt that built up on their faces during the day. Scarves then became used to show certain ranks in various cultures, with certain colours and fabrics meaning different things. Now they are a must have fashion item that we all turn to every year to keep warm while looking cool.

 (Images from www.fashion7days.com and www.theglamourai.com)

Fashion and Costume Plates

I mentioned in "Vogue History/Origins of fashion magazine" about Fashion plates, I never really went into what they are or what I meant by fashion plates. So for this article I'm going to explain what fashion plates and costume plates are briefly.

 

(image from community.livejournal.com/lamodeillustree/332462.html)

A Fashion Plate is an illustration of what is currently in fashion, and is used mainly to promote and publish possible future fashions. A Costume Plate illustrates what was once worn in the past.

 

(image from www.fashion-era.com)

Fashion plates first appeared in "The Lady's Magazine" in 1770 and became very popular towards the 19th century. The plates were printed in magazines aimed at women of the time. The illustrations themselves were hand colored by various artists employed by the magazine. The artists were given free range to color them however they wanted, sometimes leading to there being major differences in other copy's of the same magazine.

 

(image from www.fashion-era.com)

British and American fashion magazine's couldn't keep up with the creative flare of the French fashion plates, leading American and British magazine's to start importing copies of the French fashion plates to place into their magazines. This lead to British and American women being six to nine months behind in current fashion trends and styles of the time.

(image from zimmer.csufresno.edu/~monicaf/)

Vogue and the History/Origins of Fashion Magazines

The history and origins of fashion magazines goes back hundreds of years, the very first magazines where created for men by men. The very first female orientated magazine appeared just over 300 years ago in London called “Ladies Mercury”. It was founded by English publisher and journalist John Delton in 1693.

(image from www.bl.uk)

In Delton’s first address to his readers, he openly declared that his magazine will respond to the most appealing and entertaining issues related to love, marriage, behaviors, fashion and women’s humor. It also featured the very first "questions and answers" column, where the reader would send a letter to the editor and discuss everyday problems.

Soon after magazines aimed at women took Europe by storm, with Germany releasing "Gournal des Luxus und des Moden", followed by Britain with "The Lady's Magazine" and "Gallery of Fashion" and France had as many as four fashion magazines. All of them included illustrated fashion plates depicting the latest’s fashions in great detail.

(image from wikipedia.com)

But enough about the past let’s now talk about one fashion magazine that is considered a recent creation: Vogue. Vogue’s very first issue was released in 1892 (119 years ago), and was founded by Arthur Baldwin Turnure. Vogue started as a weekly publication for New York socialites but became a mass-market magazine over time. 

Vogue 1892

(image from thefashioninsider.tumblr.com )

Vogue 1900

(image from rlv.zcache.com)

What is a Zine?

(image from www.smh.com.au)

A Zine (pronounce "Zeen") is a small self published mini magazine of original or borrowed text or images.  It is a non-commercial publication reproduced by photocopying, targeting a small minority’s interest. The name itself is an abbreviation of the word fanzine or magazine. Zine’s have been around since the 1970’s, but never became very popular until further into the 1970’s when the punk scene exploded.  

There is even such a thing as an E-Zine, which is very similar to a blog in that they both target a small minority. The main difference between the two is that E-Zines require that you subscribe to view the content, while blog content can be viewed without a subscription.

There have been a few Zine’s that have ended up becoming mainstream commercial publications, such as:

Giant robot

(image from www.giantrobot.com )

Bust

(image from threadtrend.com)

Dazed and confused

(image from www.designscene.net)

Eco Freindly Fashion completed outfit

As I told you in the post before, our class was given the task to research in small groups Eco friendly designers in order to produce an outfit in a "pressure  test" situation. Our group researched Gary Harvey an Eco friendly designer and former creative director for Levis Europe. 

The following our photos of our finished outfit,

All up the finished outfit was constructed from 7 white garbage bags, 10 black garbage bags and undefined number of bubble gum wrappers.

Here is a photo of our classes work currently on display in the library, aren't they all unique and stunning :)