the intersection of fashion and music

Have you ever put on a pair of high waisted mom jeans with an oversized turtleneck jumper and immediately felt like you belonged in the soundtrack of an 80s movie? Or likewise listened to Muse’s ‘Supermassive Blackhole’ and been gripped by the compulsion to don a leather jacket and pair of platform Doc Martens? Undeniably, the intersection of fashion and music is ever present within our daily lives. The curation of a personal ‘aesthetic’, so to speak, is not simply about the clothes you wear. Indeed, the way you style yourself has just as much to do with the cultures you immerse yourself in, the lyrics you quote and the music you listen to, as it does the items in your wardrobe. 

Nowadays, the concept of a personal style emerging from one’s fashion and music tastes seems much more like a conscious replica of the decades themselves from which these ‘trends’ derive their source material. When you scroll through the tabs of a clothing website now you may see the titles, ‘80s retro chic’ or ‘90s rave babe’ and inevitably find a collection of items superficially reminiscent of what we imagine the essence of those eras to be. But from where do we derive that essence? To a large extent, the answer is music. Think about it: album covers, Top of the Pops, music videos, awards ceremonies. The conception of what a decade looks like is thus unfathomable without a simultaneous conception of what that decade sounds like. 

Arguably, the 1960s was when this concept of an intersected stylistic and musical landscape really came to into being; radical social change produced a rise in the number of emergent sub-cultures whose affinity with a certain style of music coincided with a certain style of fashion. The early 1960s saw a conflict between two dominant British subcultures – the mods and the rockers. While the mod subculture was more concentrated on music and fashion, an aesthetic centred around tailored suits and a sophisticated generic palette of jazz, soul and blues, rockers were largely known for their rebellious attitudes and ‘rock-and-roll’ mindsets as well as the clothes they wore. The clash between these two movements culminated in a social and cultural tension which then opened up space for the second half of the 1960s to emerge as a period defined by colour, vibrancy and experimentalism, both in music and fashion. Indeed, when asked if he was a mod or a rocker, Ringo Starr famously replied, ‘I’m a mocker’, clearly embodying the shift in attitudes towards a synthesis of the two subcultures. From this regenerative fusion was born the psychedelic hues of The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ which inspired a generation of ‘Beatlemania’ crazed fans to adopt a similar flamboyancy within their own personal style. Floral shirts, velvet jackets, vivid hues and a profusion of paisley – a kaleidoscope of textures, patterns and colours which mirrored the synthetic psychedelia of the late 1960s. 

Bridging the gap between the 1960s and the 1970s was the ‘Electric Magic’ of bands like Led Zepplin who combined 60s psychedelia with the new genre of heavy metal. Oversized jackets, flared jeans and unkempt hair were the defining tropes of the band’s appearance. The psychedelic hippie movement of the late 1960s into the early 1970s soon made way for the era of disco, where we see the intersection between music and fashion clearly played out in the suitability of clothing to the dancefloor. The disco sound is typified by synthesisers, electric guitars, syncopated basslines and punctuated beats producing an up-tempo aura of freedom and fun. Disco emphasised liberated sexuality capitalising on the free love movement of the 1960s and the feminist movement which saw a risqué playfulness emerge in both the energy of the music and the corresponding fashion trends. Cropped tops, glitter, miniskirts and figure hugging jeans that would have sent the women of the first half of the 20th century into cardiac arrest, or perhaps incredulous admiration, became presiding trends of the decade. 

Then comes the 1980s, a decade so variegated in its stylistic potency it is near impossible to tease out the emergent characteristics. But perhaps this is precisely the point. It is the sheer multiplicity, the avant-garde exuberance of the 1980s’ music and fashion scene that defines it as a period. From Prince to Bowie to Queen to Wham, from Madonna to Blondie to Lauper, such is the musical myriad of the decade that to label it by genre or even style is simply reductive. And the same applies to fashion. As artists underwent their own metamorphoses throughout the decade, so too did the clothes they wore, and in turn the trends that they influenced. Perhaps Madonna’s mercurial self-fashioning is the most eminent example of this phenomenon. As her music evolved and changed, so indeed did her image. In her ode to Marilyn Monroe and the glamour of the 1950s, Madonna’s music video for 1984’s ‘Material Girl’, sees her wears a pink satin gown, matching gloves and ornate diamond necklace. This stands in stark dichotomy to the experimental androgyny of her 1989 performance of ‘Express Yourself’ at the MTV awards, in which she sports a black power suit and a striking bleach-blonde pixie cut. What Madonna’s chameleon-like style exemplifies is the inability to define this decade by a singular aesthetic, and what has been a key aspect of its charm over the years. Young people in particular, whose experience of a chronic inability to locate a stable ‘identity’, is mirrored in the stylistic mutability of the 1980s. 

In recent years, there seems to have developed a particular affinity for the trends of the 90s and noughties, colloquially branded, ‘y2k’. Low rise jeans, sequins galore, pastel tones and micro skirts are just some of the conspicuous female fashions of this period. For men, ‘oversized’ was also having its moment, and thus still is, in a conscious attempt to reinvigorate the styles of the near past. The evocative raunchiness of women’s y2k fashion clearly speaks to the emergent female voices of the period: Christina Aguilera, Pink, Beyonce, Britney Spears, to name but a few. This strong collective of female artists continued the legacy of the 90s divas whose infiltration of the androcentric music industry pushed the boundaries of women’s roles in culture more widely, just as it did in music and fashion. 

So here we are in the present day, where the intersection of and fashion and music is arguably more pronounced than ever, with our ability to so consciously, so autonomously create and curate a style identity from the vast catalogue of cultural resources we have at our disposal. If one day we want to whack on ‘Strawberry Fields’ and wear our wackiest tie dye t-shirt, then we can. If the next day, we want to ‘Pump up the Jam’ and sport a sequin halter-neck, then we can. There are no rules and there are no expectations as to what aesthetic we choose. Ultimately, it is where music and fashion intersect, where sound and image become one, that culture, I would argue, is born.