‘Punk will come back in new forms always because the attitude is so very, very good; it’s to do with people doing things for themselves, controlling their own methods and their own culture’: Malcolm McLaren 1982
This is an extract from an interview with the late Malcolm McLaren in October 1982, conducted just after he and design partner Vivienne Westwood had shown their fashion collection Punkature.
As the promulgator, initially through music and fashion and then into other forms from film and art to design and media, McLaren defined Punk as an anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate attitude imbued with a D-I-Y spirit which embraces chaos.
Punk is alive today, maybe no longer as a vital form in fashion and popular music – where the original stylistic tropes are interminably recycled as those sectors are consumed by globalisation – but detectable in outcrops of non-conformity in all sorts of other areas, from the high profile politicised activism of Pussy Riot and digital age disruptions of Anonymous to the irreverence of The Mushpit magazine, the offbeat art/jewellery excursions of Mayfair’s Belmacz and the independent celebrations of British rap label High Focus.
The McLaren ’82 clip may also be viewed on the Punk London site set up by the Mayor Of London’s office, which is launching a year-long programme of activities across the capital tomorrow.
View here.