The Clash – (Punk) Passion Is A Fashion

The Clash recognised how critical a ‘look’ was part of their musical package but unlike the Sex Pistols and SEX/Seditionaries, they didn’t have a shop to supply an endless stream of clothes and they certainly wouldn’t have bought theirs from there as they had no money.

Their manager Bernie Rhodes, a one-time colleague of McLaren saw The Clash as the Sex Pistols’ rivals and recognised the need for a coherent look to match their sound and place the band at the emerging new musical punk ground zero. What emerged was a political sloganeering punk urban guerilla look.

First off hair was hacked off. Strummer’s rockabilly haircut from his time in the 101ers went and he became blonde. Jones was so distraught at his prized long curly locks going that he is said to have cried. Simonon just took it all in his stride as he was an ex-skinhead. Gone also were Strummer’s crumpled suits and Jones’ flowing scarves and shirts.

With money tight and a look critical, The Clash’s punk look came from second-hand clothes shops. Ties, shirts, jackets and boiler suits were customised with big bold slogans sprayed or painted on them like urban graffiti and homemade armbands were added.

A Jackson Pollock style action paint effect was particularly striking when applied to their clothes. Interestingly Matlock had first experimented with this look customising his SEX jeans which members of The Clash had noted and liked.

This was their look through 1976 and early 1977 until they were signed by CBS in the spring of 1977. The covers of their first single and album demonstrate that look.

The DIY look was one that every punk had adopted or was adopting. The Clash’s signing to CBS in Spring 1977 meant they were now major league and about to start a headlining tour to support their debut releases. Rhodes wanted a distinctive punk look for The Clash to both rival the Sex Pistols and set them apart from the crowd. His next act was surprising and arguably a masterstroke.

Michon was brought into the band on a wage of £25 a week, same as the band members. No one seemed to have complained.

One of the reason Bernie took me on  – and all power to him – was that I was this Polish girl from nowhere making swimsuits. I was going up against people like Vivienne Westwood, who was in her 30’s then. Paul Gormann, The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion

Interestingly the clothes made suitably reflect the band. Militaristic, sloganeering, functional and very male and macho. Very different to the more playful, provocative, confrontational but unisex clothes of Westwood and McLaren. Arguably the former were survival clothes and the latter provocation ones.

Reflecting back upon how Michon and Kolowska’s unisex styles felt from a feminist perspective. Coon said they were “representative of the hard-style clothing that we found so necessary, protective and liberating as the often violent, misogynist backlash against women in the workplace ramped up inthe 1970s”! Design History Beyond the Canon edited by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Victoria Rose Pass, Christopher Wilson

The initial clothes designed

…majored on lines of zips (“That was my tribute to the streaks of paint”) and multiple stitched seams.  “Because I didn’t know what I was doing I oversewed everything.” She explains. “The first trousers were made of blackout cloth from the war, which was really heavy and blacker than black. It was like no other fabric.” Paul Gormann, The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion

The pair designed a biker-style jacket for Strummer advancing on the idea he and the band …

… had used previously when he was splattering paint in a manner similar to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings on his clothing. Similarly the designers threw the zips randomly onto the base jacket, sewing them on as they fell. The pair were …making the clothes in collaboration with the band, being fully aware of the political imperatives and philosophies which were evident in their music that reflected the troubled times of the late 1970s. Strummer himself even added an image of a running policeman on the back of the jacket, an image taken from the 1976 Notting Hill riots.

… Kolowaska elaborates … We added details such as the multi top-stitched waistband pockets, belt carriers and collar which gave durability and a strong look. We were using elements of Joe’s personal style at the time but with futuristic unseen elements which we personally created from our own design ideas. Bonhams auction house

Army surplus clothes and jeans were bought dissected and then constructed in red, blue white and black. Stencilled slogans and phrases were still added but sparingly and band members would request personal customisations. Strummer’s trousers had a small pocket for a plectrum and his jacket an inside pocket to carry a book in. All participated in the designs including Sebastian Conran, at whose house Michon and Strummer lived and where the clothes were made.

While Rhodes wanted to sell Clash clothes through the label Upstarts he had created, the rag trade and shops like BOY soon started selling ‘Clash’ style clothing which killed the opportunity.

By mid-1978 The Clash had mostly reverted back to pre-Clash clothes and hairstyles but with the addition of London Leatherman studded wristbands and belts and Johnsons leathers. A visit to the States kicked off another change in both music and fashion style that moved firmly away from but with roots in punk.

She would return when Rhodes was brought back and The Clash’s most commercially successful time in the States and design with Kolowska a whole range of clothes until Jones exited/was pushed and the band fell apart.

But, Michon’s inspiration came from a surprisingly queer source: “I was totally obsessed with the writings of Jean Genet at the time, [and] the male-only machismo of gay desire, toughs and crime, bruised masculinity.

In another surprising bit of gender- bending for the otherwise famously butch Clash aesthetic, Michon created for Strummer what the two of them dubbed his “silk-stocking sleeve” shirt, in which the see-through, black fabric sleeves of a cotton button-up of her design were double-hemmed in such a way that they looked like the tops of ladies’ silk stockings, draped like lingerie over his biceps (Figure 7.11). The name, she says now, “was just a piss take, really. But, yes […] conceptually it was a big deal!” Design History Beyond the Canon edited by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Victoria Rose Pass, Christopher Wilson

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