Moderator: Jacob P. Cupps, Washington University in St. Louis
Kim Kattari, “Stylizing Hypnotic and Transformative Musical Experiences”
All of the popular and subcultural musical communities I’ve previously researched
ethnographically – reggaeton, rockabilly, psychobilly, electronic dance music – were strongly
associated with a unique fashion style that defined their particular brand of identity politics …
until now. My current work focuses on drone-based electronic music that produces hypnotic and
transformative experiences for many of its listeners, often designed to engage activist intentions.
There is no common sartorial theme or “look” to which members ascribe. But that doesn’t mean
there isn’t a general “style” reflected within this community. In this presentation, I assess the
ways in which a particular aesthetic framework is created and recreated, despite the perceived
lack of a common fashion style. Comparisons of album covers and social media posts, as well as
ethnographic observations at electronic music concerts, form the basis for this analysis.
I consider the necessary practicalities of style. Durational electronic music is generally
intended to be experienced while lying or sitting down and remaining relatively still and quiet.
Concerts can last several hours, allowing one to fully enter an altered mental state that can lead
to transformative potential. One annual event I’ve documented is a 28-hour long performance of
drone-based music that protests the use of military drones and raises money for victims of the
military industrial complex. Accordingly, most participants dress in comfortable clothes or
pajamas, prepared to spend many hours on the floor in a semi-conscious state, drifting in and out
of sleep.
This paper sheds light on the presence of “functional style” in musical subcultures that
aren’t defined by a discrete fashion style, and considers how it in fact supports the resistant
potentials of the drone-based music community.
Alex de Lacey, “‘Tell Virgil Write Brick on My Brick’: Hip-Hop and Haute Couture”
“Tell Virgil write Brick on my Brick”: Hip-Hop and Haute Couture
Hip-hop and fashion have gone hand-in-hand since its inception. Ostentatious outfits of the 70s made way for Run DMC’s three-stripe theocracy, before the much-fabled “shiny suit era” that closed out the millennium. Krishnamurthy’s Fashion Killa chronicled this latter “ghetto fabulous” flamboyance, with luxury lifestyle brands juxtaposed with tales of adversity (2023: 103). However, a recent turn in rap has resulted in an explicit re-positioning of hip-hop fashion and music as haute couture.
Buffalo-born rapper Westside Gunn founded Griselda x Fashion Rebels (GxFR) in 2012 as a clothing brand.
This soon became synonymous with musical output from his wider rap collective, with physical releases increasingly bearing the hallmarks of high art, accruing substantial sums through surprise limited edition drops and collaborations with the late-Virgil Abloh. 2020’s Pray for Paris solidified this relationship on a larger scale: the cover fashioned by Abloh, its opening skit “400 million plus tax” samples the auction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, juxtaposing renaissance portraiture with bracing lyrics about Buffalo life. This presentation will explore the methods by which artists such as Westside Gunn, and his contemporary Roc Marciano—who works with Josué Thomas of Gallery Dept. for “Art That Kills”—are seeking to redefine the relationship between art worlds in the 2020s.
Luxury brands remain pivotal, but this interface subverts and satirizes tried-and-tested tropes. When Westside Gunn rapped “tell Virgil write brick on my brick” on “Dr. Birds”, he channelled Magritte to offer a critique of artworks’ “reification”, capturing the fickleness with which art gets elevated to a higher status. In contrast to Pharrell Williams’ formalised partnership with Versace, these rappers remix, edit and challenge the aesthetics of the contemporary fashion landscape. Rap and streetwear are at the forefront. In doing so, they are redefining the terrain by which rap and couture enter into conversation.
Cindy Quach, “The Plaza as Paradox: Deconstructing Punk and New Wave Aesthetics”
This presentation is sourced from one section of my master thesis, which examines the aesthetics
and fashion of music goers in Chinatown’s punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The
two venues that made up the scene were Madame Wong’s and Hong Kong Café, and public
history has argued that Wong’s venue hosted new wavers, while the café was inherently punk.
The two venues were situated in Chinatown’s central plaza, just merely 90 feet from each other.
Despite the proximity, there was a clear division and distinction amongst the crowds at Madame
Wong’s and Hong Kong Café, their style was a major visual indictor of their music taste, but also
their politics and worldview. In this presentation, I will be giving a brief history of the two music
venues, but I will specifically focus on how punk and new wave fashion/style localized in
Chinatown. Through this, there will be examinations of how counterculture clothing, hair styles,
makeup, and more were reflective of transnational politics, but were also heavily influenced by
Asian and Chinatown’s aesthetics. To showcase this, I will be incorporating archival
photographs, audio clips, and videos to illustrate how punk and new wave style is manifested in
politics, music, and counterculture ecosystems. Drawing from the title, the plaza as a paradox, I
will be pulling in perspectives from punks and new wavers about one another’s fashion, and this
is where I draw on queer theory to expand on their concepts of “posers” to understand what it
means to pose, what is posing, and who is posing, especially within the context of an ethnic
enclave. I also would like to bring in mini-zines for audience members to take, the zine will just
be a collage of fashion, style, and aesthetics of the punks and new wavers in the plaza; the zine
will be less written content and mostly sourced archival materials.
Joseph M. Thompson, “No Shoes, No Shirt: Beach Fashion, Condo Country, and Nashville’s
Vacation Obsession”
Country music hitmakers traded their pearl snap shirts for tank tops and went to the beach in the
early 2000s. In 2003, Alan Jackson released “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” a salute to day
drinking that was christened seaworthy by collaborator Jimmy Buffet’s featured verses. Kenny
Chesney embraced his inner Buffet that same year with the single “No Shoes, No Shirt, No
Problem.” The success of that song pushed the landlocked Tennessean to launch a cabana
industry of beach-themed songs, a “No Shoes Nation” fan club, and his own brand of rum.
Dozens of white male country artists followed suit with songs that indulge in what might be
called “condo country,” the trend that celebrates beaches, boats, bikinis, and beer.
Since the 1960s, the country industry has catered to the white suburban consumer. Condo
country has stayed this course by catching them on the way to the beach. Where once country
music celebrated the dignity of labor, condo country songwriters pen odes to not working.
Because most people must wear shoes and shirts in their everyday lives, condo country comes
with its own clothing that signals the suburban escapism sold in its songs. As these tunes
convinced country listeners to take it easy, brands like Salt Life and Tommy Bahama enabled
consumers to live the purportedly laidback lifestyle one UPF-rated shirt at a time.
Exploring why condo country and beach fashion exploded simultaneously among similar
demographics in the early 2000s offers a window into country music’s gender and racial politics.
