Rose Bishop, “Snapshots of the Counterculture: Rolling Stone, Rags,
and the ‘Bay Area School’ of Fashion Photography, 1967–1983”
This proposed paper considers the role of Rolling Stone magazine (est. 1967), and its
short-lived companion devoted to fashion, Rags (1970-1971), in the development and
popularization of street style photography. Unlike the meticulously staged scenarios
found in the pages of conventional fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s
Bazaar, early issues of Rolling Stone and Rags were illustrated with candid snapshots
of self-styled models, who used clothing to express their identification with West Coast
counterculture and its associated music fandoms. These environmental portraits,
produced at nightclubs, music festivals, and record shops, reveal an alternate tradition
of street photography currently absent from our understanding of 1960s and 1970s
documentary practices. I will spotlight the work of Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone’s first
chief photographer (1967-1970) and the founding editor-in-chief of Rags, as well as
Wolman’s successor at Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz (1970-1983), to outline the use of
snapshot photography in these two interconnected publications. Such pictures, I argue,
reflect the shifting politics of beauty, authenticity, and personal expression in 1970s
America, and offer new insight into music media’s relationship with fashion reportage.
Katherine Reed, “‘Music is Serious, Fashion is Silly’:
Rock, Style, and Rolling Stone in the 1980s”
For the magazine’s 20 th anniversary in 1987, Rolling Stone planned a special issue with
David Bowie gracing the cover. The theme? “Style.” The extra-long issue included
photos and an interview with Bowie, along with a feature tracking the fashion history of
musical subcultures. This issue sheds light on RS’s 1980s turn toward fashion and the
way the magazine conceptualized its relationship to style in a changing media landscape.
Rolling Stone came to that focus well after rock and its denizens did, and for different
reasons– choosing to center Bowie’s fashion in 1987 is markedly different from doing so
in 1972.
This paper focuses on that anniversary issue to examine the 1980s connection between
music, fashion, and the press, explored by Hebdige and Davis in earlier contexts. To do
so, I begin a decade before that RS issue, examining glam and Bowie’s affinity for
subversive style and the ways periodicals like Creem began capitalizing on it through
their reader contests and “Eleganza” column. Drawing from new interviews, RS’s
fashion features, and internal magazine communications, I then focus on fashion editor
Laurie Schechter’s 1985-1987 tenure at RS as a turning point in that magazine’s fashion
coverage. I show how Schechter created RS’s fashion section and pushed for style
coverage that went beyond a mainstream advertising focus, and why Bowie as
figurehead (with all his fashion history) was important in that push. The 1985-7
coverage shows how musicians, editors, and fashion professionals understood music’s
importance in forging multimedia identities. While other Rolling Stone editors saw
fashion as a commercial opportunity, Schechter’s choices show the deep connection
between star image and fashion. Assessing the internal discussion around her music-
centered choices, I argue that this moment in fashion coverage reveals the changing
symbiotic relationship among fashion, music, gender dynamics and the press in the
1980s.
Kimberly Mack, “Nasty Gal: A Black Critical Response to
Betty Davis’ 1970s Live Performances”
Between 1973 and 1975, funk-rock singer, songwriter, and producer, Betty Davis,
released three albums, Betty Davis, They Say I’m Different, and Nasty Gal. While her
output failed to garner commercial success—radio, in particular, rarely played her
songs—her live shows became infamous. Davis’ onstage fashion certainly played a
role—her style was sexy and fabulous whether she was wearing hot pants and thigh
high platform boots or a trench coat with lingerie underneath (Mahon 237 ). But it was
what she did with her body onstage that caused moral panics among the Black middle
class, the White middle class print media, and unprepared (male) audience members.
Her pelvic thrusts and booty shaking was too much for onlookers unaccustomed to such
a joyous and uninhibited expression of Black female sexuality. The uproar was loud
enough for the NAACP to join protests to stop a Black radio station in Detroit from
playing her song, “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up.” (Mahon 231).
Davis played a series of live shows at the popular New York City club, the Bottom Line,
in June 1974 in support of They Say I’m Different and one show at the same venue at
the end of 1975 after the release of Nasty Gal. There’s virtually no extant live footage of
Davis from the 1970s, so what we know about those performances is largely mediated
through the writings of music critics who are overwhelmingly White and male. This
presentation will focus on Vernon Gibbs, a Black male rock critic who wrote positively
about Davis’ live performances in Phonograph Record, Crawdaddy!, and Penthouse in
1974 and 1976, calling out the underlying sexual repression, and latent sexism, in the
reception to her music. Gibbs’ intervention underscores the vital role that Black rock
critics played in articulating a politics of support and allyship for Black rockers who faced
obstacles in the music industry because of their race and, in this case, gender.
