Latest news with #punk
Washington Post
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Dandyism, decadence and a taste of rebellion at Junya Watanabe's vision of Paris
PARIS — A new kind of dandy took over Junya Watanabe's runway on Friday — not the traditional gentleman, but a sharp-dressed rebel with a streak of punk at Paris Fashion Week . Watanabe, the pioneering Japanese designer known for mixing classic tailoring with a wild, creative edge, unveiled a lineup of bold, offbeat looks at the Lycée Carnot. The show was sharp but rebellious, rich in history but full of energy. It wasn't about looking back. It was an explosion of new ideas. Watanabe has built his reputation by smashing the line between elegance and rebellion. This season, he didn't just mix old and new, he turned history into a weapon. His spring men's collection borrowed from the past — rich brocades, jacquards and a hint of Rococo flair — but reimagined them with a bold, punk attitude. Jackets worthy of Venetian nobility were paired with rugged workwear and raw denim, creating looks that felt both grand and streetwise. The music followed the same energy, starting with a traditional piano piece breaking down into a thumping city beat. Classic style was pulled apart and rebuilt right on the runway. Some outfits showed off sharp, careful tailoring, but the order quickly fell away — seams went crooked, sashes trailed loose, wild patterns took over. Even the ties broke free, knotted multiple times in ways that broke from tradition. Despite the wild mix of styles, the show was more than just patchwork. Watanabe was making a statement about taste itself — a constant tug-of-war between old ideas and breaking the rules. Familiar touches — a monk's robe, the rooftops of Florence — were turned into clever fashion puzzles. Throughout the collection, Watanabe's eye for detail and contradiction remained. He's known for boldly mixing sharp tailoring with street style, blending Japanese tradition with punk energy. This season, he sharpened that approach into clothes that were both smart and full of electricity, pieces that challenged the idea of what it means to dress well. By the end, the dandy wasn't just a gentleman —he was sharper, braver, both thinker and rebel.
The Independent
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Dandyism, decadence and a taste of rebellion at Junya Watanabe's vision of Paris
A new kind of dandy took over Junya Watanabe's runway on Friday — not the traditional gentleman, but a sharp-dressed rebel with a streak of punk at Paris Fashion Week. Watanabe, the pioneering Japanese designer known for mixing classic tailoring with a wild, creative edge, unveiled a lineup of bold, offbeat looks at the Lycée Carnot. The show was sharp but rebellious, rich in history but full of energy. It wasn't about looking back. It was an explosion of new ideas. Watanabe has built his reputation by smashing the line between elegance and rebellion. This season, he didn't just mix old and new, he turned history into a weapon. His spring men's collection borrowed from the past — rich brocades, jacquards and a hint of Rococo flair — but reimagined them with a bold, punk attitude. Jackets worthy of Venetian nobility were paired with rugged workwear and raw denim, creating looks that felt both grand and streetwise. The music followed the same energy, starting with a traditional piano piece breaking down into a thumping city beat. Classic style was pulled apart and rebuilt right on the runway. Some outfits showed off sharp, careful tailoring, but the order quickly fell away — seams went crooked, sashes trailed loose, wild patterns took over. Even the ties broke free, knotted multiple times in ways that broke from tradition. Despite the wild mix of styles, the show was more than just patchwork. Watanabe was making a statement about taste itself — a constant tug-of-war between old ideas and breaking the rules. Familiar touches — a monk's robe, the rooftops of Florence — were turned into clever fashion puzzles. Throughout the collection, Watanabe's eye for detail and contradiction remained. He's known for boldly mixing sharp tailoring with street style, blending Japanese tradition with punk energy. This season, he sharpened that approach into clothes that were both smart and full of electricity, pieces that challenged the idea of what it means to dress well. By the end, the dandy wasn't just a gentleman —he was sharper, braver, both thinker and rebel.
The Australian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Australian
Brendan O'Neill takes aim at Kneecap ahead of Glastonbury show: ‘cult of the keffiyeh'
Kneecap, the Northern Irish hip-hop punk trio who are playing at Glastonbury this weekend, bring the controversy with their IRA-inspired balaclavas and pro-Palestine stunts. Pundit Brendan O'Neill reckons they're part of the 'cult of the keffiyeh'. This is an edited transcript of his interview with The Australian's Claire Harvey for our podcast The Front. Brendan O'Neill: I am a free speech absolutist and I don't want them thrown off the ticket at Glastonbury. I don't want their gigs cancelled. You know, we've got politicians here in the Labour Party and the Conservative Party saying they shouldn't be able to play at Glastonbury. I might be too old to appreciate their kind of weird Irish language hip hop, but I don't want politicians setting the performance list for Glastonbury. That's not a world I want to live in. Claire Harvey: I wonder about the idea of punk in 2025 and if in any way it's compatible with featuring at Glastonbury where the tickets are nearly 800 Australian dollars a person now. What do you think? Can you be a punk and be a headliner at Glastonbury? Brendan O'Neill: Glastonbury has changed so much over the decades. I think the first ever Glastonbury was 1970, and it was basically The Kinks and Mark Bolan and women running around with no bras on and men with long hair and beards, smoking weed, having sex. It was a hippie fest. It was quite rebellious, it was quite counter-cultural. More recently, the average age of people going to Glastonbury now is around 50. They all tend to be upper middle class because you have to be in order to afford a ticket. So it is completely anti-punk. It is the most conformist festival that Britain holds. So the idea of Kneecap going there and being welcomed as punks, I think it rather gives the game away, which is that they are kind of phony punks. They might seem like punks to boring old farts who like going to music festivals, but to kids, most normal young people, I think they probably look a bit square. Claire Harvey: Does this tell us something about where music is now though, that you need kind of three guys, one of whom wears an Irish flag balaclava to give you a sense of rebellion? Brendan O'Neill: The one who wears the Irish tricolour balaclava, by the way, which I always think looks like a tea cosy rather than a balaclava. He is nearly 40 years old. Let's just get this into perspective. He's in his late 30s. Claire Harvey: He used to be a schoolteacher, I think, didn't he? Brendan O'Neill: Yeah, he used to be a schoolteacher. He's nearly 40. He is far too old to be carrying on like this, in my view. You know, the truth about Kneecap is that they met at an Irish language centre in Belfast. One of them is from Derry, two of them are from Belfast. They're basically a cultural studies outreach programme. That's essentially what they are. You know, they are singing the praises of minority languages. They are talking about the trauma of history and the impact it has on young people's mental health. There is nothing you hear from Kneecap that you wouldn't see in a Guardian editorial or in a United Nations statement about the importance of protecting minor languages or the importance learning from history. They are … They do push actually a very conformist, elitist view, but they have, as you're suggesting there, they do look punkish. JJ O Dochartaigh, who performs as DJ Provai in the Belfast hip hop trio Kneecap, is a former schoolteacher. Picture: Helle Arensbak / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP They kind of have the IRA fancy dress. They dress up with a balaclava and they kind of steal valour from physical force republicanism of the 1970s and 80s. They kind get a bit of momentum and a bit sex appeal from harking back to that when provisional IRA was seen by some people in Northern Ireland as an adventurous, daring guerrilla movement. Because they don't really have anything punkish to say in 2025, they kind of have to look back to the past for that sense of rebellion. So they look punkish. Occasionally they sound punkish, but if you dig a little deeper, there's not much going on. Claire Harvey: The band members themselves might be old enough to remember some of the Troubles, but many of their fans wouldn't be. Is that part of the equation here? Do you think that it's kind of glamorising something that for people who live through it in Northern Ireland or in the rest of the UK or in Ireland, might not think it was kind of cool? Brendan O'Neill: Yeah, that's an issue, certainly. And that does make Kneecap jar with a lot of people in mainland Britain in particular, where there's a very different view of the IRA than there might be in parts of Northern Ireland. People like Kneecap are referred to as Good Friday babies. So these are the kids who were born after the Good Friday agreement or around the Good Friday agreement, which came into force in 1998. They are people who never experienced the conflict, the so-called Troubles, don't remember bombs going off every day, don't know remember shootings happening every day. You know, the fact that Kneecap is called Kneecap is in itself quite revealing because of course that was a punishment meted out by the IRA, primarily against Catholics. It was a horrendous punishment. Mostly meted out to the Catholic community itself, and often for drugs offences. This is one of the great ironies of Kneecap. Kneecap's lyrics are 90 per cent about drugs. They love drugs by all accounts. They sing about taking ketamine and how much they enjoy it. And the great irony, which I think they probably know themselves, is that Kneecap would have been kneecapped by the IRA in the 1970s, because if you dealt in drugs in those communities or even took drugs, you'd be in trouble with the IRA volunteers, as they called themselves. Claire Harvey: Someone else who's probably not following them on YouTube are the leaders of Hamas. Although Kneecap seemed to be fans of them and what's got their lead singer in trouble now is some alleged chants of 'Up Hamas, up Hezbollah' and allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a gig. Now he's pleaded not guilty to that. He's also requested an Irish translator at Westminster Court when he has his appearance. I thought that was a nice little touch. Brendan O'Neill: If they want to speak Irish in an English court, that's their business. I don't really have a problem with that. This is what I find quite infuriating about the love for them amongst so-called radicals and progressives, which is that the thing that they're in trouble for, that they are alleged to have done, we have to kind of use that language because the court case is ongoing, they are allegedly to have waved the flag of Hezbollah, they are alleged to have said up Hamas, up Hezbollah. Um, one of them, the guy with the tricolour tea cosy on his head, he posed with a copy of Hassan Nasrallah's book. Hassan Nasrallah was the, uh, former leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel a few months ago. This is a book that refers to Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs. To my mind, that's a pretty serious matter. And I'm not sure that progressives and radicals would be rallying around a hip-hop group that had posed with a book that referred to black people as monkeys. And yet when it comes to this group, which has posed with Hassan Nasrallah's book, and which has allegedly praised those two anti-Semitic armies, Hezbollah and Hamas, they seem not to have a problem with it. There's a serious element to this, which is an extraordinary double standard. And there are a lot of Jewish people in the UK, I know this for a fact because I've met them, I've spoken to them, who are worried about this case because they see the music industry, the popular music press, lots of young people, Glastonbury itself, they see all of these institutions rallying around these three lads who have allegedly praised one of the armies that carried out the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Kneecap's stage at Coachella, 2025. Claire Harvey: They are pleading not guilty but they do wear keffiyehs in public, they speak about the people of Palestine, they refer to it as a genocide, they criticise Israel by implication. They're certainly invoking something underneath young popular culture that seems to be resonating all the way up to the kind of 50-year-old rich people who go to Glastonbury. Why is that so appealing, you know, why is that punk now? Brendan O'Neill: I've called it the cult of the keffiyeh, which is that, you know, it's so interesting to me that for years and years we heard about the crime of cultural appropriation. You were stealing the culture of a minority group and apparently that was the worst thing you could ever do. Now, you go to any campus in the west Anglo-American world and you will see rich white kids, as far as the eye can see, in Arab headgear. I think it's a signifier of virtue. It is a kind of sartorial way to show the world that you are a good person. You're on the side of right, you're on side of Gaza against 'evil' Israel. The irony, I think, with a group like Kneecap, is that the truth of the matter is that their opinions are perfectly acceptable in dinner party circles. I've never heard them say anything that would be out of place as some soiree at the National Gallery in London or somewhere else, you know, I mean, it is now the most expected conformist position you can hold and the keffiyeh has become the garment of those classes. So when Kneecap wear that and make those statements, I just think to myself, that's not as radical as you think it is.
ABC News
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Perth photographer Rob Baxter publishes book of city's early punk, new wave scene
It was 1976 and Rob Baxter was a photography student at Central TAFE when he began combining his love of music with his camera. "My photos really are me walking around as a teenager and then in my early 20s … just documenting what I was into," Baxter told Mark Gibson on ABC Radio Perth. "I was transfixed by New Wave and punk, which happened — really started — about '76," he said. "Living in Perth and growing up in Perth, I didn't want to be here. I wanted to be in England. I wanted to be in America. "It was, and it always is, isolated. So, I think that a lot of the inspiration came from those bands." He has now delved into his archives and self-published a book full of his photographs and memories of that time. Some of the band members became famous, others are now distant memories. "In the book, it's a cross-section, a snapshot in time. It really is a snapshot of that period," Baxter said. "It's biased. It is very much my favourites. In one set of images, a very young Dave Faulkner, later of Hoodoo Gurus fame, performs with his band The Victims at their final gig in 1979 at a venue called Hernando's Hideaway. "The Victims were certainly one of my favourite punk bands. Probably the most famous punk band really ever to come out of Perth," he said. "The very mention of Hernando's Hideaway will conjure up memories for people. "That was a fantastic punk venue. "[The Dave Faulkner image] is one of my favourite photos. Putting the book together, Baxter said he tried to focus on Perth and the story of the city's music history in the '70s and '80s, warts and all. "It's not necessarily the most famous bands. It's the bands that wrote their own songs," he said. "Independent bands who were inspired by the Sex Pistols in the UK and the American bands like Talking Heads and Blondie. "This is very exciting for me because I finally got these photos in a book."
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Nobody makes a record like that for the money': how Gang of Four made Entertainment!
I grew up in a really boring village in Kent, so moving to Leeds as a student was thrilling. It was an A-list place to see gigs. On the other hand, the buildings were as black as soot, the Yorkshire Ripper was around and you could feel the tension between the National Front and the south Asian community. I saw swastikas on walls and on an anti-NF march I was hit with a truncheon by a mounted police officer. So I gradually came up with the modest ambition to change the world. I had known Andy Gill, our guitarist, since primary school. We were like brothers but also chalk and cheese. Musically, the four of us in the band never let each other off the hook – which sometimes resulted in actual fights. That tension fed the music. Andy wasn't a trained guitarist but had this genius way of flicking his fingers and stabbing at the instrument like it was his personal enemy, which would become hugely influential. We'd started as a knock-off Dr Feelgood, but once we came up with Love Like Anthrax we realised we had to dump all the other songs and write more like that. Then Damaged Goods opened the floodgates – we brought funk to punk. The songs on our debut album Entertainment! took a microscope to society. 5.45 – on which I sing, 'How can I sit and eat my tea with all that blood flowing from the television?' – was about the evening news. Every household had been sent a 'Protect and survive' pamphlet because of the threat of nuclear war: Guns Before Butter tapped into that paranoia. At Home He's a Tourist came from the Jean-Paul Sartre-type idea that the defining sensation of modern life is to feel uncomfortable. Then our bandmates Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham had the hilarious idea of making it a disco song, because we all loved Chic. It charted at No 58, but because we refused to change the word 'rubbers' (or condoms) to 'rubbish', the BBC wouldn't allow us on Top of the Pops. Entertainment! was recorded with no effects, so at the playback the record company thought it was a demo. But over the years it has inspired so many musicians, from Kurt Cobain and REM to Run the Jewels and Frank Ocean. Whenever we play the songs now, I'm almost depressed that they're still relevant, but I'm proud that Entertainment! has become an outsider classic. Nobody makes a record like that for the money. I was an English literature and theatre student playing in the rugby team but I realised I was never going to meet girls standing on tables singing songs with my trousers round my ankles. I gravitated to university clubs such as the Funk Society and met cooler people like Jon and Andy, who weren't wearing flares. Dave had moved to Leeds from Cumbria to find a band. He was the only real musician among us. We fought about everything from the music to the price of Mars bars but laughed about everything else. We started off rehearsing in a smelly basement in a Victorian building surrounded by mannequins. Then Gang of Four, the Mekons and Delta 5 became a collective who shared rehearsal space and drank together in the Fenton pub. Buzzcocks let us support them and took us on tour in Europe, so we became a spectacular performing band, bashing into each other on stage. All the labels were desperate to sign their version of the Clash but we signed to EMI for the least money because they gave us full creative control. We recorded Entertainment! in Workhouse studio in London, where Ian Dury had recorded New Boots and Panties!!, which we'd all loved. Between sessions we lived on a houseboat and would get pissed with a churn of people including Charlie Harper from UK Subs. I'm still amazed nobody drowned. We recorded without click tracks and didn't do many overdubs. The studio engineer hated us and every time Dave or I made a mistake, he made us do it all again, but the finished album sounds gritty and raw, simple but funky. We never talked much about the lyrics, but we all agreed it was far more interesting to sing about H-blocks or 'the working classes' than cars and girls. A lot of the people who were influenced by us went on to make millions. I wish I had a penny for every song that sounds like ours. Gang of Four play Entertainment! in full as part of their final UK shows, at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, on 23 June and O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, on 24 June. Jon King's memoir To Hell With Poverty! (Little Brown, £25) is out now
