Evaluation Of Final Piece

Evaluation

For my final piece I decided to create two images representing the punk era and my own interpretation of Vivienne Westwood's style of clothing. Vivienne Westwood has been key to influencing me to create such a shock factor type piece and to recreate the types of clothing that she is well known for which I have portrayed in my final images.

Vivienne Westwood is one of the most influential British fashion designers of the twentieth century and introduced "underwear" as "outerwear." Her most well known movements are those of sub cultural fashion and punk. Punk is a well known fashion style in the present day and was born in the 1970's mainly in London and other main cities, it was part of a rebellion and aggressive movement. The fashion "punk" was closely related to the genre of music that formed also named "punk," examples of this particular music genre are The Ramones, The King Blues and of course, the Sex Pistols which pretty much invented punk themselves and the band was formed and created by Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood's early boyfriend..

The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement. The Sex Pistols consisted of members such as Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, Glen Matlock being replaced by Sid Vicious in the early 1977. Under the management of Malcolm McLaren, the band provoked controversies that took Britain by storm. In 1971, McLaren and girlfriend Vivienne Westwood, opened a London clothing shop called Let It Rock, on King's Road. The shop stocked many second hand pieces, and Teddy Boy style clothing designed by Westwood herself. Such clothing that Vivienne had designed were Bespoke tailored drape jackets, skin tight trousers and thick soled brothel creepers. All of these designs were the mainstay of the shop and all of the designs are also being resold in shops to the present day,

Vivienne Westwood also designed a bunch of styled clothing with the logo Destroy. This certain design I had tried to recreate in my final images and is my own interpretation of this awesome design. Other punk types of clothing and items I have also used in my final images are things such as tartan jackets, skirts, outrageous make up and hair, spiked dog collars and safety pins as nose rings, all of these were big things to wear back in the punk era and are still around today.

Making This Happen.

Trying to turn my mother back into a punk was not as difficult as it sounds and she got well in to it! Overall recreating the punk era took me a few hours, to do the make up, hair and crazy clothing which me and my mum had made by hand! Note, creating the clothes had taken a week beforehand.

The Hair

The hair was the hardest part of creating this awesome idea. It took a whole lot of gel and hairspray and straightening! My mum had actually cut her own hair for this project!

The Make Up

Outrageous make up was a huge part of the punk style, mainly around the eyes and was always very dark, big and bold. I didn't want to over do it with the make up and make it look like one big mess so I made it quite simple but also quite detailed, using some bright red lipstick to bring out the sharpness and color of my mums face.

The Clothes!

The clothes which me and my mum had designed and made were the Destroy t shirt, one of Vivienne Westwoods most famous designs so I decided to use my own interpretation in my final images. The skirt we had made out of some old tartan material and used some old ripped leggings which were kicking about. The boots and the jacket were NOT made by us.

The Final Product.

After a lot of hard work and effort, my mum was finally a punk!

After I had finished recreating punk, I had this crazy idea to shoot some photographs of my mum smoking and drinking in a phone box, she wasn't actually doing this! A lot of punks back in the 1970's would hang around phone boxes just drinking and smoking and looking mean and this gave me the idea to incorporate this set in my final images after seeing some old photographs of the Sex Pistols.

Test Shots

For this particular shot, I love the face that my mum is pulling and the pose she is doing, this pose is just typical punk! The shirt she is wearing which says "Destroy" is a re creation of Vivienne Westwood's original design and I covered the top in safety pins.

My Final 2

After taking about 40 photographs, getting extremely frustrated about which ones I would choose and which ones would look better, I decided to pick these two. I felt that these two particular shots represented what being a punk was really like, smoking a cigarette where you're not really supposed to, drinking out in the open and not caring what no one thinks! I feel that my mum had interpreted this brilliantly and I was able to capture the moment and she was able to relive it again and overall the experience was breath taking. I feel that my final outcome was achieved with brilliance, I am very happy that I took the time and effort to recreate something that really was an eye opener back in the 70's and is still somewhat around today and I hope people will enjoy these photographs and understand the true meaning that lies behind the images portrayed.