Music lends a beat to New York City street style
By Kerri Jarema
The bright and diverse New York City streets are indicative of many things, including the evidence that fashion no longer comes strictly from the runway. The culmination of six decades of youth fashion inspired by revolutions in music now makes up “street style” – what everyday people on the street are wearing.
In the 1950s, actors like Gregory Peck and Marilyn Monroe were considered some of the most fashionable people around. However, they were all dressed the same. Fashion came directly from the designers in Paris, meaning that women wore form-fitting pencil skirts for day and sparkling, full-skirted evening gowns, while men wore suits for the everyday, complete with tie, hat and overcoat. Tuxedos were worn at night.
Liz Besanson, 37, a New York City jewelry designer based in Wilmington, De., says that the music industry has always influenced the fashion industry, but the popular music in the 1950s wasn’t very revolutionary.
“The artists at the time that were huge were Dean Martin, Bobby Darin and the like were wearing sophisticated suits and the women were wearing gowns – they weren’t musicians who were trying to change the ideas of society, but rather they were simply there to entertain. Then that changed and fashion went along with it,” Besanson said.
In the 1960s, street fashion finally began to emerge, directly related to the growing influence of the music industry. The Beatles brought the British Invasion to the U.S and along with it came the Mod look, with skinny suits, Cuban heeled boots and bowl haircuts. Then came the Hippie movement, bringing peasant dresses, bell-bottoms and men with long hair onto the scene. From there, everything changed.
Alexandra Adame, co-owner of Lower East Side boutique, The Dressing Room, maintains that the growing variation of music that people listen to and its heightened influence on day-to-day life has caused a definite shift in the fashion world.
“The music scene has been a huge influence on the fashion industry, and vice versa, and how people choose to dress themselves,” said Adame. “I think the fashion and music worlds are melding more together each year, with many musicians starting clothing lines, modeling in magazines and ad campaigns, and attending and performing at fashion shows. Conversely, more and more musicians are much more aware of high fashion and are wearing more designer looks and accessories than in the past.”
Adame also said that she believes that the street fashion movement really started in the early 1990s, when the runway took inspiration from people on the streets, who were getting their inspiration from music.
“I think the influence of street style really took off after Marc Jacobs’ groundbreaking collection for Perry Ellis in 1992, in which he used many obvious references to the ‘grunge’ style of the Seattle music scene at the time,” she said. “This was really the first time a designer used such blatant and specific street style influences in a collection, and it opened the doors for other designers to interpret trends coming from the street.”
Vladimir Lackovic, 21, of Manhattan, maintains that his fashion inspiration also comes partly from the music industry, saying, “I don’t dress to look like anyone in particular but I do know the style that I like, fitted clothes but not too fitted… I guess it does come from some styles that indie bands would wear [which is what I listen to.]”
The street fashion phenomenon has sprouted up from urban areas such as New York, where the diversity of the young people living there and their desire to express their individuality through their clothes has led to a plethora of styles cultivated from the runway, but more importantly from their music and themselves.
Besanson believes that style, rather than fashion, is all about the individual, saying, “Style is a personal thing and is often what people feel makes them stand apart and unique. When [people] see others in the street, they take a little of this and a little of that from what they are wearing and add their own spin on it.”
Besanson believes that the “spin” people put on their style can come from music, but also comes from other people, both past and present. She says, “I’m drawn to those who wear vintage designs with a little bit of the old and a little bit of the new to create their own look. Fashion is so broad and it really depends on the person’s personality on how they want to display it.”
Oftentimes, inspiration comes from multiple sources simultaneously.
Lauren Lee, a 21 year old Hunter College student, says that she gets her fashion inspiration “mostly from actresses in Korean dramas” but she also thinks that a majority of new styles seen on the street come from the music industry.
“Lately I’ve been listening to Phoenix, The xx and the new I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business album and I feel like I wear plaid shirts and skinny jeans with Converse sneakers more often when I’m listening to indie, hipster music than when I’m listening to my Korean bands,” Lee says. “I feel like this is probably true for a lot of people. What you hear everyday is bound to influence how you want to look, at least partially.”
Street style has never been more varied than it is right now, mostly because the music industry has never been this wide-reaching, including more genres than ever before and more influence, too. It only remains to be seen how much farther music can push the fashion envelope before the runway starts to push back.