Photos of the day: Street Punk Finds a Higher Street

I was punk all through highschool, starting with my love for the music and my crush on a 21 year old punk friend of my borthers. I had a mohawk from age 15 to 18, green or red hair, a nose ring, a leather jacket with spikes, steel toed boots, cat eye makeup and dark sunglasses on all the time, – but I didn’t have any punk friends, I didn’t shop at Hot Topic, and I made most of my clothes myself from whatever I could find. My favorite thing to do was take old oversize tees and cut them into crop sleeveless tees, then wear them over long sleeve tees with holes cut for my thumbs. I was a poor, parentless teen, living on friend’s couches for much of highschool but I never did drugs, rarely drank and always went to school. I had great grades and my teachers loved me for not dropping out so they let me do anything I wanted, and I never really lost my style in the process. So although stereotypes can sometimes be true, punk is a style I find only given a bad reputation by idiots who think of it a solely a fashion style with some mandatory “bad boy/girl lifestyle” to match – like they’re putting on a costume and playing a part rather than being themselves and showing how they feel through their style. So it’s no wonder that as some of us punks have grown up, we have kept our fashion style because many of us still feel the same way we did when we started dressing that way. Some of us have done better than others, some of us had to stop dressing that way for jobs, but we will always love the music we loved as teens and be punks inside no matter what we wear. How many “trends” can you say that about.

connoisseurs at the Armory Show, 2012

by Maro Riofrancos

Acting Naturally

by Maro Riofrancos

Anarchy at Harajuku Station

by Tokyo Fashion

streetsnapping – how to get clocked….

by John Phillips