![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1981_adalbertstrasze.jpg\")
Heinrich Dubel on Adalbertstra\u00dfe, Berlin 1981. Image courtesy of Heinrich Dubel Medien und Verlagsservice<\/p>\n Heinrich Dubel on Adalbertstra\u00dfe, Berlin 1981. Image courtesy of Heinrich Dubel Medien und Verlagsservice<\/p>\n
Heinrich Dubel on a personal transformation through punk in Hannover, 1975. Translation by Thomas Lovegrove<\/strong><\/p>\n I was 14 years old in November 1975, when The Sex Pistols made their debut at St Martins School of Art and Design in London. My look at the time consisted of no-brand studded jeans, or black cords, a blue Navy pullover worn over a plaid shirt, and a shabby black nappa-leather jacket, two sizes too big. I also had a hooded sweatshirt. You could get those back then, too. However, I can\u2019t remember them being that common, or where I got the bright yellow example that I was so proud of.\u00a0<\/p>\n The older youths, hanging out at the kiosk on the street corner, wore flares with fox tails on the belt and cowboy-style half-length boots with angled heels. The kids who I hung out with in our area wore chunky Seventies shoes with thick soles and beaded jewellery seams, or clogs in summer. Admittedly, I also had a pair of clogs in fake crocodile skin, and with thick copper-coloured studs around them. But after I had seen Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cA Clockwork Orange\u201d at the cinema, I practically only wore black US combat boots on my feet. It certainly wasn\u2019t stylish, but it made a statement: on the whole, my appearance was more like that of a worker, or one of the sub-proletariat in my area, and not one of the \u201cyobs\u201d, as we called the youths hanging out on the corner.<\/p>\n It was down to the disco at the weekend, where I was regularly turned away at the door. Not because I was too young, but because I wasn\u2019t wearing the right clothes. I solved the problem with a pair of quite tight-fitting wine-coloured cords, half-boots with brass fittings on the toes and heel, and a gold-coloured shirt with an iridescent black pattern on that I considered \u201cbaroque\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n I found myself on the verge of a new era, but I didn\u2019t know it at the time. And it would only be much later that I became aware of just how radical this would turn out to be. On one hand, the boys still asked the girls to dance in an extremely old-fashioned way. There was fawning, flirting, and the sending of missaries, who rushed here and there between the tables and the dancefloor. At the same time there were already those who unceremoniously disappeared to the toilets, for bouts of sex and drugtaking. This was outrageous, and could prompt weeks of discussion.\u00a0<\/p>\n One night something strange happened. The DJ announced (at the time, the individual tracks were partly still introduced) that he was going to play a totally new, red-hot record, with a style of music that \u201cwe had never heard before\u2026 namely\u2026 PUNK!\u201d \u2013 then it was \u201c\u00c7a Plane Pour Moi\u201d by Plastic Bertrand, which became an instant favourite and was thereafter played every night. There was much dancing to this record, but not in\u2026 well\u2026 the classic disco dance style, but instead something like a clumsy proto-pogo, which developed entirely organically.<\/p>\n The transition from disco to punk was easy. I explained quite simply that I would now be A Punk. For 50 Deutschmarks, I bought a green-black, waist-length leather jacket from a co-worker, which her boyfriend had decreed to be too old-fashioned. I sewed on to the jacket safety pins and brass chains from the hardware shop. It would be my most important possession in the next two years. Even the wine-coloured cords were now properly put to use, equipped with homemade \u201cbondage\u201d applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those who were regarded as posers were known as \u201cdisco punks\u201d, which irritated me at first. However, it was not about the origin of individuals coming from the disco scene, but about what kind of clothes they wore and if they were punk fashion \u2013 whether the clothes had been bought, or whether they were tatty or homemade 1<\/sup>. However, this category applied only to boys. Punk girls were allowed to make themselves prettier, it was even expected. The more down-at-heel, the more rancid the guy, the more spectacular the girl. 2<\/sup>\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was 1978 and I was a real punk. My trousers were threadbare and were held together by safety pins and pieces of fabric that I had sewn on myself, using the most garish stuff available, leopard print and so on. Sneakers and boots were swathed in gaffer tape. I still wore the Navy pullover, with holes in; after all, it was now pretty old. Finishing off the look was a mohawk and studded arm bands.<\/p>\n A guy named Face was the coolest. He was a true Dandy. He was so called because he had an extremely delicate, fine-featured face, somehow aristocratic, although he himself was completely wasted. His style separated him. He never wore the typical \u201cjewellery\u201d like safety pins, studded arm bands or chains. Whether summer or winter, he always wore a long grey coat. Under this he wore suits, which he got from charity collections, and roll-neck pullovers \u2013 almost always in grey, rarely black, and never another colour. In fact, he was homeless, but he played bass in a band.<\/p>\n Although of course there were a myriad of subtle differences in detail and multiple crossovers, styles for the guys generally developed in three directions: there were the \u201cnormal\u201d, or today classic hardcore punks, who wanted to be explicitly political with slogans on their leather biker jackets and extravagant spiked hair in green and red. Then there was the suitjacker- wearer. They also painted their clothes and draped them with chains and badges. They wore their hair short and arranged in spikes like Johnny Rotten 3<\/sup>. And there was a smaller group, who had now renounced jewellery, accoutrements and inscriptions, just because these things were now so popular with the others. I belonged to this group. It was a dark, very depraved style, hard and broken.<\/p>\n As an alternative outfit, which I called \u201cfake popper\u201d, I sometimes wore a wide, pale blue pullover, which a friend of mine had made on her mother\u2019s sewing machine, with tattered tapered jeans cut too short, and pointy black loafers. I combed the mohawk to the side, for a look that was proto-Emo. In this outfit I got to know girls from the student scene \u2013 the effect was simply less aggressive. On the contrary, it had something\u2026<\/p>\n One night I made an observation that would influence my later life more than anything I had ever seen. I watched a guy \u2013 drunkenly swaying back and forth \u2013 holding on to a street lamp with difficulty and then throwing up on his shoes. In a flash, I realised: it was more about the attitude and less about the clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Taken from The Sleek Book, “Punk”, featured in Sleek 38.<\/strong><\/p>\n A longer version of this piece is published in “Cool Aussehen – Mode & Jugendkulturen”, Ed. Diana Weis. Published by Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag AG.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n 1<\/sup> Quite early on even in Hannover there was an outfitter, which \u2013 as usual for this scene \u2013 was based on McLaren and Westwood\u2019s London boutique SEX. As such, it first offered Teddy Boy, and subsequently painted, leather, punk and new-wave clothes, and then finally all these together.<\/span><\/p>\n 2<\/sup> In retrospect, it is apparent how conformist the apparent diversity was, e.g. the hairstyles of the girls \u2013 all these hairstyles were pale blond, pale green, pale red and cut in the universal \u201ccat style\u201d look.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 3<\/sup> In addition to the music and attitude of the early punk rockers, the fashion, or more accurately the style of dress, was a central element of the rebellion against the mainstream. Everything was acceptable. But did everything work? Where did the protagonists of this time derive their specific inspiration? From England? In what way did the punk style develop, considering that it did not actually exist as a singular phenomenon? Of course, typifications can be identified within the\u00a0development of the seemingly unconventional clothing habits of those years; these would later become standard, and later still become caricatures. During the writing of this text, the idea came to me that it may well have been that in their leather jackets, the punks unconsciously reincarnated the British rockers of the 1960s, while the suit-jacket-wearers in turn related to the Teddy Boys or Mods. In the early 1980s many punks did actually begin to shift towards these styles or movements.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Heinrich Dubel on Adalbertstra\u00dfe, Berlin 1981. Image courtesy of Heinrich Dubel Medien und Verlagsservice Heinrich Dubel on a personal transformation through punk in Hannover, 1975. Translation by Thomas Lovegrove I was 14 years old in November 1975, when The Sex Pistols made their debut at St Martins School of Art and Design in London. My…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,959,960,961,962,865,815,963,964],"class_list":["post-10636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-berlin","tag-cool-aussehen-mode-jugendkulturen","tag-diana-weis","tag-hannover","tag-heinrich-dubel","tag-punk","tag-sleek-38","tag-the-book","tag-thomas-lovegrove"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1979_kerry_dagmar_GO.jpg\")
Kerry und Dagmar, Hannover 1979. Image courtesy of Heinrich Dubel Medien und Verlagsservice<\/p>\n