You only see me for the PiL hoodie I wear

"You never listened to a word that I said / You only see me for the clothes I wear ..."

But that was in 1978 not 2018, and now we have PiL hoodies on sale in a shop in Shoreditch in east London for a mere £75. Yeah, £75 to you, squire. Here ya go. Get yer PiL hoodies! Fresh out the van. Come on mate, get one of these on ya. You'll look well tasty when you go out tonight ... I shouldn't care (and I don't very much), but with my eye caught by the PiL window display earlier it was at least necessary to resister some residual disgust. Targeted disgust - isn't that what punk was supposed to be about?

There's no future in shop-bought 'creativity' 

I'm fully aware, of course, that punk from the its earliest days was heavily enmeshed with clothes and consumerism - from Sex to Seditionaries, from over-priced bondage trousers and mohair sweaters, to a boom in Doctor Martens and even George Cox brothel creepers. First-, second- and third-wave punks were walking adverts for clothes and so-called "brands", with their Levi's, their Harringtons, their studded belts and biker's jackets. But still, a shop selling PiL pin badges for £8! A little metal badge! What the fuck ... This "seven-piece capsule collection" of PiL merchandise is a tie-in with PiL's 'The Public Image is Rotten' tour, at which, presumably, they'll be selling more merchandise to a load of punters who've paid a lot of money to go to the gig in the first place. Something is rotten, for sure. Lest we forget, one of the best things about punk was the way that people felt they could reinvent themselves through clothes and appearance, ripping conventional clothing norms to shreds. McLaren and Westwood's shop certainly (and cynically?) cashed in on this but also helped to license a way of mixing and matching that post-punk types did instinctively with army surplus gear, jumble sale cast-offs and tie-dye handiwork. This was the true invention of punk, not a Ramones or a PiL t-shirt. "White edge to badge (no coping)", says the sales blurb to the stupid pin badge. And I guess there isn't any coping with the awful bashing punk's taken from rampant commerce down the years if you emotionally over-invest in the "sanctity" of the music and what (you thought) it represented. One of the new PiL shirts even has album track listings printed down the sleeves. You're literally wearing your musical preferences on your sleeve ...  I haven't eaten butter for years (it's bad for the cows you know ...), but if I still did I would be sure never to buy that stuff Lydon endorsed. Similarly, if you gave one of these t-shirts or hoodies to me I'd rip it up while listening to Metal Box as opposed to actually ... er, wearing it. In public. So there you have it. Hoodie provokes the last dregs of preserved punk disgust. It's a pathetic tale. But then again:

"The public image belongs to me / It's my entrance / My own creation / My grand finale / My goodbye / Public image / Public image / Goodbye ..."