Tesco v Esselunga: a bag for life

One of the best things about punk was arguably the licence it seemed to give people to get creative with their appearance. To get creative with everything, really, but especially with clothing and hair. And with accessories - sunglasses, belts, chains, piercings. Someone once told me that the punters who turned out for the Sex Pistols/Clash show at Coventry's Lanch Polytechnic on 29 November 1976 included a person who'd customised a black bin bag into a dress and another who wore a lightbulb as an earring. Classic punk DIY! Classic but possibly untrue. An industrial design student who wrote up his memories of this gig says there were actually no punk-like people in Coventry at this point and there were "at most" only 30-40 people in total in attendance that night. Pre-Grundy, to me this seems much more plausible than the show being attended by hordes of people looking like the woman in this photo. (Meanwhile, Lavinia Greenlaw's account of seeing numerous people in black bin-liners at a Vibrators show in 1978 rings true: by then the look had caught on in a big way).   

Sucked into the punk fashion vortex (pic: Dennis Morris)

Anyway, nice top, no? Yep, every little helps, and this photo caught my eye at the Dennis Morris exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery the other month. I forget where and when it was originally taken (I think it was the Vortex in 1977). I assume it's an example of a sort of "insider fashion" punk, a fan who'd been enthused by the London punk explosion (or just the Grundy furore?) and latched onto its outré spirit: defiance, humour, general weirdness. Viewed all these years later, in world-weary post-everything 2025, the ensemble almost turns her into a walking cliché (I am a cliche, I am a cliche), but at the time I reckon it must have been pretty bold. Or at least funny/provocative, depending on who was seeing it. Meanwhile, speaking of world-weary 2025, the other week I went to see an instore DJ thing by Kuntessa in Brixton. Yes, that's Kuntessa, who wears stuff like this ...

Kuntessa, pictured on her way to the shops

Right, another person who likes to be seen in a top made out of a supermarket bag (Esselunga's a big Italian supermarket chain, roughly the equivalent of the UK's boring old Tesco). In truth I didn't like the latin music Kuntessa was pumping out that night in Brixton but I do like her big-S Esseleunga t-shirt in this excellent publicity shot (photos aside, check out her music here). Back in the 1970s, punk obviously became a cheap high street fashion thing just like any other, appropriately enough given that a lot of the quintessential look had originated in McLaren and Westwood's clothes shop. Anyway, maybe I'm being fanciful but I like to think of Kuntessa's glaring-yellow t-shirt (a Never Mind The Bollocks yellow) as a little echo of punk's original cut-and-paste, make-and-mend, do-whatever-the-fuck-you-like-with-your-appearance mentality. At its best punk was creativity unleashed. A bag for life ...