no. 1 — "Good Vibrations" and the pulse of a movement
What a musical about the burgeoning punk rock scene in 1970s Belfast taught me about society at large
Last Friday started off in an all too familiar way: my husband Pádraig (pronounced “Porrick”) had impulsively purchased tickets to something “happening” in NYC. Every couple of months, he’ll enter into a fit of furious research slash scrolling and then emerge from his trance having signed us up for a number of upcoming activities — concerts, dinners, museum exhibits, sporting events, etcetera, etcetera. Having paid no heed to my own vested interest in or availability to attend said activities when booking them, this ritual remarkably still lands at about an 80% hit rate on cute date night. The other 20% has included a virtual Northern Lights expedition with a frenetic aurora hunter, a fully blindfolded “dinner in the dark,” and — my own personal version of hell — a Nick Cave concert-bordering-on-séance at Kings Theater. BUT I’ll gladly take those odds, and as I told Pádraig on our wedding day, I love him for all the ways he keeps life weird and interesting.
Well dealer’s choice last Friday was 4 tickets to see Good Vibrations with two unsuspecting friends, and spoiler alert: this one was a win.
Good Vibrations is a revival of the 2018 production which debuted at Belfast’s Grand Opera House and was adapted from a 2012 biopic of the same name. Both musical and film were co-authored by Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson and recount the very real life story of Terri Hooley, a rebel and a dreamer who notoriously galvanized the punk rock movement from his record shop in 1970s Belfast. At the height of the Troubles, Belfast was center stage for the political and nationalistic conflict over North Ireland’s independence, which meant it was also a hotbed of violence between Catholics (generally Irish nationalists, or republicans) and Protestants (generally British loyalists, or Unionists). So at a time and place that was divided to its core, Terri Hooley heralded punk music as the least common denominator. In signing bands like The Undertones and The Outcasts, he became a beacon for misfits and for defying authority: “Punk was anarchy, and I had been waiting for it all my life.”
Glen Wallace delivers a truly moving rendition of Terri in the musical, though he reminds us that such unbridled passion can inspire as quickly as it can destroy. (The surrounding cast and set echo this capriciousness in their own shapeshifting: most characters play several different roles, and an ostensibly minimalist set manages to permutate ad infinitum with only two music cases.) But for the most part, Good Vibrations is jovial, tongue-in-cheek, and so unexpectedly “charming” (NYT). The cast gave their whole selves in the kind of magnetic, full-bodied performance that makes you do something: dance, clap ferociously, try to lock eyes with the performers to convey your gratitude. It was an “all of the above” for me. And then it got me thinking.
Why did punk music actually take off in Ireland in the first place? And are there enough distinguishing features of movements (vis-à-vis trends) that we can discern them in real time?
Defining a movement
Most attempts at characterizing trends versus movements are retroactive and rely on tenure itself as a defining attribute. So trends are usually associated with some level of en masse popularity, but they are also fleeting in nature. It’s the side bang I had in college. Movements, on the other hand, ultimately prove more transformative. But they’ll often get embedded in the social fabric at a grassroots level, prone to being overlooked until they’ve eventually emerged as part of a larger collective consciousness. They cook low and slow.
After reflecting on Good Vibrations, I’d propose three other signaling dimensions of effective movements:
Movements are borne out of shared experience (and are most often a retaliation against it). Punk music was characteristically raw, rebellious and anti-establishment. At that poignant moment in Belfast where people were the most suppressed and divided, punk was an escapist antidote — an outlet to scream, dance, be together, reject one of two fraught labels and identify with a new subculture altogether. I’d argue it was because of the situational context in Belfast that the anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate, and anti-consumerist punk movement spread as rapidly and as profusely as it did. Or as Terri Hooley put it, “When It comes to punk: New York has the haircuts, London Has the trousers, but Belfast has the Reason.”
Movements inspire action. Whereas I may be a passive consumer of trends, movements rely on active, visible, and vocal participating agents to flourish. “This is missionary work” Terri says of his duty to evangelize punk music across Belfast. And in the same way brands are desperate to convey “authenticity” in their social media strategy, I’d contend that true movements reach a k factor >1 because the shared experience above grounds their crusade in raw authenticity.
Movements invent new things. As such profound campaigns spread, they permeate adjacent mediums of culture and lead to new creations. In the case of punk, it ushered in a wave of equally audacious fashion: leather jackets, Docs, fishnets, studs, mohawks, black eyeliner. In subscribing to illicit iconography, sexual innuendo and DIY creations, punk style defied the mainstream and attacked materialism. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired and a thought leader on tech and digital culture, suggests another key marker of something taking hold of the zeitgeist is when it starts to permeate language itself (e.g., new words enter common vernacular.) The term “poseur” was one largely popularized by the punk movement to denounce someone believed to be an adopter of the punk aesthetic or attitude without ascribing to its underlying values.
Music as an instrument
It’s no wonder then that music, uniquely tied to all three premises, has played such a central role in perpetuating historical movements. More often than not, music hits on universal themes and are meant to resonate with a shared memory of love, love lost, pain, angst… experiences that, once the details are trimmed away, create a nostalgic bond between artist and audience.
There’s also a fundamentality of music that makes it perfectly designed for translation. It is bareboned and accessible. It may be the most truly democratic device, and music notes may be the most universally spoken and understood language.
So when the contextual conditions (namely the sociopolitical factors) are ripe, the music of that era is prone to inciting an uprising. It becomes the vehicle for transporting a message. Think about the rise of the Blues and then Jazz in the South or Woodstock in 1969 New York as the denouement of protest against war and for human rights. Think also of Rodriguez’ music which was overlooked in the US but took hold in South Africa 30 years later alongside anti-apartheid activism.
Correlation vs causation
Perhaps it’s also no coincidence that some of the most iconic and timeless pieces of fashion had their provenance in a countercultural, often music-catalyzed movement — the rebellious tropes of the leather jacket and miniskirt in the 60s, hip hop-inspired streetwear in the 70s and 80s. And then perhaps Louis Vuitton’s appointment of Pharrell Williams as its new men’s creative director underpins a particularly astute strategic vision? (A topic for another post!)
I’ll admit hindsight is 20/20, and there were countless “trends” that transpired from the very same movements without withstanding the test of time. But this is a case for correlation not causation, and that’s still something. A development without an underlying reason, without proactive dissemination and without a tether into multiple dimensions of culture is more likely to land with a thud than one with any. And one that bears all three has a fighting chance of leaving a permanent mark.
The here and now in fashion
Time for some real-time diagnosis. Let’s consider two of the most widely recognized developments in fashion today:
The rise of genderless styles. No doubt unisex is en vogue, as is the recent predisposition of designers to feature traditionally feminine garments (skirts, dresses, handbags) on their male runway models and vice versa. But is this a trend or a movement? Well as with other successful movements, there is a fundamental reason for the proliferations of genderless fashion over the past decade. It surfaced as a bold statement against constricting gender boundaries, an affront to the antiquated expectations they engendered, and a broader celebration of inclusivity and the LGBTQ+ population especially (i.e., criteria 1: ✅). Consumer interest in genderless fashion is also spreading rapidly and instigating changes across the industry. According to Klarna research, half of Gen-Z shoppers globally have already purchased fashion outside of their assumed gender identity and over 70 percent plan to in the future. In response, emerging designers and heritage luxury brands like Gucci, Versace, Prada alike have already launched non-binary lines or featured more trans and non-binary models (criteria 2: ✅).
But while representations of genderless-ness have to some degree prompted new terminology and new processes (e.g., changes in the way we use pronouns), I think we’ve thus far fallen short of true innovation in design. Agender clothing today has largely taken the shortcut form of baggy jeans and oversized everything — a commercially-driven and convenient approach to complying with recent demands. It’s worth noting here that the term “unisex” was originally coined in the 1960s, when unisex clothing first came and went. This wave ultimately resulted in women mostly co-opting historically male garments, or what fashion historian Jo Paoletti describes as “uniformity with a masculine tilt,” and quickly disappeared. To reinforce the status of today’s genderless styles as a a more enduring movement, brands may need to develop more inventive solutions to agender form and function (criteria 3: 🤔). Perhaps this calls for more versatile fabric construction that enables you to better adjust to desired fit or repurpose the same garment in multiple ways. Or perhaps we’ll see a shift towards made-to-measure garments or offering in-store tailoring services. One can hope.
The sustainability “movement.” With fashion now widely recognized as one of the most polluting industries in the world, sustainability has become a central topic for debate around climate activism with brands (especially fast fashion brands) becoming the predominant targets of attack. As with other successful movements, today’s sustainability initiatives are widespread across industries and are truly changing the way we communicate and operate. They have even spawned new businesses and dedicated ESG industries.
As for criteria 2, brands have undoubtedly been forced to change the ways they produce and distribute apparel. They have vowed to circulatory pledges, waste reduction standards, and transparency initiatives. But these efforts towards so-called “slow fashion” are only a partial and single-sided antidote to the problem; they don’t address the underlying ways in which we consume and utilize apparel. Rental platforms (Rent the Runway, Nuuly, Pickle), new brand resale programs (TheNorthFace, Cuyana, Oscar de la Renta), and P2P marketplaces (TheRealReal, Poshmark) all represent essential progress at addressing these root consumption and utilization patterns, but consumers are generally still using them as a supplement rather than an alternative to prevailing modalities. So while I believe sustainability is a veritable movement, I think we’re nearing an inflection point where consumers will become the more proactive creators, participants and evangelists of the solution.
What next?
And with all that said, it does indeed feel like there is a particular ripeness to this very moment in 2023 — a post pandemic, mid Russia-Ukraine war era that is imminently facing the aforementioned reckoning of climate change and AI. The last two decades heralded technology as the ultimate force for democratization (e.g., with the introduction of gig economy, direct-to-consumer, and other higher access / lower cost models), but we’re becoming increasingly aware it also had unintended consequences (e.g., rising mental health issues, data privacy concerns). In the next decade, I can see a world where we are fighting to reclaim what we feel we’ve lost to technology.
Maybe the next “a la punk” countercultural movement comes across as an attack on “the algorithm,” a retreat to nature, and a comfort in physically being with each other. I can see a growing anti-consumerist mindset propel us away from today’s “DTC for everything” panacea and a move toward bundled services and social shopping. I think we’re already seeing the sentiment in the nostalgic return to analog products like vinyl records and disposable cameras, witnessing it in “quiet quitting” turned “live quitting.”
But whether it’s through these developments, other iterations, or new categories altogether, it feels like we’re due for movement.