The culture of fashion: Alex Michon, shy punk (part 1)
In December 2020, I interviewed my friend, the artist, writer and a director of Transition Gallery, Alex Michon for an article for Bon Magazine called ‘Can what you wear change who you are?’ I could only feature a couple of her soundbites in the piece, but on recently rediscovering the transcript, I realised she had some incredible insights into a pivotal time for young women and their attitude to clothes and self-expression. I spoke to her about her years designing and making clothes (alongside her friend Krystyna Kolowska) for The Clash at the peak of their influence along with her own personal style metamorphosis as a reaction to living in 1970s Britain.
DRG: Can you describe the outfits that you made for the Clash? What was the brief from [Clash manager] Bernie Rhodes for you and Krystyna, that he was trying to achieve?
Alex Michon: The brief was that the clothes had to be hard-wearing because as Bernard [Rhodes] had said there was going to be “a lot of fighting on the streets”. Then there was that wonderful thing, where for fashion reference, he said we had to watch The Battle of Algiers. This was the film that was against the French colonialism in Algiers and to me, was a really interesting kind of fashion signifier that he gave us.
I never watched it actually! I just saw images of it, so I took some reference from those images along with the idea that the clothes had to be hard-wearing. I suppose maybe there was an army idea to it. Although Bernard never used the word ‘army’; that came later, everybody calling them ‘fatigues’. It was much looser than that. It was much more conceptual. So as Krystyna and I were designing the clothes, there were these various ideas floating around in what I call my ‘Imaginarium’.
When you produced these designs, and the band put them on, how do you think they felt in them?
I think what it did was it enhanced the idea of a shared identity which they already had from when they were painting their boilersuits and shoes in this kind of replaying of the Jackson Pollock thing. To me, the exciting thing was that they had looked like art students who had just walked out of the studio and strapped on their guitars.
They were playing around with the clothes themselves, like Paul Simonon had been painting bullet holes onto white shirts. They were all stenciling their shirts. So, when we made the first jackets, they were templates that they continued to stencil on. In a way, that transformative idea of them, changing their own clothes and working on their clothes had started before I came along. And I think we were just an expansion of that, because as Joe Strummer said, he didn’t want to wear dead man’s clothes anymore (meaning he didn’t want to wear things from charity shops). The clothes were of their time, so the templates that we made were contemporary templates that they put their own ideas on top of. And that was important because it meant this whole idea of punk was not about looking back, but a new kind of modernism – the future rather than dead men’s past.
What Bernard was interested in was creating a collection in the way that Vivienne Westwood had created a collection as well. It was very much of the time. Lots of people were making their own clothes, lots of people were thinking about new ways of dressing during punk. We just had this opportunity of doing that but having these people who were in a band to do it with. So, it was absolutely not at all dressing them for their particular personalities. We would make things and they would choose what they wanted from the collection.
So, there’d be a range of shirts and they’d choose which one they wanted, or they would request specific things. For example, Paul [Simonon] wanted a shirt with a cut-up Union Jack. He asked for that specifically. That wasn’t Bernie telling him that he had to wear that, he came to us and said, “Oh, listen, I’ve got this idea, okay”. We worked on that and then we would put in our own ideas. And then, things like Joe would say, “I really want a pocket in my trousers to put my guitar pick in”. They also asked for epaulettes on shirts, so we worked with that idea.
It was collaborative. They would specify things and we would suggest things and then we’d show them. It was like creating a range that they would then choose from. It was taking what they’d done before, like with the zip jacket we did, which was kind of a nod to the Pollocks because the zips were meant to look like the paint lines. And then we did a lot of petrol blue jackets in the beginning which referenced the boilersuits. And then white shirts. Paul had been wearing the white shirts with red, so we used the red. And then it kind of grew from that.
We weren’t dressing them. We were designing a new collection although we never called it that. That would have seemed to be a bit naff! I was 18, 19, I was just one of the punks, you know, it was all very DIY.
Tell me about the clothes that you were wearing as a shy punk. On the one hand, the popular image of the female punks is very provocative, hyper sexual and fetishy, epitomised by Jordan. But then you also had the shy punks which were maybe more androgynous. How did the clothes that you wore as a shy punk express you or change your personality or the way you felt or behaved?
The androgyny thing was very uppermost at the beginning. A lot of ties, you know, kind of school uniform-ish type stuff. You’d always wear a white shirt with a black tie, black jacket, black trousers. Then there would be miniskirts which I made that were like the trousers because I remember Joe saying, “you never wear the clothes. Why don’t you wear the clothes?” So I made a mini skirt that was very like the trousers. And it was very hard-wearing and it zipped up the sides and I made one for Gina from The Raincoats. And I made quite a few for Jeannette Lee. I would wear the miniskirt a lot, but I would wear it with very dark black tights. It wasn’t sexual in a way, it was just hard-wearing. And I always wore it with either flat men’s shoes or boots, probably some kind of jumper on the top and a jacket. It was definitely not meant to be sexy.
How did you feel when you were wearing these kinds of clothes?
In punk times what you wore was a badge. showing that you belonged to this movement, that you were part of a revolution, this new thing that was happening. The clothes were extremely important for singling you out and identifying you with that tribe. And so how did I feel? Well, I always just wanted to be a Slit, obviously, as we all did. Or Patti Smith. Especially the Patti Smith Horses album cover. A lot of shy punk girls would be dressing trying to look like Patti. And I was always trying to either look like Patti Smith or trying to look like The Slits in their schoolgirl phase.
What did Patti Smith represent to you that you were trying to embed yourself in?
Patti Smith represented beauty, power, and a new way of being a woman, which is what The Slits represented as well. It was a new way of being a female that really resonated with the Shy Girl. Because here was a way where you could gender-play, take on that androgynous role. And you didn’t have to sexualise yourself. That was wonderful, to get away from the 70s, where it was very, very acceptable to make sexist comments all the time. I had kind of spent my whole teenage years in a semi cringe, a semi anxiety about being female and feeling incredibly shy about my own body.
When Patti Smith came along, and when punk came along and you could be a bit androgynous, that kind of swept all that away. You didn’t have to care about what men thought about you anymore. All the signals that you were putting out were, “I am punk, you know, I am not just a woman” thing. So that was very important and made me feel more comfortable in my own skin and in my shyness. Suddenly, it wasn’t about being sexual. It was about something else. That kind of awks that you felt all the time as a woman in the 70s, which was appalling.
Alex also emailed me this paragraph at the time, which strongly resonated with me:
“(Politics with a small p) is about the micro-politics of everyday life. About the minute-by-minute choices and decisions that make us who we are. About the politics of identity and place. I think this is particularly relevant to the little decisions we all make when deciding what we are going to put on day to day. Clothing is a performative act which involves the dipping into the dressing up box of our own personal re-remembered narratives. Aesthetic signifiers taken from films, books, personal histories which travel with us through our life.
Things like black stockings and polo necks will add a touch of the beatnik, black kohled eyes will take us to Goddard’s films evoking the Paris student revolts of 1968. The signifiers we choose when donning clothing may be imperceptible to others; we don’t replay our costuming of eras or film stars in their entirety, but they are our own tiny personal homages to things we have loved or been influenced by. For sure this putting-on playing changes us. We take on these re-imagined remembrances to clothe ourselves so they become like magical fetishes which imbue us with the power, beauty and self-confidence of their original wearers.”
What other punk looks were appealing to you?
The Slits – they were doing something that was extraordinary. They were playing with gender stereotypes like the party dress. Viv Albertine had this party dress we sewed for her (below), which she said was like her favourite party dress when she was a little girl. Like we all had when we were little, you know with the puff sleeves and the sweetheart neckline and the piqué fabric. I just thought that was extraordinary. She wanted it exactly like her party dress, but for her as a grown up. But then she mixed it with plimsolls and then with the wonderful addition of the socks knotted in the hair. So, it kind of detoured the whole idea of the young girl – like the naughty girl who would mess up her uniform. I saw the socks as kind of a nod to Rasta hair styling, you know what I mean? And then the kind of low pumps, which meant that there weren’t high heels. So, all these little significations were amazing.
And I have to tell you about their gymslips. Because now we have all that idea of gymslips and old perverts sexualising schoolgirls, but they were not like that at all. They took that idea and turned it on its head, they sort of used the gymslip as a weapon against that stereotype. They mixed it up with St Trinian-esque messed up hair, and then most importantly to me, which was such an important signifier, were the tights! You know, when you were in school and used to have those grey ribbed tights and they always used to kind of buckle up at the knees? So the gym slip would be worn with these thick ribbed grey tights, which again completely de-sexualised it.
I thought this was so great! To wear that uniform that you used to wear but to kind of reclaim it. And to use it as a signifier of being female but to completely de-sexualise it, and take out any kind of paedophilic context, and also to put it there as a mark against any kind of person trying to find a schoolgirl sexy, because they’ve got the messed up wild hair. They’d be screaming and screeching and playing guitars and yet they had these school uniforms on. And so that was very important. And of course, Ari [Up] was extraordinary, because she wore very long pleated skirts and it had such an impact on me. But I couldn’t really do it because I didn’t feel I was as beautiful or as brave as The Slits.
So, Ari would wear these long pleated skirts. And then she would wear something very strange and very unheard of in punk; Roots shoes. Those kind of round-toed, brown, natural leather shoes? It was what Rasta women wore and she would wear them with white polka dot socks; that was very big in punk – black and white polka dot socks. They had been very around in the 70s, very much in magazines like Honey and Petticoat and they survived through to punk.
The other person I always wanted to look like and I would copy her, was Jeannette Lee (below), who for me was just an inspirational style icon. She would be wearing one of my miniskirts with a matelot blue and white striped top, with a 1940s royal blue long-to-the-ankle mac (very 1940’s). She would always wear high heels because she was tiny, but with thick dark black tights. And then she would have the hair in a high cascading ponytail which made her look like a Ronette. She also wore over-the-knee high leather boots or 1940’s snakeskin platform shoes which were so desirable. She told me she got them from Petticoat Lane market and I went on a fruitless search to find some similar.
I was also wearing these 1950s jeans which were almost like kid’s jeans. They were made from very lightweight jeans fabric. They were really cheap. They had a straight leg and I wore them with a pair of plastic pixie boots with a tiny heel. I just wore these all the time – that was my uniform with probably a black or white shirt. I don’t think these jeans are around any more, they looked like the sort of jeans a young American kid would wear in the 50s, like those 50’s posters of little boys drinking Coke or something.
Back to Jeannette Lee. I mean, she’s just still beautiful and amazing and she was mesmerising. And then when she was in Public Image Limited, you need to look at some of the images of her in that band. One thing she wears is a long white party dress. Then there is an image of her in a very ornate (pre-Blitz kids) Regency jacket. She was ahead of her time and she mixed up the whole punk look with 1940’s stuff and just had her own unique look. Me, as long as I had my 50’s cute American lightweight jeans, my black shirt and my plastic pixie boots, I was good to go. I did wear my zipped mini skirt too, but I don’t remember ever wearing a dress during punk times. I was definitely gender-playing as boy!
Keep an eye out for Part 2 of Alex Michon’s recollections, coming soon.
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Alex Michon in her sewing studio wearing Joe Strummer’s jacket; The Slits by Anton Corbijn; Jeannette Lee by Janette Beckham
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here
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