The History of the Indies diverts all the way back through time, and is a genre of rock music which originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 80's. The genre of Indies represents Independent music, which once a upon a time, it probably was. Originally, the term Indie in the 80's was more or less synonymous with indie rock. Bands such as The Smiths, The Stone Roses and Mary Chain were directly influenced by Indie Music. Back then, Indie Music was considered to be original and admired, yet as the years progressed into the new millennium, Indie Music simply reflects popular culture.
For example, walking around a city nowadays, a majority of male teenagers are wearing they think are Indie clothes. (Checked shirts and skinny jeans). Although, ironically, back in the 80's this particular style was considered unusual. Bands who dared to dress like this such as The Smiths stood out, and skinny jeans were in fact a laughing stock and were believed to queer. As a result, Indie music weren't usually signed up to major and current record labels, and instead were in charge of producing, marketing and selling there own music. The whole point of the Indie label was to be different from current trends, and bands thrived on appearing more individual than current artists. Below is a video by The Stone Roses performing a song called "Begging you," which are an example of an Indie band from the 80's. The actual video juxtaposes the idea of normal and illusions, as the video is quite different and conveys unusual images.
However, in modern times the label Indie might as well represent a completely different meaning. Instead, if you watch music videos now by bands such as U2 and Razorlight, they are all similar to each other in terms of story lines, locations and shot types. Also, the massive genre that is Indie has been squashed into a tiny representation of Indies simply being males who wear skinny jeans, shirts and enjoy playing the guitar, where in fact Indie used to mean so much more than this.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Useful research but independent rock music goes back to the mid 1960's with bands like The Velvet Underground's debut album. Indie dress style can take many forms, an example from yahoo.com;
ReplyDelete...
its like, the urban street style of fashion
kind of teen guy in the city?
idk but really all you have to wear is a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a neutral colored beanie, some gladiator sunglasses,
and (here's the most important part of the outfit):
a graffiti inspired shirt:
...
Indie clothes are mainly non conformist and challenge conventional fashion styles thus what was once (slim jeans and check shirt) trend setting is now conventional, thus the indie dress code in your terms does not reflect the true essence of the meaning of independent fashion styles. It would be better to term the jeans check shirt style as reflecting popular culture.