Punk’s not dead, despite the movement’s brevity and the fact that in the UK it originally involved just a handful of people between the King's Road and Bromley. But such was the power it unleashed that, 40 years later, punk’s attitudes and influences live on, having shaped subsequent generations with its spirit of rebellion, experimentation, DIY aesthetic, and kicking down the walls to see what’s on the other side. Punk was not sitting around waiting for others to make things happen for you.
Here, four women influenced by punk – both directly and indirectly – talk about the hair, the clothes, the music and mentality of their punk pasts...
Sonia Bell, fine artist
"I was too young for the first wave of punk so the Sex Pistols appearing on Bill Grundy totally passed me by. I noticed my friends’ older siblings starting to look different and listening to strange loud music in and around 1977. It didn't chime until I turned 14 in 1981.
I stopped paying attention at school, and saw no future via conventional routes, but I hated all the hippie stuff my mother was embracing. Punk was perfect! They hated hippies and saw no future.
First I changed my look, messing about with clothing and hairstyles, listening to Siouxie, Magazine and The Slits. I liked the DIY element of how you could create something out of what you had to hand. Myself and another girl formed Dublin punk band The Broken Hymens as an antidote to all the male bands around. Paranoid Visions let us rehearse at their studio and we played a couple of gigs, got reviewed in Hot Press, fell out with Paranoid Visions and then fell out with each other. Very rock ‘n’ roll.
Back then, looking different was like a signal to other misfits, we could identify each other. Before the internet there wasn't much else to go on, so your signals were visual. It was tribal."
Lulu Allison, literary novelist
"Music, music, music – that’s the reason I loved punk. There was a fantastic variety at that time – Adam and the Ants, The Slits, The Clash, Magazine. I used to hang out in a pub in Reading called The Star – entirely non-punk on the surface but the landlady was tolerant and the jukebox was magic.
Style was a hobby – jumble sales in nearby villages. Old men’s coats and suede-fronted cardigans, dead ladies' tea dresses and undergarments, costume jewellery and DMs or monkey boots. More Slits than Siouxsie.
Fashion and music are exciting because they change. I would get bored of a look or add new music to my album pile.
But there’s no one more reactionary than the avant garde. Movements very quickly become a bore and a chore. People start to try to out-orthodox each other. There was a wonderful feeling of being awake, being alive, being able to do things on your own terms, but that invariably at some point requires the rejection of being part of a movement.
But if you decide you don’t belong in, or can survive outside of the rules-based economy, it gives you a great skillset, both financially and culturally, for later life. In the end, punk and DIY culture can make you realise you are responsible for yourself and that is a blessing."
Debs Walsh, IT consultant
"I have been outspoken and rebellious from a very early age – my dad was a huge influence, a trades union leader and CND marcher, taught me to read age 3 and had me reading Animal Farm at 8.
The idea of rebelling against society certainly appealed to me – I was 14, 15, so very young in 1978/1979, lying to my parents to go down the pub and to gigs. The music was crucial; The Clash are my band, also Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees. I still remember hearing The Specials for the first time on John Peel, and my first gig was Elvis Costello in 1977, age 13.
The tribal nature of punk was amazing – we were super tight-knit and still are, decades on. People were terrified of us – stepping out of our way to let us through, not making us pay on trains up to London – which felt good when you're that young. The idea of just not conforming and shocking people was a huge part of it.
I was early, first generation punk, so before the huge mohicans. Hair with loads of hairspray, loads of black eyeliner. For clothes, it was basically Doc Martens, skinny jeans, T-shirts and of course a leather jacket, which I still have; it still fits me and I wear it now.
I have never ‘retired’. Being part of such a seminal movement has certainly shaped my attitude, my beliefs and my life. I'm still very outspoken, still stand up for injustice. There was a time in my 20s, when I got into the corporate world, that I was willing more to conform – not now, I feel like every year I revert more to my true type. I'm much happier hanging out with artists and musicians.
When people hear I was a punk the reaction is always, 'Well that makes sense'. And it's still cool being able to tell people yes, I did see The Clash live, and PiL, and The Damned...
The value of the punk movement is immeasurable, limitless and hard to quantify. You see it everywhere: alternative music, independent movies, architecture, fashion, attitude, willingness to speak out and not conform."
Suzanne Harrington, journalist & author
"Punk had ended by 1978 when I was still in primary school – but the influence of punk, post-punk and new wave on my choice of friends, bands, and hairdos was huge. It began with the jolt of seeing Siouxsie and The Banshees performing "Happy House" on Top of the Pops in 1980, and later that year accidentally finding John Peel on the radio, a crackly portal to another dimension, far from small-town Ireland. An escape route.
In 1983 I went to my first gig aged 15 – The Smiths played Cork – and a year later met my lifelong best friend. There she was, walking down the street in head to toe leopardskin, blonde hair sticking straight up like a toilet brush and 14-hole Doc Martens. People were staring out car windows, as though an alien had landed – there were a few boy punks in town, all mohawks and studded leather jackets, but nobody like this girl. She had style. Her name was Sonia.
She was 16, the same age as me, and reluctantly new in town from (the far cooler) Dublin. I was still in school uniform. As everyone around me talked about rugby and sailing and wanting to do law at university, Sonia talked about London and music and gigs. Her mother was an artist who lived in a commune; I didn’t even know what that meant. Sonia had been in an all-girl punk band in Dublin.
Her boyfriend did me a TDK90 of bands I’d never heard of – Big Black, Sisters of Mercy, Butthole Surfers, Devo, Alien Sex Fiend – and in 1987 I moved to London, intoxicated by the NME gig guide. Sonia moved soon after. We hung out at the Electric Ballroom, the Camden Palace, the Slimelight, discovered amphetamine, and never looked back.
I wore leather, PVC, plastic, rubber, any material as long as it was black – I worked at Camden Market and got clothes from there, and charity shops. Bright hair extensions and kabuki makeup. The liberation of London, of being able to walk down the street without being shouted at, was the greatest feeling. You could dress as you liked, experiment, be your own canvas. Nobody cared. It was heaven.
Everything changed in 1988 when Sonia and I discovered rave. We swapped cider and speed for Evian and E, and black for bright colours and adidas trainers. These days when we hang out together it’s at art galleries in London and every summer we go on big family holidays together in the south of France. We will always feel like outsiders. It’s more fun than fitting in."
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