Culture and the punk movement

For most people, the punk movement was born in England in 1977 with the Sex Pistols. Although it was this legendary band that popularised the movement musically, culturally and (a)politically, it was in the United States in the early 1960s that the real roots of the movement were to be found: although their career was relatively short, the Detroit band MC5, formed in 1964, is considered to be the forerunner of punk rock music and had a great influence on the musicians of the time. They were followed by bands like the Ramones, Stooges and The Sonics, followed by the Clash in England. In France, it was the group Les béruriers noirs that became the standard bearer, black of course, of this great agitation.


The punk movement is much more than a musical trend, it is first and foremost the spontaneous revolt of a disillusioned youth, confronted with the crisis of the first oil crisis of 1973, which gave rise to an authentic counter-culture. The punk ideology is anarchist and nihilist: anti-authority and anti-conformist, against all forms of power. In contrast to the hippie movement, which was non-violent and close to nature, May '68 was to participate in the subversive emancipation throughout Europe and the United States of a category of the population against the capitalist system.

The aesthetics and dress codes and the punk aesthetic are based on synthetic materials, recycled clothes and flashy colours and prints. Accessories include braces, bracelets, bicycle chains, badges and the inevitable safety pin, which will remain one of the symbols of this trend. The body was also put to work with extreme make-up, scum hairstyles or the emblematic Iroquois crest, but also the first piercings. While recuperation and DIY were still the order of the day, from the mid-1970s onwards, shops offered collections of punk clothing and shoes inspired by what you could see on the street.


Today, you can find on the Antre de Syria punk shoes like rangers, punk creepers and studded boots, perfecto jackets or bombers, slim-fitting trousers and skirts as well as a vast collection of tee shirts with punk printed patterns. Hundreds of references in all the major fashion and accessory brands are present on the shop, Aderlass, Banned, Black Pistol, Dead Threads, Demonia or Last Rebels.


In 1979, at the same time as Margaret Thatcher took power in the UK, the punk movement began to decline without ever really disappearing. It can even be considered as the founder of the neo-romantic and gothic tendencies that would appear in the 1980s.