A model for Vivienne Westwood wearing an Exhibition Tartan Bondage jacket
and Lyon Tartan Bondage trousers (Anglomania, A/W 2015)
I'm not entirely convinced by the Nietzschean notion of eternal recurrence, but it's certainly true to say that within the fabulous world of fashion everything comes around again; yesterday's daring new looks so outmoded today will be marketed as avant-garde all over again tomorrow.
Even designers who think of themselves as radical and revolutionary, invariably return to their old designs and recycle ideas. So it is, for example, that Vivienne Westwood is once again flogging her tartan bondage lines first seen all those years ago at Seditionaries.
Of course, ripping garments out of their cultural and historical context robs them of their fetishistic power and subversive potential; transforming clothes for heroes into items of fancy dress for those who long for a past they didn't experience, or those who vainly wish to relive their youth.
But, well, there you go: even ageing punks are prone to nostalgia and a certain wistfulness; just like the old rockers and hippies before them whom they so scorned. It's nothing to be proud of, but nothing to really feel so ashamed of either.
Indeed, when I saw one of the models on Westwood's website wearing her mismatched tartan bondage jacket and trousers, even I couldn't help remembering with a certain poignant joy those years gone by when I would hobble around the streets of Soho still thinking of myself as a sex pistol and still fiercely loyal to Malcolm and his project of pop-cultural provocation:
Portrait of the artist as a young punk (1985)
