Wednesday 20 November 2013

CRASS’S PENNY RIMBAUD DOESN’T CARE ABOUT URBAN OUTFITTERS PROFITING OFF HIS BAND’S NAME

Close-up of the $375 "punk" jacket.
A few weeks ago, Urban Outfitters, your cool little sister’s favorite clothing store, started selling a “vintage men’s punk leather jacket” for $375. The jacket had a bunch of crappy hand-painted logos of some of the most notable punk bands of the 70s: the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and Crass. That the company already peddles Joy Division and Sex Pistols shirts to angsty teens of all ages is a given, and the commodification of punk rock has been going on basically since the invention of the phrase punk rock. But selling a jacket featuring the name of the most famous anarcho-punk band of all time at a price no upstanding anticapitalist could afford seemed, at least, a little problematic. (The jacket was the only one of its kind, and someone bought it.)

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