Keeping In Tune With The Beat - Beatnik Fashion

Beatnik: A person, especially a member or follower of the Beat Generation, whose behavior, views, and often style of dress are pointedly unconventional. (1)

Robbie Robertson, Michael McClure, Bob Dylan & Allen Ginsberg

The most obvious way an individual can resist conformity to the mainstream is through their fashion, It puts a person at an obvious opposition. The following exert from Fickle Fashion by Farrukh Dhondy describes one individuals opinion of the beatnik fashion, what it appears to be, and how the times have changed.

"I pride myself on having a minimal quotient of physical vanity. When I watch my kids and their generation obsessed with their size, hairstyles and designer clothes, I calculate that their cool has a very different temperature from ours. These vanities come in historical trenches. Theirs is certainly affected by the celebrity and endorsement culture. My idea of cool came from the beatniks of Europe and their American poet imitators. It was a fashion of poverty, a cultivation of misshapen, moth-eaten sweaters, torn jackets, beards and dark rimmed glasses to look aggressively intellectual. The Beatles and Stones were latecomers to the long hair game in which Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti had already put centuries on the board". (2)

1. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/beatnik

2. Read more: The Beat Generation - Page 3 - the Fashion Spot http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f95/beat-generation-22562-3.html#ixzz1kE0ca7DA