The Perils of 1990's Teenage Punk Fashion
Traversing the halls of my high school in the mid to late nineteen hundred and nineties was a daily predicament. The educational facility I attended, Smoky Hill High School, in suburban Aurora, Colorado, housed thousands of students, dozens of teachers and faculty staff, a handful of unpleasant security guards, a smattering of pleasant cafeteria staff, and one police officer, affectionately christened “McDonut” on account of his legal last name being something Irish-y or Scottish, but is now lost to time forever due to the last-name-erasing power, and hilarity, of “McDonut.”
It was a large, expansive building fairly resembling a prison with its entire brick exterior that housed narrow, metal mesh reinforced, slit like windows, reinforcing the idea of escape being futile. The school was barely negotiable in the best conditions, let alone during the five minute passing period we were granted between classes, let even more alone while being covered head to toe in leather, spikes, chains, studded belts, combat boots, and assorted band shirts, which was, the official nineteen hundred and nineties teen punk uniform. This fashion choice made me the ire of the entirety of the football team, soccer team, wrestling team, basketball team, baseball team, lacrosse team, bobsled team, along with most of the security staff, half the teachers who were lucky enough to be be graced by my spotty, at best, class attendance, and McDonut.
This said ire made the five minute mad dash between classes an even more frantic feat as I had to make sure my path to the next class didn’t cross with any of the various sporting team’s players, security guards, and McDonut, though he was easily avoidable, spending most of his time in the school cafeteria.
This daily rigmarole was vexing at best, perturbing at most because why should I be singled out and scorned for my fashion sense? Especially given how eclectic, colorful, captivating, and physically loud it was.
Junior year of high school is when my punk fashion devotion peaked, and crescendoed. My daily adornments consisted of:
One chain necklace, secured with a key-locked padlock, the key being long lost so I had to use two key ring metal loops to hang the padlock between as to allow me to pry one ring open and scoot the padlock out when it needed to be removed.
One black, typically sleeveless, punk rock band t-shirt, usually a skull clad, Misfits t-shirt as I owned about a million of them. Tucked in to my pants, of course.
One pair of army, camouflage, cargo pants, which I at some point trimmed into camouflage shorts, fully exposing my legs and thusly loosing all benefits of the camouflage’s effects.
One black, two row studded belt intended for keeping my pants in place but unable to perform its function under the weight of all my waist accessories.
One black, leather belt, that I wore akin to a Han Solo’s blaster holster, slung around my waist. Encircling the belt was a row of metal rings, although attached to the leather belt by a smaller metal ring, were left free to dangle and clang around. It was referred to as a “bondage belt,” presumably as it was originally intended for use in sadomasochist sexual roleplaying, the metal rings being used to confine or restrict the wearer. I was not using it for sadomasochist sex play. I just thought it looked cool and was punk as fuck.
One pair of nylon suspenders, not worn in the proper over-the-shoulder manner one deployed in order to keep one’s pants aloft, but hanging freely down at my sides.
One chain refurbished from a dog’s leash, one end attached with a metal hook clip to the second, right belt loop, the other attached to a leather wallet in my right back pocket. My precious student identification card and two American dollars would be safe and secure knowing if any attempt at wallet thievery was made I would surely be alerted by it’s chained attachment to my body.
One pair of leather combat boots. I had been through many pairs in various colors: red, black, yellow, and various styles. If the boots were tall enough and the laces longer I would stuff my pant legs into my boots in order to properly show off the boots to fellow boot aficionados.
One black leather dog collar, imbedded with metal spikes, worn around my right boot for extra punk-ness.
Multiple wrist accessories including chain bracelets, black leather, metal spiked or studded, and a barely functioning digital wrist watch.
Depending on the season, proper torso coverage would be provided by either a jean jacket, arms removed to make it a vest, punctured with dozens of metal studs, with black canvas swatches of fabric featuring punk band logos printed on them in white paint, attached to the denim vest by my poor hand stitching skills, victims of my lack of attention paid during the sewing unit of Home Economics class, or a black leather motor bicyclist style jacket, hand painted with paint pens to feature my favorite punk rock bands, punctured with metal spikes, the collar adorned in fuzzy, leopard print fabric and worn straight up in defiance of fashion’s intents.
Topping all that off, and my head, was spiky, bleached-blonde hair, long extended, pointed sideburns that reached down the sides of my head directing eyesights to the chin-only goatee beard.
Truly a fashion template.
Pacing through the halls, avoiding authority figures and sports enthusiasts, I surely sounded like an old western movie cowboy with their spurred boots, had fallen down a hill. The effect was especially amplified during test taking when I, half-assed-ly, completed my test, rose from my combination plastic chair and tabletop desk, clanged and rattled to the front of the class to hand in my paper to the teacher, turned around and rattled back to my desk to drop two belts worth of metal and chains into the waiting plastic chair, a symphony of fashion defiance. Quiet knew no quarter when I was around.
So there I went, jangling about everywhere, alerting all to my upcoming presence.
“Look out! Here comes a punk rocking youth full of piss and vinegar and metal,” the belt loudly announced with each click and clang.
One day, returning home from some sort of hijinks and or shenanigans, I clanked past my father, enjoying his umpteenth hour of watching professional golfers on the television, when without notice he loudly declared “that’s it, I’ve had enough! "Get rid of that damned noisy belt or I’ll get rid of it for you!”
Apparently the constant rattlings of my bondage belt’s rings were driving him crazy like some sort of Dickensian ghost, his own personal Jacob Marley ratting through his house.
Seeing as there was no wiggle room here the belt had to go. I’d known my friend Ray had coveted my belt, wanting to take his own punkness to the next level, so a trade was arranged. For my one black leather bondage belt I would receive one Misfits t-shirt to add to my growing horde, this one featuring the “Horror Business” artwork in glaring red, yellow, and white on the front and scrawled across the back in bloody read font it announced I was one of the “Teenagers From Mars.” To sweeten the deal I would also receive Ray’s black leather studded belt, which contained THREE rows of metal studs, one more row than my current black leather stuffed belt. Why only wear one studded belt when you could wear two? My more svelte, two-row studded belt kept it’s position as my official pants holder-uppers and my newly acquired three -rowed studded belt replaced my now absent bondage belt, slung around my hips, slouched to the left for added effect.
I’m not sure if tripling my metal stud amount and gaining shirts that made bold declarations of my martian heritage was preferable to my father or if he’d just resigned himself to whatever outcome resulted in less clanging in his life but he never offered any further insight in to my fashion choices from then on out.
You’d think with two belts and my pant accessories being substantially lighter it would be fairly simple to keep my pants at waist level. Well, you’d be dead fucking wrong.
