From street culture to high fashion, the punk subculture has gripped and fascinated society for many generations.
This year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will celebrate punk’s visual symbols through the PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibition. Abbott Miller of Pentagram has designed a catalogue for the exhibition that captures the essence of the punk subculture.
Miller collaborated with curator Andrew Bolton on the development of the catalogue and created a design for the book that conveys the aggressive, confrontational and elemental nature of punk’s do-it-yourself aesthetic.
The catalogue is in the form of an LP cover and printed on uncoated paper giving it a raw, tactile feel and quality.
The catalogue opens with essays by punk musicians Richard Hell, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols and music journalist Jon Savage. Throughout the book, large format photography places the punk movement side by side with its fashion descendants.
PUNK: Chaos to Couture juxtaposes original punk garments from the mid-1970s with more recent fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols and how designers are using the subculture as a form of artistic expression. The exhibition features designers including Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Miuccia Prada and Rei Kawakubo, to name a few.
The Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York will host the exhibition until 14 August 2013.
