The Art of Fashion and Music

As a fashion student, my two favorite art forms are fashion and music, which I’m sure many others relate to. Luckily for us, those two are more correlated than we realize. For example, as house music and DJs have spread like wildfire throughout the younger generations, we’ve seen pashminas, rave outfits, and sunglasses become extremely popular. Although this is a very specific example, we’ve seen this happen all throughout history.

In the 1970s, as disco started dominating everyone's record players, we saw an influx of go-go boots, groovy patterns, flared pants, hot pants, and more. Society understood the funky vibe of disco music and translated it into their wardrobes. Whether they were going out, dressed head to toe in a disco-inspired outfit, or even in day-to-day wear incorporating wide-leg pants, fun patterns, and big hair, they took influence from the musical movement that was occurring at the time.

As we moved onto the 80s, popular music transitioned into soft rock, metal, and electronic dance music (post-disco), and with that, fashion trends revolved around the ideologies behind those genres. We saw a rise in leather jackets, shoulder pads, frizzy perms, neon colors, and striking patterns. As the music became more tame, so did society's fashion choices.

Today, country music, indie rock, and EDM have taken over. With this, we see people rocking modernized Western wear with cowboy boots, fringe, and denim. Indie rock fans tend to have a very minimalistic style with a vintage aesthetic. Finally, as mentioned before, EDM has influenced a new “party girl” aesthetic, popularizing sequins, accessories, and platform shoes. From dressing in your favorite cowboy boots for a Chris Stapleton concert to throwing on your pashmina for John Summit, music has a bigger influence on our fashion choices than we realize.