Version française:
A Melbourne, on croise énormément de personnes au style très marqué; des styles vestimentaires parfois extravagants mais surtout très identitaires et révélateurs d’un style de vie, un idéal, et qui rassemble les personnes.
Sachant que c’est ma passion pour les visages et les styles qui m’a fait venir à la photographie, l’intense culture de la mode à Melbourne est une mine d’or. Cependant, photographier des inconnus dans la rue s’est avéré une approche plus difficile que prévue.
Je commence donc par vous présenter un éventail des styles de la culture alternative que l’on rencontre sur Melbourne; afin de trouver la motivation d’aller chercher les clichés pour illustrer.
Avant tout, il faut comprendre que la culture du style est plus marquée en Australie – particulièrement à Melbourne – qu’elle ne l’est en France. La mentalité australienne est beaucoup plus ouverte que celle européenne à l’égard des styles vestimentaires que l’on peut qualifier d’alternatifs.
Un exemple concret de cette ouverture d’esprit s’observe avec les tatouages. Ils sont beaucoup plus répandus et moins stigmatisant qu’en France. Même les tatouages les plus ostentatoires ne semblent pas représenter une barrière ou un signe d’exclusion sociale.
Par ailleurs, les styles me sont apparus très délimités géographiquement, comme je l’avais déjà fait remarquer dans ma description de Fitzroy et Saint Kilda.
Voici quelques exemples de “sub-cultures” dont j’ai trouvé la définition sur http://www.urbandictionary.com
Je ne vais pas vous traduire les définitions de ce site, mais je vous invite à les consulter. Je vais plutôt tenter de vous présenter l’équivalence de ces styles en France.
Hipster: Il s’agit du bourgeois de bohème, très retro au niveau du style vestimentaire, beaucoup de look stylé année 40. Par contre, malgré des tenues datant des années 40, soyez sur qu’il possède le dernier iphone, ipad ou tout autre objet de la marque si icool. Souvent artiste sur les bords, il lit des magazines de design dont vous n’avez sans doute jamais entendu parlé, écouter des groupes que personne ne connait mais qui sont pourtant si cool. Mais dans bourgeois de bohème, il y a bohème alors le hipster achète ses vêtements dans des friperies de seconde main, qui coutent pourtant plus chère que les versions neuves, il a porte la barbe et tente même de réintroduire la mode de la moustache (il y ait actuellement parvenu, même si je n’ai pas cédé à cette mode) et est couvert de tatouages old school.
Il s’agit du style que l’on rencontre majoritairement dans le quartier de Fitzroy, quartier chic et décalé où foisonnent les ateliers d’artistes et boutiques vintages.
Muzza: Il s’agit du stéréotype du beau gosse, bien bof. Reconnaissable aisement à son corps ultra bodybuildé, à coup de sessions journaliéres en salle de muscu et de stéroïdes, façon Jean-Pierre de Dany Boon.
Il est aussi caractérisé par sa voiture, modifiée façon voiture de course, avec ampli et enceintes de 2000watts et dance commerciale à fond, fenêtres ouvertes.
Hippie: la communauté hippie est beaucoup plus présente qu’en France et surtout, elle a conservé le même look que dans les années 60.
On la rencontre particulièrement lors des festivals et autre événement trance.
Punk: Oui, il existe une culture punk en Australie et on croise occasionnellement des punks dans les rues de Melbourne mais ceux-ci semble moins marginaux et hors système que les punks à chien français.
Bogan: Il s’agit d’un terme à connotation plutôt péjorative, qui a pour équivalent le bof français, redneck aux USA. Outre, les mauvais goûts en tout plan (vestimentaire, attitude…), le terme bogan semble mettre l’accent sur l’aspect sans le sous.
English version:
On Melbourne, it’s common to see people with strong fashion styls, I mean street fashion, sometimes could look extravagant but most of all very specific and relevant of walks of life, an ideal that gathers the persons.
Knowing that it is my passion for faces and styles that led me to photography, the intense culture of fashion in Melbourne is a mine of gold. However, shooting unknown people on the street wasn’t as easy as expected.
So, I begin by introducing you a catalogue of urban Melbourne styles ; to find later motivation to go to shoot the good models to illustrate.
First of all, it is necessary to understand that culture of style is more marked in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, than in France. The Australian mentality is a way more open-minded than in Europe as for alternative fashion styles.
A concrete example of this open-minded is tattoos. They are much more common and less stigmatising than in France. Even the most showy tattoos do not seem to represent a barrier or a sign of social exclusion.
Moreover, styles appeared to me very as geographically delimited, as I had already pointed it out in my description of Fitzroy and Saint Kilda.
Here are some examples of subcultures of which I have found definition on www.urbandictionary.com
If you’re Australian, you should know all theses types of fashion styles, so I just paste here the definition of urbandictionary.
But I invite you to tell me your opinion and help to define theses different styles.
Muzza:A muzza is a young male, usually of southern European decent (even though they’ve never been there), that are born and raised Melbournians. Living in middle-class western and northern suburbs they are depicted by their cars..
They walk like they’re trying to immitate a scarecrow, or like they’re holding a bucket of water in each hand (with a subtle swaying motion) This is often a result of going to the gym once or twice and thinking your lats are so huge you cant put your arms straight down your side.
As soon as there’s any drizzle outside muzzas call all their bros and go do some demos in your cars.. ripping it up in the wet is considered “free demos” because it doesnt bald your tires as much.
Muzzas are often highschool dropouts currently doing apprentiships, with every cent they earn going towards their cars (mostly on tires and petrol), and they end up wondering why all their bros who went to uni end up driving mercs and picking up chicks while they stick to their teeny bopper marias (which are the 13-16yr old female equivalent of a muzza) who are the only chicks who go for these guys.
Common hangouts are Bell St maccas, or any other Hungry Jacks 24hour store carpark, but the most common place (which is guarenteed to give you some pure muzzas) has got to be Chapel Street on Friday and Saturday nights. Doing constant and repetitious laps of this popular shopping strip is a must, and ensures many hours of sitting in traffic at 3am on a Saturday morning.
Hipster: Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20’s and 30’s that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. The greatest concentrations of hipsters can be found living in the Williamsburg, Wicker Park, and Mission District neighborhoods of major cosmopolitan centers such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco respectively. Although “hipsterism” is really a state of mind,it is also often intertwined with distinct fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses. Both hipster men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. Such styles are often associated with the work of creative stylists at urban salons, and are usually too “edgy” for the culturally-sheltered mainstream consumer. The “effortless cool” urban bohemian look of a hipster is exemplified in Urban Outfitters and American Apparel ads which cater towards the hipster demographic. Despite misconceptions based on their aesthetic tastes, hipsters tend to be well educated and often have liberal arts degrees, or degrees in maths and sciences, which also require certain creative analytical thinking abilities. Consequently many hipsters tend to have jobs in the music, art, and fashion industries. It is a myth that most hipsters are unemployed and live off of their parent’s trust funds.
Hipsters shun mainstream societal conventions that apply to dating preferences and traditional “rules” of physical attraction. It is part of the hipster central dogma not to be influenced by mainsream advertising and media, which tends to only promote ethnocentric ideals of beauty. The concepts of androgyny and feminism have influenced hipster culture, where hipster men are often as thin as the women they date. The muscular and athletic all-American male ideal is not seen as attractive by confident and culturally-empowered hipster women who instead view them as symbols of male oppression, sexism, and misogyny. Likewise, culturally-vapid sorority-type girls with fake blond hair, overly tanned skin, and “Britney Spears tube-tops” are not seen as attractive by cultured hipster males who instead see them as symbols of female insecurity, low self-esteem, and lack of cultural intelligence and independent thinking. Hipsters are also very racially open-minded, and the greatest number of interracial couples in any urban environment are typically found within the hipster subculture.
Although hipsters are technically conformists within their own subculture, in comparison to the much larger mainstream mass, they are pioneers and leaders of the latest cultural trends and ideals. For example, the surge of jeans made to look old and worn (i.e. “distressed”), that have become prevalent at stores such as The Gap, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister, were originally paraded by hipsters who shopped in thrift stores years before such clothing items were mass produced and sold to the mainstream consumer. The true irony here is that many of the detractors of hipster culture are in fact unknowingly following a path that hipsters have carved out years before them. This phenomena also applies to music as well, as many bands have become successful and known to mainstream audiences only because hipsters first found and listened to them as early-adopters of new culture. Once certain concepts of fashion and music have reached mainstream audiences, hipsters move on to something new and improved.
Because of the rise of various online photo-blog and social networking sites, insights into urban hipster culture is reaching sheltered suburban audiences at an exponential rate. Cultural “norms” have been deconstructed by hipster culture as a whole. Hipsterism is often dismissed as just an image thing by some, but the culture as a whole is effecting changes in society, leading to feelings of insecurity and resentment in people who are no longer a part of the cultural ruling class. For example, a lot of anti-hipster sentiment evidently comes from culturally-clueless suburban frat boy types who feel that the more sensitive, intelligent, and culturally aware hipster ideal threatens their insecure sense of masculinity. Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can’t keep up with social change and are envious of those who can.
Hippie: A Hippie is a person who was raised under the ideological system that came out of the tumultuous 1960’s in North America and western Europe. They are either of the flower-child/baby boomer generation or that generations’ subsequent offspring. They possess a core belief set revolving around the values of peace and love as being essential in an increasingly globalized society, and they are oftentimes associated with non-violent anti-governmental groups. There is a stigma of drug abuse attached to the hippies that is prevalent to this day, specifically the use and abuse of marijuana and hallucinagens. Many rock movements,poets, artists, and writers from the 1960’s to today have associated with this movement, most prominently The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Phish. There are others too numerous to name. The movement, then and now, is considered a sub-culture by sociologists that associates itself with the left in all its political opinions. The conservative right often berates and abuses the opinions of people who associate themselves with the hippie movement and/or lifestyle, as the consider it dangerous and degenerative to a society to favor liberalism to such an extent.
“When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different… we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives.”
Author: June Jordan
Punk:
Bogan: Australian term used to describe members of society that are a combination of what the Yanks call Rednecks, Jocks and Trailer Park Trash. most likely found wearing mockies, flanalette shirts and consuming VB (bad Aussie beer). Large amount of bogans can be found living in The Borough, Bendigo, Aust. by Athene \\\’n\\\’ Mah Davels
New glimpse of Australia 