With our outfit, we decided that we wanted to focus heavily on two prominent historical aspects of the East Village; the large working-class population and the punk rock movement. We believe that both of these types of people define the East Village and have helped made it into what it is today. When it comes to the outfit itself, our group decided that we wanted the basis of the outfit to resemble the working-class aspect of the East Village. Therefore, we chose to make a jumpsuit in order to symbolize the working-class immigrants who made the East Village into a largely populated part of the city. Building upon this, our group decided that the punk rock movement was the most notable movement to get its start in the East Village and she be displayed through our outfit. With this in mind, we added various punk rock elements to the jumpsuit such as chains, black leather boots, spikes, patches, writing, a bomber jacket, and an overall dark esthetic.
My personal portion of this outfit was the hat. With the hat, I chose to start with a trucker-style cap to, once again, symbolize the working class. I then added spikes around various sections of the hat to symbolize the punk rock movement taking over the working-class majority of the East Village. In particular, the spikes on the top of the cap are in the pattern of a mohawk and are also a resemblance of the biker helmets that many members of the punk rock movement wore themselves during the movement’s most popular days. Finally, I made the spikes on the front of the cap in the shape of the letter “E” to represent that both the working class and the punk rock movement are two types of people that make up the East Village and define what it has become today.
