If you’re online, a music-lover, or both, it was hard to miss last summer’s announcement that the 90s band Oasis, fronted by the notorious Liam and Noel Gallagher, would be embarking on a reunion tour. The declaration made waves. Rock bands have always fostered feuds and high tensions: just think Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, Johnny Rotten and Glen Matlock, David Gilmore and Roger Waters, the list goes on. The Gallagher brothers’ feud in particular was highly publicized, given their fraught sibling relationship, one which ultimately culminated in a 2009 physical altercation that motivated Noel to quit the band. I actually hadn’t heard of Oasis, or their glittering and dramatic history, until the reunion tour erupted online. As an American Gen-Z girl with generally mainstream interests, I hadn’t yet delved into the wonderfully provocative, risque, and surprisingly emotional sounds of Oasis’ seven albums. In fact, I wasn’t really informed of 90s British culture in general. To be fair, I had my case of Anglomania in my late childhood. As a kid, my closet was covered head-to-toe in posters of Zayn and Niall from One Direction, we blasted Adele in the car, and my siblings and I woke up early to watch Princess Kate’s wedding to Prince William. I knew that in Wattpad stories, I could be spotted by Harry Styles in a crowd, my hair tied in a messy bun, reading a book as my friends danced along to pop music Y/N –my name– was totally disinterested in. But my knowledge of the 90s had been restricted to 10 Things I Hate About You, Full House, Nirvana, band tees, and chokers. Recently, however, the glorification of the Union Jack, parkas, and bucket hats might be returning to the fashion and culture landscape.
Britpop, a term used to describe 90s British rock bands like Oasis, Blur, Suede, and Pulp, along with pop bands like the Spice Girls, maintained a major international cultural influence during the 1990s. As an answer to American grunge, the “Cool Britannia” style emerged, largely influenced by the relaxed day-to-day wear of the Gallagher brothers; Kate Moss’s edgy and unpolished looks; and the works of British designer Stella McCartney, herself the daughter of British rock-music icon Paul McCartney. During Oasis’ reign, the Gallaghers made parkas, tracksuits, and Adidas sneakers the hallmarks of Cool Britannia fashion. The brothers, along with supermodel Kate Moss, wore boho-chic festival looks and regular streetwear that appeared sourced from their closets, not high-fashion designers. They embraced an authenticity not often seen in the overly-polished and carefully-curated worlds of mainstream music and fashion. In fact, their style was largely inspired by the 1960s British Northern Mod movement. Following the second World War, Brits had more disposable income, but the population was largely still working class. Mod, stemming from the word ‘modernist,’ was a youth subculture characterized by tailor-made suits, sharp button-down shirts, attentive grooming, and listening to American jazz music. The casual button-downs and shaggy haircuts of mods were echoed in the Gallaghers’ looks, along with jerseys, tracksuits, bucket hats and parkas, a style now referred to as “Blokecore.” In truth, the Cool Britannia style focused on genuine working-class experience, rather than carefully-assembled projections of influence, power, and pop-icon status. That focus was echoed in the lyrics of Oasis’ music, as the Gallaghers sang about life in the city, complicated relationships, drug addiction, and alcoholism: a witness testimony of working-class mundanity, laced with raw emotion and a spirit of rebellion.
According to Vogue business, searches for Britpop style have skyrocketed since Oasis announced their reunion tour. The Internet’s number-one source for burgeoning aesthetics, Pinterest, has reported an increase in searches for parkas, anoraks, Gazelle Adidas, Britpop aesthetic, and mod fashion. It seems that brands have caught on to the public’s renewed interest in Britpop. Liam Ghallagher recently partnered with Berghaus, re-releasing his 1994 Meru jacket in advance of the tour. Burberry released ads featuring Gene Ghallagher, Liam’s son, while re-focusing on their signature British check patterns and utilizing the iconic English red bus as a backdrop for another recent ad campaign. Adidas harnessed the anticipation of the tour to release a reunion collection. Turkish-British designer Dilara Findikoglu has been revitalizing Union Jack iconography in her recent pieces, taking inspiration from the works of her historic fashion predecessor, Vivienne Westwood. Accompanying Findikoglu’s looks on high-fashion runways are utility jackets by Hermès and Harrington jackets by Fendi. The renewed interest in Cool Britannia is farther-reaching than fashion: Blur played a set at Coachella 2024, and Oasis’ reunion tour includes outdoor stadiums in America, marking a first for the band. While Oasis was largely a U.K. phenomenon in the 90s, it appears as if their influence has not only resurged, but strengthened in the states. Despite the brands that have been sinking their teeth into capitalizing upon the Gallaghers’ return to the stage, there is a general acknowledgement from most brands that it would be unwise to attempt to use Oasis to market if there isn’t a pre-established connection to the band and the larger British working-class culture. Britpop was generated from a place of authenticity: working-class people who made it to the heights of fame, yet retained the down-to-earth, uniquely British, and unfiltered style of their roots. This insistence on remaining uncurated was a kind of resistance from the era’s stars. You can’t separate Britpop from its politics. Not only did the lyrics and styles explore, examine, and esteem the life of working-class Brits, but the bands themselves emerged from increased arts-funding provided by the U.K. government. Tony Blair, the Labour Party Prime Minister of the U.K. from 1997 to 2007, positioned himself as a champion of the Britpop image in an attempt to resonate with British working-class youth, a tactic some believe won him the election. When exploring any fashion movement, you can’t forget its origins, and Britpop ultimately grew from the seeds of working-class self-expression.
The movement joins a long line of British fashion crusades that were uniquely integrated with music and art, generating an all-encompassing cultural commentary on the state of the U.K. at the time. The Northern Mods that inspired Britpop aligned themselves with jazz music, French and Italian modern art, and dance clubs, generating a sort of ironic commentary on the consumer-culture that surfaced in the aftermath of World War II. The 1970s and 80s saw the rise of British Punk, a movement spearheaded by another British, working-class band: The Sex Pistols. Punk was born in a little shop on London’s King’s Road, called SEX and founded by Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood. Like Britpop, the style reflected the specific moment of its rise: post-World War II, the British working-class were profoundly discontented with rising inflation and depressed due to their inability to afford the cost of living. The looks were deconstructionist, a term coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida to describe something that appears as if it has been torn to bits, then reconstructed into something functional. Many of Vivenne’s designs were sado-masochistic, a direct revolt against the propriety demanded by the British upper-class. The pieces featured rips, tears, buttons, safety pins, badges and zippers that made the clothes look as if they had been haphazardly fastened together. The DIY-ethics of the punk movement advertised, elevated, and reclaimed the symptoms of inflation-generated poverty: the inability to afford new clothes, the need to sew them back together. The sado-masochistic garments that echoed underwear and BDSM-culture –evoking images of things meant to be unseen– tore back the facade of primness, exposing the real-life underbelly of the U.K. that the bourgeois attempted to obscure. Punk embraced sex, a value later replicated in the lyrics and looks of Britpop. Emblematic of the symbiotic relationship between music, fashion, and politics that has uniquely characterized British culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, The Sex Pistols, a London-based punk band, were the punk movement’s primary propellers. The Sex Pistols were managed by McClaren and often sported Westwood’s punk designs. They were the musical and social embodiment of punk’s ideals: they were anti-consumerist, anti-monarchist, anti-capitalist, and fed-up, working-class rockstars. The harsh sounds of punk manifested the rage that younger generations felt towards the establishment. During their brief yet indelible two-and-a-half years as a functioning band, they upended British culture, serving as a mouthpiece for the ideas of the U.K.’s agitated youth. They rebelled against adults, who, for the youth, represented the institutions they wished to fight against. “Anarchy in the U.K.” was the band’s first single for Nevermind the Bullocks, and their song “God Save the Queen” communicated an unmistakable anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic sentiment that sent shockwaves across the U.K. The prevalence of the counterculture inspired a reactionary, conservative moral panic, especially following The Sex Pistols’ unruly appearance on teatime television in December of 1976. Their presence in culture underscored that the respectability politics of the U.K. –and the demand that the oppressed working-class would remain silent– would no longer stand with the younger generations.
This tale of two bands emphasizes something that even money-hungry brands have recognized: the integrated relationship between music, the arts, politics, and culture in the U.K. Both Cool Britannia and punk were born out of the bona fide experiences of working-class Brits, reflecting their day-to-day realities, their arguments against conservatism and the establishment, and a refusal by those that sported the styles to reject their roots. The styles were protest in the form of culture, one that mobilized all forms of art –music, fashion, film, design– to make their statements. While some have pessimistically forecasted that rich Brits and Americans alike are likely to begin cosplaying Cool Britannia, once again commercializing a subculture born from others’ actual realities, others are more optimistic about Cool Britannia’s ability to endure as a unique movement based in authenticity. In a digital world that only recently belittled the so-called “Chav” subculture of the U.K. –ironically also characterized by Adidas tracksuits, parkas, and cigarettes– with TikTok sounds like “Chav Check,” the renewed interest in Cool Britannia, especially among the British youth from which the style originally emerged, may herald a new era of fashion. One where we might return to exploring the styles that are produced from the legitimate and genuine experiences of an individual, from the culture and society and feelings from which that person emerges. Rather than following the trends shoved down our throats by capitalism, donning whatever TikTok shop tells us is “in,” we might once again utilize subculture– music, fashion, art– as a vessel for political statements, true self-expression, and honest testimony of our human experiences.
Kira Manelski 
Leave a comment