Alex Yakovleff, as he was then and as he is now.
Not all punks stay punk forever. That’s a crucial underlying thesis of this project: While we may get jobs and abandon our spikes and sneers, the simple fact of having once been punk shapes who we are. The distant sound of distorted guitars and screaming rebellion blast into our present-day lives when we least expect it, reminding us they’re still there and they still matter.
Alex Yakovleff is a former punk who blogs about menswear at A Fistful of Style. He’s a #menswear rebel, whose “maximalist” style and tooth-and-nail devotion to thriftiness nips at the heels of the often-pricey “What to Wear” culture of men’s fashion. “Take me with a grain of salt and a whiskey back,” he tells readers.
Alex and I got together over coffee to talk about what it means to be punk and how being a punk as a teenager affected his approach to style, politics and more.
Journalator.net: You’re kind of Portland-famous as a #menswear blogger. How does having been punk influenced your take on mens fashion?
Alex Yakovleff: I write a lot about personal style and thrift shopping because when I was a punk rocker I spent a lot of time digging around in thrift stores. Back then I was looking for ratty black jeans and denim jackets that I could cut the sleeves off. It made me understand that style is in the eye of the beholder. That anarchist punk look of wearing one pair of jeans until they disintegrate, and the jacket with patches you put on it and spikes you hand-set, that’s a very personal thing. That’s style.
You write a lot about fashion on the cheap, right?
Yeah, I do. A lot of people sort of view menswear and that scene as being about expensive suits and ties. I’m not interested in that. I’ve gotten into some fights with people online for saying that money isn’t part and parcel of developing your personal style. You don’t need to spend a lot of money.
Does that sort of class-conscious, thrifty approach come from having been punk?
Definitely. It’s the idea of like “Fuck money, man!” That definitely came from that time, and it’s really stayed with me. Making money so you can have nice things is backward. You should do what you want and make do with it. If we’re talking menswear, it can be done on a shoestring budget.
OK, so here’s the million-dollar question: Would you still say you’re a punk now?
Not really. I would say, in my current social setting, I’m still a shit-starter. But I’m certainly not a punk rocker anymore.
It’s interesting you connect “starting shit” with being punk. Do you think being a rabble-rouser is crucial to being punk?
I do. I mean this in the best possible way, but a big part of being punk is being against something. That something can vary depending on your scene and your personal beliefs, but a big part of it for me was finding another group of people who didn’t like the popular kids in school and thought the teachers were feeding us a lot of bullshit and fighting against that in a visible way.
How does that tie into maximalism? What does maximalism even mean?
Maximalism for me is having no shame and wearing things that I like, regardless of what the conventional wisdom is. I like playing around and taking elements from a lot of different sources and smashing them together and seeing how it looks.
You know, if I asked a 16-year-old punk kid about their style, I think they’d say that exact same thing. I mean, you’ve taken it in a different direction than the kid in the Crass-logo loincloth, but …
Exactly. That’s a big thing. While I wouldn’t’ call myself a punk now, I certainly have that same sort of ethos. I’ve never been afraid to say what I think, and a big part of that came from being a punk rocker who just had to argue everything. Being punk means everything is up for discussion. You’ve got to tell people they’re wrong and show them that really we should be living in some sort of anarcho-socialist commune system or whatever. It was about questioning everything and never taking it for granted that just because someone else says something they must be right.
So how did you come to punk?
When I was in sixth grade or something, I started listening to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and shit like that. Gradually, I met older punks from the neighboring town who introduced me to Crass and Conflict and other anarcho-punk bands. A group of maybe four to eight of us would hang out in the band room and put patches and spikes and studs on our clothes.
So even back then, clothes were part of the picture for you. Was being punk in a sartorial sense important to being punk generally?
Well, you had to get patches, you know? And you had to get the right patches. In the end, that contributed to my falling out of punk: I never had the right patches. I also had a jean jacket and I made it short-sleeve, but that wasn’t cool. You had to cut ‘em off completely or have the whole sleeve there. No one was having any of this short-sleeve bullshit.
So is that it? That’s why you fell out with punk?
Well I went off to college, and I was still sort of in that mindset of being punk. But after a semester and a half or so, I didn’t really have a whole lot to rebel against anymore. No one was telling me I couldn’t dress a certain way. None of the teachers would argue with me when I had a different point of view; They’d talk with me and we’d have an intellectual exchange, whereas in high school if I was like, “I don’t believe what you’re teaching,” the response was “Well, that’s too bad.”
I think there are a lot of punks who aren’t as interested in politics or challenging authority. There’s that anti-intellectual strand you see in drunk punk or street punk.
Sure, but the intellectual aspect really appealed to me. I really dug the idea of that anarchist, anti-capitalist, our-government-is-fucking-us mindset. At that point it was rebellion for the sake of rebellion, but it definitely forced me to reassess my values and to really look at what I believed and why I believed it. That’s been really valuable.
So what are your politics now?
I’m still pretty leftist. I’d say I came back to living in the real world. In America, capitalism, for better or worse, is the system we have. But that’s been the only place where I’ve really moderated my position. I’m still pretty libertarian in my social views and socialist in my economic beliefs. So I haven’t come all that far, I guess. I’ve moderated a little bit and I’m willing to hear the other side out more.
Is that willingness to be less knee-jerk in your reactions to people a function of growing up or of not being punk anymore?
Both, I think. Now that I’m older I’m less likely to have a knee-jerk reaction, but that’s sort of what you’re supposed to do as a punk rocker. You’re supposed to take it real seriously. If someone tells you capitalism is the best ever, your immediate reaction has to be “Fuck you! Capitalism sucks, and here’s why.” I don’t know if that was just because we were a bunch of teenagers or because we were punk rockers or if it was both. But I don’t think that’ll ever go away
So now that you’re older, what does it mean to be punk?
I’m not sure I ever really knew what it meant. For me it kind of meant you had to be willing to take a stand on just about anything. I think that’s punk rock. Being able to double-down on whatever it is, even if you haven’t really thought about it as much as you should have. Still having to say “This is what I believe and I will take it tooth-and-nail as far as it needs to go to prove my point.” And again, that rebellious attitude. People use “contrarian” as a bad word, but sometimes contrarians are the only ones suggesting that the way things are now aren’t the way they should be. And that’s always valuable.
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