The other day, a coworker showed me a cool new gizmo she’d purchased on Amazon. It was a quarter-sized pin that looked exactly like the button fly on a pair of Levi’s. She had it fastened to a loose-fitting pair of slacks, and it hemmed the garment together perfectly — and discreetly.
The little pin makes a convincing argument for itself. After all, we 20-somethings don’t have a ton of options if our clothes wind up falling out of factory condition. So what do you do if your clothes rip, or become too big or too small? You could go the route of my coworker and buy a designated gadget. You could ponytail a loose-fitting tee with a rubber band or hair elastic. Or you could invest in a large pile of safety pins.
Of course, safety pins have a certain “look” attached to them, as they’ve long been the hallmark of Do It Yourself (DIY) fashion — which itself is a core tenet of being a punk.
What fastens the punk to the safety pin?
To me, punk style is all about the intersection of form and function. While there may be nothing more purely degenerate than meaningless adornment (see tattoos and piercings), what we carry on top of our skin is usually found at the crossroads of the banal and the divine.
Which is why it’s important to note how the punk wears her safety pins; even a pin through the earlobe serves a purpose — it keeps the hole from closing up if, say, your earring gets lost in the mosh pit.
For a while, safety pins closed unsightly holes in my shirts, took the place of missing buttons, hemmed in baggy waistlines and served as a perennial fastener of whatever I felt like turning into an accessory: a feather, a flower, a playing card.
To turn a bare need into regal excess — that’s what it’s all about.
You can get away with the elevated pragmatism of the safety pin in Allston, where I live. For one thing, the average age there seems to be around 22, so it’s safe to say these recent college grads can appreciate an economical option. Furthermore, Allston seems to be the coalescence of all remaining punk activity in the city of Boston.
There are a number of different types of punks in Allston, but surprisingly for the internet era, many adhere to the classic, Sex Pistols prototype. That’s your mohawks and mesh, your hair dyed puke green, your piercings, tattoos, leather jackets, Doc Martens, hole-y shirts, ripped jeans and, of course, a healthy amount of safety pins.
For my own part, I see dressing like Sid Vicious as a tad too similar to wearing a uniform. The devotion to such a strictly-curated shtick always seemed a lot more restricting than liberating to me. The reason why I see the DIY ethos as vital to punk is because both embody a mindset that demands to make its own rules. Especially in this day and age; the whole Nevermind the Bollocks vibe is somebody else’s generation. As young punks, aren’t we supposed to be forging our own way?
Essentially, in the ultimate battle between form and function, function has to win out. It’s more important to maintain the punk mentality than the punk aesthetic, and sure as a safety pin is sharp, you’re gonna start missing the point if you make too many rules. And that’s what I had to tell myself when I saw my coworker’s adjustable button.
At first, I privately rolled my eyes at what was probably the cold, hard antithesis of all that is DIY. Then I got to thinking about how useful it’d be, since I don’t wear my safety pins around the office. Then I got disappointed, because, well, it just wasn’t very punk. Then I got over myself.
When you get right down to it, the button thingy traverses that same form/function line as the safety pin. So I’d say it’s an appropriate substitute, and I’m even thinking of ordering one. But hey — if you’re ever in Allston and find yourself needing a safety pin, I’m your punk.
Sophie Yarin can be reached at [email protected].
