Punkabilly - Fashion and Subculture

Fashion and Subculture

In "its early days, psychobilly relied almost entirely on word of mouth to be spread throughout London (p. 53). If your friends did not know of it, the odds were that you did not either...Roy Williams saw this gap and stepped in again creating a newsletter that would be passed around known as "Zorch News" allowing fans to keep up with psychobilly news that specifically related to bands involved with Nervous Records." "Despite being starved of the oxygen of mainstream music press attention for more than 25 years, psychobilly has thrived in the underground building a network of fiercely loyal followers and producing a huge number of bands who each peddle their own brand of the genre." Fanzines are one of the ways the psychobilly scene created a social network, with Deathrow being the "...only long running psychobilly fanzine."

Psychobilly musicians and fans, who are sometimes called "psychos" often dress in styles that borrow from 1950s rockabilly and rock and roll, as well as 1970s punk fashions. Psychobilly band members of both sexes often have prominent tattoos, often with a vintage theme. Psychobilly "tattoos followed the same general notions as band designs, being highly influenced by the same movies. Common tattoos were images of the macabre nature such as bats, skulls, gravestones, as well as the occasional pin-up doll and band logo." The goal of the psychobilly scene member is to "live fast, die young, and leave a (not so) beautiful corpse."

Other aesthetic influences include the scooterboy and skinhead subcultures, although not all performers or fans choose to dress in these styles. Scooterboy fashion includes flight jackets, mechanic's jackets, and motorcycle jackets. "Skinheads brought in things such as Doc Martens and pilot jackets ... Punks brought in clothes such as the leather jacket and tighter clothing Beneath the jacket was often a band T-shirt or a tartan shirt taken from rockabillies" Psychos often cut the arms off of their leather jackets, converting them into vests, and decorate the jackets with horror imagery or band logos.

Men often wear brothel creepers or Dr. Martens boots and shave their heads into high wedge-shaped pompadours or quiffs, military-style crops, or mohawks. The Sharks song "Take a Razor to Your Head" articulated the early psychobilly scene's code of dress, which was a reaction to the earlier British Teddy Boy movement: Teddy boys had long, strongly-moulded greased-up hair with a quiff at the front and the side combed back to form a duck's arse at the rear. The Shark's song said: "When your Mom says you look really nice / When you're dressed up like a Ted / It's time to follow this cat's advice / Take a razor to your head". "Like most hairstyles of the 1980s, things were taken to the extreme. People tried to get their hair as tall as possible and brought in streaks of strange colors."

In a psychobilly scene "Betties" is the slang term for "Ladies, most often of the rockabilly and psychobilly persuasion, who emulate ’50s pinup queen Bettie Page, particularly with the long, wavy, jet-black hair and supershort “fetish” bangs." "Women also wore tight leggings, miniskirts, and even tighter clothes." Women of the psychobilly subculture frequently model their fashions after B-grade horror films and hot rod culture.

Lucky-13 "is an American hot rod clothing company proudly servicing pinup, rockabilly, psychobilly, rock n' roll, and punk rock guys and gals for over 15 years" Inked Fashion calls itself "the rockabilly shop for petticoat, psychobilly and rockabilly clothing." Paper Doll Productions sells what it calls the "...boldest psychobilly designs on the market today, fantastic for anyone who has a love of vintage style and classic horror. Inspired by rockabilly fashion, psychobilly has the same influences of 40’s and 50’s clothing but features a far greater modern flair, incorporating bold colours and horror themed designs to create an entirely unique genre of clothing."