In 1982, horror-punk rockers the Misfits sang “I want your skulls, I need your skulls.” Almost 30 years later, the band’s iconic black-and-white skull-head logo has influenced the preppy boys and pretty girls. They want skulls. They need skulls. But, they want and need them differently. They’re reinvigorating skull-wearing with colour and patterns, and throwing out traditional black and leather. Skulls aren’t just for the misfits anymore. They’re for the mainstream. It’s happening globally. It’s happening in Toronto.
Who’s to blame? Alexander McQueen‘s dark side? Vivienne Westwood‘s tough-girl image? Mexicans’ rituals of honouring the dead?
Almost everything Alexander McQueen designs is skull-inspired. From his pimp silver skull-head cane to his gold skull-head knuckle-duster clutch, any couple with a bit of coin can walk into a party and knock ‘em down. Vivienne Westwood and Betsy Johnson’s colourful skull-head designs fastened with accents like flowers, lace, and diamonds make being girly and edgy easy.
Canadian-born Actor Dan Aykroyd even has North Americans storing skull heads in their freezers. Vodka that is. Aykroyd’s Crystal Head vodka is influenced by Mexico’s Day of the Dead ceremonies. He says the design and name were inspired by his interest in the legend of the 13 quartz-crystal heads. Crystal skulls are known to represent life by honouring the person and their consciousness.
Days of the Dead is a holiday celebrated in November to celebrate friends and families who died. People visit graves and set up mini altars with flowers, food, and photos. But throughout the year, skull heads are present in homes and shops in several different forms from ceramic sculptures, wood carvings, and paper maché, to jewelry and paintings. When I was in Mexico recently, wood-carved skull heads were going for $25 USD.
McGill University Professor of Anthropology Kristin Norget explored the practice and symbolism of death rituals in poor urban neighbourhoods, focusing on the southern Mexico city of Oaxaca in her 2005 book, Days of Death, Days of Life.
“I think it’s sometimes a problem to assume images we see in clothing and so on come from some deep psychological urge rather than simple processes of commoditization,” says Norget in an e-mail.
Similarly, Fashion Magazine Market Editor Caitlan Moneta blames it on the street.
“I think this trend came about from the bottom-up– as in a derivative of street style, rather than the runway. Like any trend in the making, it was probably a case of a few style influencers wearing skulls to infuse a dark edge into their look, followed by a trickle-down effect.”
The founders of The Coveteur agree with Moneta, but they also blame McQueen.
Toronto-born stylist Stephanie Mark and designer Erin Kleinberg have explored the closets of people they dub “cultural forecasters” since January 2011, and they continue to see skulls in clothing and décor. Skull-head motifs decorate coffee tables and bookshelves in the homes of New York Photographer Ben Watts, Jimmy Choo’s Sara Riff, American Designer Wes Gordon, and Moda Operandi Founder Lauren Santo Domingo. They’re examples of the preppy boys and pretty girls that want skulls.
“Watts really loves him a skull motif; they were popping up everywhere– his kitchen, his dining room table, his bedroom, his pillows… that place was practically a techicolour graveyard,” says Kleinberg.
But skulls wouldn’t exist in fashion without, well, skeletons.
“As a fashion or icon, the skull gets simplified immensely,” University of Toronto Professor of Anthropology Susan Pfeiffer tells me. She provides sociological context to explain our fascination with what’s frankly a dead object.
She describes humans as social animals. And all social mammals communicate through the face, with all senses: smell, taste, hearing, sight, and touch. The face, as part of the skeleton, identifies a person beyond communication. So when you take away the head, there’s nothing left to identify a person.
Her insight explains why we’re so connected to the skull head. When I ask if we’d be as fascinated with skulls if we were wearing skeletons around our necks, she explains, “Most people can’t distinguish whether other parts of a skeleton belong to an animal or human.”
The answer then, is no.
Pfeiffer tells me that the skull-head shapes we see in fashion are that of a North American or European cranial structure. Specifically, she calls out modest brow edges, the shape of the orbit, eye sockets, and height of the jaw.
While Moneta blames street style and The Coveteur founders blame McQueen, Pfeiffer blames the CSI phenomenon.
“Everyone wants to be different,” she says. She points to forensic scientists who try to differentiate themselves within their professional group by wearing cross-bone skulls on neck ties, hats, shirts, and socks.
In Toronto, skull-head designs are available everywhere from the black market to Little Korea, Queen Street West and Ossington Avenue. Art.27, a beauty and wellness boutique on Queen Street West carries a line of colourful skull-head soaps and candles from French brand Citizen Bio.“Everyone likes and buys these skulls,” says owner Camelia Nicoara. The youngest kid to buy a skull from her was about eight-years-old.
As Moneta puts it, “Skulls and skull patterns aren’t new. A classic punk rock icon, they just seem to have lost their threatening persona now that they’ve become the uniform for suburban teens and plastered on belts, bags, t-shirts, and jewelry.”
So the pretty bitches win yet another round.
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Kristen Marano is a Toronto-based writer. Follow her on Twitter at @kmarano.
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