De Lafee

The New York Times’ Sunday fashion insert doesn’t normally cross
paths with Hatewatch. But a headline in the Sunday, Sept. 16, edition caught our
attention:  “Skinheads are Moshing Their Way Into the Style Mainstream.”

According to the brief magazine article, big-name designers like Dior Homme
and Heidi Slimane are bringing skinhead style back to the runway. For a movement
now largely known for its racist violence, that’s quite a comeback.

Skinhead researcher and Portland [Ore.] State University professor Randy
Blazak says that while he hasn’t seen a pair of Doc Martens boots in over three
years, skinhead style as a mainstream fashion fad isn’t anything new. As a
matter of fact, racist skinheads are often angered to see their style co-opted,
whether by anti-racist skinheads or trend-seeking teenagers. “It undermines
their message when that style is diffused to the mainstream,” said Blazak.

The Times also improbably claims — on the basis of what evidence
it’s hard to say — that skinhead style has been not only appropriated, but
defanged, by European gay men: “Skinheads went underground until gays, who have
disarmed much of the movement’s racism, recently began dragging them out of the
closet… .”

Blazak says while researching the skinhead movement in England in the 1980s,
he accompanied a skinhead into a bar and found himself surrounded by guys with
shaved domes, black boots and suspenders. But the pub wasn’t a hangout for
racists or ultranationalists; it was a gay bar. Still, that doesn’t mean that
gays had “disarmed” the movement’s racism. Says Blazak: “Just because there are
gay skinheads doesn’t mean that racist skinheads are going away.”