How To Dress Like A Punk

If you want the look of that rough, dirty edge that being a punk is all about and you're just getting out of your grade-school Lacoste polo shirts and chinos for the first time, stick around and learn how to dress like a punk. Punk clothing is a style unto its own, and much of punk style comes from re-purposed clothing. Hey, even that Lacoste polo shirt could become a part of your punk look.

What you'll need:

• Elmer's Glue
• Tattered t-shirts
• Spikes
• Brightly colored hair die
• Fingerless gloves
• Screen-printing equipment
• Combat boots

1. Spikes Spikes are a hallmark of punk rock dress. If nothing else, buy screw-in large spikes and put them on everything: your jacket, your fingerless gloves and your belt. These spikes scream punk like Johnny Rotten. And don't forget to spike your hair!
2. Torn and pinned Take your favorite T-shirt and tear it in three or four places asymmetrically. Use safety pins to stitch it back together. A great way to dress like a punk is to wear multiple torn shirts in varying colors over one another. How about cutting that little alligator off your Lacoste shirt and pinning it to your sliced and diced clothing just to tell those yuppies exactly where they can go?
3. Screen print your anti-establishmentarian message Setting up a screen printing shop in your basement is a sure sign you are a punk and just need a little control and discipline. Create messages in clear, simple block print, then make the messages into screens. Print in white ink on black cloth. Once your message dries, pin it like a loincloth to your jeans or your jacket so it hangs over your skinny, malnourished self.
4. Jean Jacket The jean jacket is a perfect canvas for your new punk rock style. Write on the sleeves, paint a tableau of your city crumbling to pieces around a band of dejected youths. Wear your jean jacket no matter how hot it gets.
5. Bracelets Bracelets are a must for punk rock style. Get the little rubber or thin metal ones at Claire's and put fifty of them around your wrist (if you are a girl). For guys, get a good spiked bracelet and you'll be screaming your rebel yell like Billy Idol in no time.
6. Dog collar To be truly punk rock, get a used dog collar from a dog owner! Forget these little shops in the mall that are trying to commodify your punk rock life. Maybe you should spend a year living in the doghouse with someone's pet.
7. Plaid skinny jeans Oy! Nothing says you're dressing like a British punk than a pair of plaid skinny jeans. Make sure they are tight enough around the buttocks that on a hot day, you'll get a rash from your sweaty cheeks being pressed together.
8. Combat boots If you are a punk, you're in a war against congeniality. Dress for it, but don't get ready to hump your pack across desert like a real soldier; get ready to lazy around in a haze in someone's nasty basement apartment.
9. Belts Spiked. The belt doesn't have to hold anything up; it can just encircle your hips loosely. If you get the thin, leather spiked belt, get two or three of them so they can hang over one another.
10. Earrings Classic punk is to have little hoop earrings all the way up your ears with seven or more piercings in each ear, even wearing safety pins through pierced holes in the ear.  Modern punk includes stretched piercings.
11. Hair Spiked hair is a hallmark of the punk look. Some punks shave the sides of their head, leaving a tall Mohawk in the middle that they spike using watered down Elmer's glue. Color the tips of your spike hair with brightly colored hair dye.