Taqwacore the Fashion Line
Earlier that week I had walked into 7-11 to find Mike Knight searching through the aisles looking for duct tape. He was wearing this deconstructed long sleeve jacket that looked like it was pieced together from odds and ends light green army material. He had this odd pocket that resembled a fanny pack hanging off of the back of it. It was a shirt gifted to Knight by Niilartey DeOsu who is the fashion designer of Neodandi, a House of Couture based out of Seattle. I had first seen Niilartey at the radio show on Main St. when he came bearing shirts for Mike, Eyad and The bands. Almost all of the shirts had 4263 stenciled on them. The shirts were a part of Neodandi’s new fashion line, a new Taqwacore fashion line. I’m not going to lie – I was skeptical.
I asked him why he was looking for duct tape. He pointed to a patch on his shirt. It was a white stencil that said, ‘The Taqwacores’ on the left side of his shirt. “I like it…the shirt. I just don’t like that.”
I smiled as I put two and two together. “It’s kind of like a band that wears shirts with the name of their own band. You just don’t do that,” I said.
“Exactly! I wrote the book, and it’s my movie. I can’t go around wearing something that says ‘The Taqwacores,’” he said.
“Yeah, and it’s not like hip-hop heads go around wearing shirts that say ‘hip-hop’ or punks go around wearing shirts that say ‘punk rock.’ In fact punks wear shirts that say ‘punk rock fucking sucks’ or ‘fuck punk.’ That’s what these shirts need to say. ‘Fuck Taqwacore.’”
Mike ended up not buying duct tape and bought a box of safety pins instead. He used the safety pin to rip off the labeled patch and wore the shirt for the rest of the time there.
I was skeptical of a Taqwacore fashion line – it felt like the commercialization of a subculture, the Hot Topic-ifcication of The Taqwacores, if you will. To me, punk wasn’t just music, but it was also the DIY fashion. It was about creating the patches, spray painting the stencils, sticking your studs one metal piece at a time into your vest. But if fashion design is a form of art, who am I to say what kind of art can or cannot be inspired by The Taqwacores? I can’t control that and really, I believe there should be room for everyone to be inspired by the message in the book and movie to create art. It’s the reason why in the movie, Jehangir let Bilal’s Boulder play at the final concert – there had to be room for every body in the scene. It wasn’t a sect. It couldn’t be a sect, if everyone was allowed in it.
My skepticism of the House of Couture didn’t fully drop until the night of the Epic show. At first I saw the Neodandi crew standing to the side and watching the punk rockness. But by the end of the night during The Kominas set, I saw the crew taking off their sunglasses and moshing in the circle pit with the rest of us. That was when my skepticism faded and I thought that maybe they did get it.
