How Music's Oddballs Keep the Fashion World On its Toes

In the past week, Lady Gaga has redefined the shell-suit. It used to be a flammable, slippery outfit perfect for middle class students' fancy dress nights (“I'm a chav, Rory”), and “Can't Hold Us Down”-era Christina throwbacks. Now, though, it's a couple of shells with which to cover your most erogenous zones as you chat to One Direction's Zayn about the haterz.

Gaga is the exception to the rule that pop stars stick to one clear image, even if just for a while. Putting turbo-force behind Bowie and Madonna's ability to adapt and develop several iconic looks, Gaga plays around with tens of different personas. These are often seemingly random: but when she does wear something that actually aligns with her music, it's usually pretty heavy-handed. Take the pig's snout she's been sporting as promotional garb for new song “Swine”. With preview clips suggesting it's a thrashy, snarly grunt of a song, it seems the porcine snub matches up to both the name and sound of the single.

This relationship between style and music has existed for eons before Liz Hurley's red-top fodder premiere gown, and the travesty that was the 2013 Met Ball, the safety pin embodied punk culture as much as punk's music did. But now musicians pose on the red carpet, and become billboard models as soon as they are performers.

This is just plain boring, and leaves little room for eccentricity or individual creativity. But there are a few exciting mainstream artists who buck the trend, and refuse to let their outfits be micromanaged by record company committees. Though punk is no longer a visible movement - and was never too aesthetically pleasing anyway – some musicians dress beautifully, using punk's DIY ethos to push boundaries.

Arctic Monkeys have had a good go of switching up their style; before, they were a bunch of blokes just making some music, and what they wore was a sideline. Now their style is a calling card, a sign that they're happy to dress like the rock stars they always were. As well as putting touches of old-school Stones-style R&B back into their indie-rock, they've also demonstrated a stubborn but laudable commitment to dressing like light-entertainment hosts of the mid 60's. By going all-out for this style, it shows that not only are they ready to lead, but that they're all in it together.

Then there are artists who have always shown an interest in fashion, and compromise traditional westernised ideals of beauty. Grimes, MIA and Bjork are the leaders of this, looking to other countries for style inspiration. What's striking is that they don't repress the quirks of international styles, but let the differences spike up and jar a bit. This is a nice contrast to the generic, mono-cultural music of Pitbull and Avicii, who mush together foreign-ish memes, whittling them down to slot in with the expectations of Belvedere-chugging, be-suited businessmen in Mahiki.

Sometimes borrowing from other cultures without filing down the edges can get acts into trouble: Bjork for wearing Kimonos, MIA for the “Bad Girls” video, and Grimes for ill-advised bindi wearing. Although none of those images are that comfortable, it doesn't seem like they're borrowing from other cultures in order to take the piss. Instead, they're paying homage to them, assembling them next to other iconography rather than sanitizing them for western consumption. For some reason it's deemed acceptable to borrow musically from other cultures (OK, unless you're putting on a Jafrican accent a la Sting or The Saturdays), but not to dress like other cultures – even if you're not sexualizing or ridiculing it.

This isn't to justify the actions which have offended other cultural groups, but just an attempt to explain what the thinking behind the cultural appropriation of Grimes et al might be. Remember that time Bjork wore a swan, and MIA dumbed up as a cheerleader in her 2012 Super Bowl guest spot, and Grimes wore the same Versace trousers as 2Chainz? These lot dress ridiculously, and make you flip your expectations of fashion, in the same way that they flip expectations of music. The point is not just that they stop traffic and troll their way onto the worst-dressed lists without giving a crap. They also educate the mainstream in other ways of perceiving beauty, both aural and visual.

Fashion weeks are becoming international circuits for the rich and famous, like the polo season or the Grand Prix. Attention is focussed on the preened, pretend-interested, SEO- friendly celebrities sitting front row. So, despite their occasional lapses in judgement, isn't it nice to have these oddballs about?

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