Music has played a pivotal role in the influence and constant development of fashion throughout America's musical history. Both music and fashion are art forms, and like other art forms they are an expression of the individual's inner self. Music can be soulful, bright and happy, or slow and sensuous. Because it has lyrics, it can also tell a story, be argumentative, or persuade the listener to adopt a cause. Anything that can be expressed in ordinary speech can be expressed more vividly and effectively in music, because the words are enhanced by the rhythm and the beat. Likewise, fashion tells the story that can be told by any visual object. The old adage "A picture can take the place of a thousand words" is emphatically true; in fact, a thousand words cannot possibly ever replace a picture, because the reader must read those thousand words, thus diminishing the impact. The sight of a visual object communicates an idea clearly and immediately without the message having to go through the individual's many inner "filters." A picture gets past all of a person's defenses and registers its message immediately. Thus, taken together, music and fashion provide the auditory and visual expressions of an idea.
Given the similar way in which they communicate an idea, it is not surprising that music and fashion also influence each other. The fashionista moved by a musical creation can incorporate what she feels in a fashion statement. The fashion that makes a statement can influence the musician to express it musically. The music-fashion interchange is more than a simple re-expression from one medium to another, however. There is a cultural element involved that cannot be ignored. Rock music, for example, is surrounded by a context of rock culture that includes the way rockers live, how they dress, and what their personal values are, and when their fans idolize them, it is not just because of their music; it is also...