Where do you draw the parameters for a law against patches or insignia? Who is allowed to wear an image of a bulldog on a T-shirt? Photo / NZME
Where do you draw the parameters for a law against patches or insignia? Who is allowed to wear an image of a bulldog on a T-shirt? Photo / NZME
OPINION
The National Government hopes to unpick gang power by policing patches and insignia. But, as lifestyle deputy editor Emma Gleason asks, how do you define the style codes of a subculture and can outlawing items of clothing achieve this objective?
Dress codes are getting jurisdictional muscle. The National-led Government announced on Sunday that it would push through its proposed ban on gang patches and insignia, with legislation being introduced to Parliament over the next two weeks.
As part of the Government’s strategy to crack down on gangs, announced by Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and Police Minister Mark Mitchell alongside other measures, gang “insignia” would be banned from public places - including tangi and funerals. Goldsmith said wearing a patch would be penalised by fines of up to $5000 or up to six months in prison.
The announcement made headlines over the weekend and has been met with concerns. Labour’s Justice spokesman Duncan Webb said the “superficial policy” using police resources “to chase down people for wearing jackets, bandanas, hats, even jewellery like rings, rather than criminal behaviour” wasn’t the best way to reduce gang intimidation.
Labour’s Police spokeswoman Ginny Andersen questioned the practicality of an already stretched force acting as “wardrobe police” and whether it would serve to minimise gang activity. “I’m just not sure that taking jackets off them and giving tickets is the way to do it,” she told RNZ.
Social worker and reformed gang member Eugene Ryder said that by “banning patches, people are going to be judged by what they wear, not their behaviours” while Ōpōtiki Māori Wardens chairwoman Te Owai Gemmell told RNZthe legislation was a joke. “The guys are probably just laughing and saying go hard, you can have it if you want to wear it.”
Patches and insignia seem like a visible solution
Part of the vernacular style of motorcycle clubs and gangs, patches or insignia refer to the branding on a jacket or vest; conventionally a round motif, with a curved badge or “rocker” above and below, denoting club and region. Conferring belonging and rank, they’ve become an explicit stylistic convention of gang culture in New Zealand.
Insignia and patched jackets have a long tradition with biker gangs and outlaw motorcycle groups, which were established in the US and spread around the world and in New Zealand. Leather jackets were practical, and insignia was symbolic of membership within a group.
With their associations of rebellion and anti-establishment values (and some glamorisation in pop culture), patches have been adopted by other groups. Eventually, as with other subcultures, commercial fashion brands borrowed heavily from the stylistic conventions of biker and gang culture, integrating elements like motorcycle boots, jackets, bandanas and more overtly creating interpretations of patches and insignia.
How then, does legislation differentiate between a jacket of a gang member and a non-affiliated motorcycle jacket - or, for that matter, a patched and studded leather jacket from local brand Stolen Girlfriends Club?
A 2019 jacket by New Zealand brand Stolen Girlfriends Club that borrows from motorcycle club and punk conventions.
Where do you draw the parameters for a law against patches or insignia? Who is allowed to wear an image of a bulldog on a T-shirt?
Patches and insignia are, by intention, easy to see. They make a statement via the vehicle of clothing.
Gangs, like many subcultures, intentionally choose easily communicable codes and conventions, giving visibility to the underground. It’s a demonstration of power and anti-authority sentiment and this transparency is a message more for those outside the group than to those within it.
Subtlety is an alternative and will likely prove an outcome of this legislation as signalling becomes less overt and harder to punish by law.
For those in an in-group, understanding belonging and status can be as subtle as a brand of shoe, style of jeans or the buttoning of a shirt. In his seminal book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, which examines the stylistic expression of deviance and anti-establishment dressing, Dick Hebdige defines style as “expressive forms that give meaningful shape to group experience” and explains how integral these codes are for a unified group message. Punks, for example, “signified chaos at every level, but this was only possible because the style itself was so thoroughly ordered. The chaos cohered as a meaningful home”.
Is there a precedent for policing clothes?
Patches are already banned on government premises, both central and local, under the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Act 2013, including schools and hospitals but excluding Kāinga Ora homes.
“No person may display gang insignia at any time in Government premises,” outlines the act, and the offence is liable for up to $2000 in fines.
Explicit stylistic conventions like patches act as a visual sign, facilitating the assumption that the wearer is in an “organised criminal group”, an offence under Section 98A of the Crimes Act 1961.
To determine whether a sign, symbol, or representation is gang insignia, it directs judges to section 128 of the Evidence Act 2006. “A judge or jury may take notice of facts so known and accepted either generally or in the locality in which the proceeding is being held that they cannot reasonably be questioned.” With that rationale, a Mongrel Mob patch, with its explicit wording and local understanding, may be seen as an unquestionable sign of its wearer’s involvement in the group.
Outlawing insignia isn’t without precedent. There have been earlier, less successful, attempts at policing the clothing conventions of gang members. In 2011, the High Court ruled Whanganui’s Prohibition of Gang Insignia bylaw, with patches punishable by fines of up to $2000, as unlawful.
Restrictions around symbolic motifs extend beyond gang patches. Last year the Australian federal government introduced legislation to ban extremist motifs, like Nazi symbols, including on clothing like T-shirts and armbands. However, the Hakenkreuz, or swastika, an infamous symbol of the Nazi Party and popular white nationalist groups, was not included due to its origin and significance in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain communities.
The culturally taboo symbol, not banned in New Zealand, was adopted by local gangs, including the Stormtroopers and Mongrel Mob, as an intentionally offensive anti-society statement.
Can governments really police clothing?
Legal restrictions around clothing are nothing new and have long been used as a tool used to enforce order, status and control.
Sumptuary laws which restricted personal extravagance date back centuries. In Ancient Greece, there were restrictions on gold jewellery, while Ancient Rome famously regulated the highly prized and elite-coded Tyrian purple dye and at times banned men from wearing silk. Sumptuary laws in feudal Japan, particularly the 17th to 19th centuries, were strict around clothing and class.
There were laws, often highly specified and with underlying motives, around clothing and social class in Europe and the United Kingdom, restricting who could wear fur, silk, brocade and precious metals. Wool caps were decreed for all men on Sundays (excluding nobles) via an Act of Parliament in 1571.
Governments also imposed clothing restrictions during times of austerity, and the rationing during periods of world war in the 20th century had a striking influence on fashion conventions.
In New Zealand, the Government introduced clothing rationing during World War Two as an austerity measure; embroidery, applique and trouser turn-ups were banned, fabric yardage was restricted and details like pleats and buttonholes were limited in number. In America, voluminous “zoot suits” - a rebellious subcultural fashion popularised by men of colour - were banned in public by the Los Angeles City Council and influenced restrictions by the War Production Board.
Two young men, dressed in the "zoot suit" style, are questioned by Los Angeles policemen in 1943. Photo / Getty Images
The social upheaval that followed the war years gave birth to myriad anti-establishment subcultures and new clothing conventions. Teddy boys, mods, rockers, punks and rude boys and others like them all deployed highly specific, ever-changing style codes to establish identity and adversarial parameters with authority and other groups.
As clothing proved to be an effective method of rebellion and subversion, it continued to provide territory for restriction. Whether in private or public spheres, dress codes and clothing regulations have long been a way to restrict access to spaces and modify behaviour.
Now a proud symbol of American values, blue jeans didn’t enjoy the same freedom they do today. During the 1950s, due to their associations with the working class, rebellion and counterculture, they were often banned from public places like schools and restaurants. Today, jeans are reportedly outlawed in North Korea, among many fashion conventions that are believed to be restricted in the country due to their associations with the West.
It’s not just the clothes themselves that can restricted, it’s also how they’re worn. For 13 years until 2020, Florida city Opa-locka banned “sagging” - low-slung pants, a fashion understood to be inspired by dress conventions of incarcerated men and popularised by hip hop culture. Punishable there by fines of up to US$500 ($810), other American towns and cities also sought to criminalise the mode of dress.
More recently, clothing has been a point of controversy and legislation in Europe, where many governments have sought to restrict the wearing of face coverings, including burqa and niqab, in public - policies that target Muslim women and inhibit religious freedoms. Denmark banned both garments in 2018. France outlawed religiously symbolic clothing from government schools in 2004, permitting discrete items like unobtrusive jewellery, and in 2010 controversially banned burqas in public, with women liable for a 150 euro fine. Switzerland made facial concealment illegal in 2021.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where over 50 per cent of the population adhere to Islam, lawyers cannot wear a hijab at work. In 2023, the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that signs of religious belief could be prohibited by employers in member states.
Specific bans ignore the nuances of dress, signalling and identity
As evidenced by bans around face coverings and sagging, clothing restrictions are usually aimed at the people deploying a style, rather than the item itself. However, the fashion conventions of any group are far more complex than the National-led Government’s gang-patch ban would have you believe.
Things get murkier - and harder to police - when the coding is more implicit. Banning a Mongrel Mob patch is one thing, but will the colours and materials worn by gangs be subject to restriction too? Can you legislate around hues like red and blue, the distinctive print of bandanas, or a leather jacket?
Groups of all kinds have used style codes to shape their identity, communicate status to peers and exclude those who aren’t. Not to mention, in the case of anti-establishment groups and subcultures, express rebellion, dissent or aggression in a visual way.
Banning patches is a superficial proposition that shows a naive understanding of how groups codify and communicate their identity in society through what they wear; anti-establishment style can be subtle and sophisticated if, and when, it wants to be.
All conventions carry meaning. Fashioning identity and rebellion is far more nuanced - and malleable- than the Government’s new policy suggests it believes. The harder the crackdown, the more subtle the signalling may be.
Suppressing the stylistic codes of a group underestimates the power of dress to communicate status, belonging and defiance.
Emma Gleason is the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and media, with a keen interest in what our tastes and behaviour say about society.
