Street Smarts: Mods, Rudeboys, Teddy Boys and Punks

While not nearly as well documented as mod culture, the teddy boys of the 1950s paved the way for future youth movements, boasting all the necessary attributes of a suitably influential subculture. They had the uniform, consisting of Edwardian-style drape jackets, high-waisted, twin-pleated trousers and silk Western bow ties; the music, which mainly consisted of fast-paced rock ‘n’ roll; and, most importantly, an all-round disregard for the dreariness of postwar Britain. Musgrave believes that “after the second world war, as old social divisions began to break down, some young working-class men wanted to express a new identity”, and the clothes were a vital element. In adopting an upper-class Edwardian aesthetic, these working-class teds were simultaneously giving a proverbial middle finger to the upper echelons of society while forging their own distinguished identity. They wore a style of suit previously associated with wealth and elegance and injected their own form of rebelliousness into it, yet the teddy boys were limited in scope and never quite elevated the suit to new levels, unlike their successors, the mods.

Robert Elms, author of the cult book The Way We Wore, put it perfectly: “The teds stole the clothes off the back of their superiors, but were content to wear them only in their own dilapidated back alleys. They doffed their quiffs and knew their place. The mods started to crave and yearn, to reach out and find out, to go up west and downtown, to look to Italy and France for clothes, to black America for records, to the Caribbean for attitude. They didn’t really know what la dolce vita looked or tasted like, but they knew they had to get some. So they rode scooters like little Neapolitans, danced from the waist up, like the black G.I.s they’d seen in jazz clubs, and walked with a bowling sway like the West Indian dudes who inhabited the same streets and estates.”

Indeed, the mods were arguably the first completely original subculture. They borrowed elements from all over the globe, and combined them to create a look and a lifestyle that was highly aspirational and universally cool. The Modfather himself, Paul Weller, who spearheaded the mod revival in the late 1970s, describes the movement as “English ingenuity at its finest”. It’s unknown exactly how mods came into existence, and there isn’t one single figure to whom the movement can be attributed, but it’s widely believed that the first mods appeared between 1958 and 1960 in Soho. London’s Soho was, of course, the ideal location for such a cult to begin. According to the author Richard Weight, “into this effervescently louche, tolerant and creative place stepped waves of immigrants from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. Italian immigrants made a mark on Soho by opening restaurants and coffee bars”, which “became a hangout for teenagers unable to get into pubs”. It was in places such as Bar Italia and the 2i’s Coffee Bar where these melting pots of different cultures and styles congregated on a Friday night, and it was here where young British mods would be exposed to exciting new music and fashion.

Mods were named after the modern jazz music they worshipped, and the contemporary way of life they yearned for. This notion of modernity extended to every ounce of the way they thought and behaved, but was most visible in the way they dressed. “Mods didn’t want anything to do with anything that had gone before,” Elms wrote, so instead of looking to previous British styles of dress, as teddy boys did, or even turning to the mecca of British tailoring, Savile Row, young mods looked to both the continent and to American Ivy League styles for inspiration.

Unlike in today’s fashion landscape, there were no big-budget campaigns advertising the new mod look, no style magazines championing it — in the beginning, at least. Instead, young modernists had to look hard for inspiration, trying a number of different techniques that would eventually combine to form what is considered the archetypal mod look. This is perhaps what made the movement so appealing in the first place, the idea that style wasn’t handed to you on a plate — you had to go out and find it yourself, and those who were the most innovative and detail-driven were rewarded. Those who consistently beat others to a particular style may be awarded the title ‘Ace Face’, a signifier that you were a leader of men, a mod of enviable taste. This notion created something of an elitist mindset in the movement, not dissimilar from the ‘old boys’ club’ ethos of the upper classes that mods were reacting against. Weight explains: “Some of the founding ‘faces’ were not really interested in the democratisation of taste that they appeared to champion. What they really wanted was to challenge established elites by creating an elite of their own, a kind of secret society for which they set the terms of entry — one based on what you wore, listened to or read rather than where you had gone to school or who your father knew on the company board, a society where they could be noblemen and not serfs, at least for the weekend.”

Read the full story in Issue 44 of The Rake. Contact subscriptions@therakemagazine.com or subscribe here.

The Jam guard their wardrobe flight cases backstage at the Gaumont, Southampton, during their British tour, 1979. Left to right: singer/guitarist Paul Weller, drummer Rick Buckler and bassist Bruce Foxton. Photo by Chalkie Davies/Getty Images.