SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING NEW

The boldest movements in British style have drawn on the past to rebel against the present. It’s been happening for nearly sixty years

Teds

The first British youths to declare their autonomy from both their parents and society were The Teds. It all began in 1951 when a gang of South London teenage ne’er-do-wells witnessed groups of gay ex-guardsmen, known as The New Edwardians and led by Cecil Beaton, parading up and down Savile Row sporting a style that flaunted the government’s post-war cloth restrictions. Their look harked back to the glory days of the Edwardian era and comprised slightly flared longer jackets, narrow trousers and long, slim single-breasted overcoats with velvet collar and cuffs. South London’s fledgling hoodlums went back to their tailors, such as Hymie of The Cut, and, like some Indian brave looting the uniform of one of Custer’s dead, stole the sophisticated New Edwardian look, adding a touch of Forties zoot and a sliver of Mississippi gambler to create the classic Ted profile.

Modernists

If the Teds steamed in all guns blazing then what followed was sniper fire by comparison. In the late fifties, proto Mods, or Modernists as they preferred to be called, such as Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones and Marc Bolan (then known as Mark Feld), chose a clean cut, sophisticated mode that would set them well apart from the greasy, knuckle-headed Teddy Boy caricature. Based on the Roman cut, the look was three-button bum freezer jackets, slim line trousers, narrow ties and winkle picker shoes for guys; restrained pencil dresses, martini heels and short hair or beehives for the girls. Certain Modernists favoured the clean cut Ivy League Steve McQueen crew cut while others went for the brushed forward Caesar crop. The Cool School of jazz (Miles Davis et al) provided the soundtrack, and they often carried their Blue Note records around with them. Modernists aspired to embrace the rapidly approaching urbane cappuccino age.

Hippies

In 1965 former Modernist, tailor John Pearse, painter Nigel Waymouth and obsessive vintage clothing collector Sheila Cohen opened Granny Takes A Trip in Chelsea’s World’s End. They decorated the shop with Aubrey Beardsley reproductions, blow-ups of turn of the century French postcards and Victorian memorabilia, looking back to the late 19th century when everything was softer, gentler and bathed in the glow of laudanum. Soon the shop was selling lilac shoes, frilled pink men’s shirts, floppy lace petticoats worn as gowns and Afghan coats. The store quickly attracted the pop glitterati, led by the likes of Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones, before transmogrifying to become the main impetus behind the hippy movement. Consequently, the ethic embraced by the Beatles and The Stones crossed both class and ethnic barriers until even Etonians threw in the towel, dressed to be cool, dropped acid, smoked dope and marched against the Vietnam war, thus blurring the lines of the old school order forever.

Punk

Even though many might attest that punk was a new movement, its influences were firmly rooted in the 1950s. Mixing the style and antics of old rockers like Gene Vincent with vintage bondage and a soupçon of homo-erotic imagery, before flavouring with the raucous, spiky haired, ripped T-shirt rock-chic of New York, the result was 1970s punk. Initially led by the art college set, the movement was a deliberate rebuttal to hairy seventies bands such as Led Zeppelin and espoused the virtue that anyone can do ‘it’… which they did. A child of the upper classes, Joe Strummer joined forces with Paul Simonon and Mick Jones to form the Clash. The Sex Pistols were angry proletarians, yet were created and managed by the unmistakably arty Malcolm Maclaren. The Banshees, on the other hand, were a mix of all three: poor, posh and arty. And to confuse matters still further, they spoke in cockney accents despite hailing from Bromley.