Back in the near mythical days of “Swinging London”, the grand old city that Len Deighton proposed as “where the action really is” in his London Dossier of 1967, there was the unquestioned belief that the Mods, and being Mod, were the definitive way to dress, act, and be. Mod was style. Being “Mod” captured what, retrospectively, Swinging London desperately wanted itself to be – to be young and look great being young.
Author: Len Deighton
Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 1967
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/columns_art/w/wee-londondossier-cover.jpgWhen one says ‘Mod’, one imagines the fashion-obsessed young Londoner on her Vespa or Lambretta, indulging in speed and dancing the night away. But that was the Mod of the camera and nostalgic reminiscence – the early Mods and the fashion they created was a rebellious cultural response to the despondency of society, a failure of Britain to live up to the promised myths that had sustained the nation, and a sudden and deliberate inversion of the social values of modern Britain through lifestyle, affect, and most importantly, fashion. This also meant that the Mods as a lifestyle-fashion could have only existed at that place and at that time.
Popular conceptions of the Mod lifestyle have been indelibly colored by (much later) cultural depictions, from Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia, to a Mod-esque Babyshambles in Fuck Forever, and to the Mod-Foxes of The Mighty Boosh (and yes, I do count that as a relevant “cultural depiction”). But for the purpose of this analysis, we have to look at the “original” Mod – the Mod of affect and rebellion before the commercialized gloss.
Even so, describing Mod fashion would be extremely difficult given the group’s continual reinvention (as fashion is wont to do). It can, however, be agreed that the Mod was birthed in Southern England, and specifically around London amongst the young, disaffected working class. They were the inheritors of a crumbling empire that had just won the largest conflict in human history only to be regarded as irrelevant by the new world powers. The rousing imperial myths of earlier generations were simply in a post-Empire Britain.
While it became harder and harder for Britons to find comfort in a national mission of imperial glory, the sudden access to disposable income following the cash-short period between the Depression and war years allowed a new generation of young Britons to find outlets in the consumer lifestyle, and by extension, the world of self-expression through fashion. Fashion, as an outward symbol, came to define the Mods.
It was decided very early on that British fashion was dead – the make-do war years saw an end to domestic style and it was only with the gradual revival of the garment factories in the South and the importation of cheap American goods that a young Brit could even begin to accessorize. The first wave of Mods, inspired by (variously) imported cultural images of the New York mafia and Brooklyn sharp, the seeming “authenticity” that West Indian migrants oozed (disaffected youth yearning for the authentic… where have we heard that before?), and the beatniks of the late-night-all-night coffee house, sought fashion refuge in this competing mesh of styles, creating, for a brief period, a period of fashion experimentation and fragmentation.
It was however, the introduction of Italian fashion magazines and Nouvelle vague cinema that defined the epitome for the Mod. From films like À bout de soufflé and Le Beau Serge, the Mods found the fashion identity they were seeking – effortlessly cool, artfully framed, pure style. While la dolce vita was at the forefront of cultural consciousness in Britain, the Mods would be made all the more aware of their dreary post-colonial condition.
Thus, rummaging in her closet, the young Mod might decide on a slim fitting dress with daring Quant-patterns of simple line structure and dramatic color contrasts, or perhaps a tight-knit shift dress that flared to an ‘A’ 5-6 inches above her knees, buttoned side-taps and sporting a contrast-banded neckline, or a jersey fabric frock with pink and grey lines, a round color, with a thin line of silver buttons running down the side seam. To keep those exposed legs warm, a maxi-coat, a remarkably subdued nearly somber one-color piece, would guard her against the elements.
The boy across the street might find his Ben Sherman dress shirt tapering to the waist, a dark navy pinstripe jacket with a cuff length at least half-an-inch too short, and a pair of trousers that retained the shape of his leg just so, allowing the lad to have a go on the dance floor. His closet was dominated by the Oxford blues and charcoal grays usually associated with the Whitehall-set; hers displayed the inventiveness of contrast colors, complimentary hues, and a growing penchant for pastels.
Author: Dave Laing
Publisher: Quadrangle
Publication date: 1970
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/columns_art/w/wee-soundoftime-cover.jpgHeavy military parkas may have been required as protection against would-be scooter-related clothing damage, but the Mod version of military was quite unlike the clunky sort we presume to be had from military surplus stores; Mod military meant the parka was cut to a flattering effect (pinched at the waist, flared above the knees, ruffled collar). In The Sound of Our Time, Dave Laing notes British society’s reaction to the uptake of the suit by the Mods: “(they) looked alright but there was something… which adults couldn’t make out.” It was almost as if the sheer temerity was in doing something that had previously been hinted at as forbidden.
When Mary Quant opened up Bazaar in Chelsea, she ushered in the radical “London Look” that defied the muted palette of the ‘50s, and defined the Mod girl. In her designs, she brought bright, bold colors, a creeping hemline on miniskirts, and quirky, pastel tights to the new London girl. She also helped to popularize the bob – a hairstyle created by close friend Vidal Sassoon – that, contrary to contemporary tastes, featured a short horizontal fringe with angled sides. Make-up was minimal: pale foundation, light lipstick. Put all together, the girls of the Mod-era must have seemed quite androgynous, emulating silver-screen icons like Jean Seberg and Anna Karina.
Quant, Sassoon & The Bob
Male Mods adopted contemporary Franco-Italian styles, emphasizing the tailor-made over the mass-produced – tight, sharply silhouetted wool suits with narrow lapels. Fashion icon, and nouvelle vague star, Jean-Paul Belmondo popularized amongst the Mod-aspirants crewneck cashmere sweaters, button-down dress shirts and the winklepecker – sharp-toed, narrow leather shoes or boots that gained increasing notoriety as a badge of Mod gang-allegiance.
The Gentleman, Inverted
The Gentleman, Inverted
British Mods took the Italian style further, incorporating contrast color collars and houndstooth-patterned jackets, adding something quintessentially British to the proceedings. Ties were skinny, belts more even so; skirts grew shorter along with parental fuses – this was a time of fashion experimentation that rebelled against expectations. Given their intense attention to detail and their rabid absorption of fashion trends, it was not unheard of for young Mods, freshly introduced to the labor force, to very quickly adopt a sense of style so polished as to be better (much better) dressed than their bosses. Were fashion not of that high importance to the Mods, dropping hard-earned pounds for a suit would have been foolish.
Author: George Melly
Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 1970
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/columns_art/w/wee-revoltstyle-cvr.jpgThis, however, proved a problem for British elders. For reasons that can be better explained by a European film theorist of the post-war period, but no doubt connected to contemporary ideals of beauty, New Wave icons were often appareled in considerably respectable ideas of fashion – the sharp suit, the accessorized dress, the waif-like androgynous form – or rather, perhaps, that New Wave came to help define what was respectable. While it might be difficult to identify whether or not the Mods adopted the respectable as a direct challenge to the upper classes’ monopoly on the suit, or whether all of Britain was seized by the same inspirational, the Mods now, importantly, had the access to procure these symbols of respectability and flaunt them in public
What defined Mod fashion was not the way the Mods wore their newfound apparel. It was also not in the sharp new cuts or daring combinations the Mods assembled into outfits either. A member of the establishment could conceivably dress exactly the same and not be a Mod; this was a lifestyle choice and with it came an ideology of fashion. How the Mod radicalized respectability was in the transformation of its outwardly visible fashion commodities into something more accessible, and in making the outfit more democratically practical, redefine its status in society.
They took the ideals of a gentleman in society – hard-working, industrious, courteous – and inverted it; adopting vices like sloth, laziness, and arrogance which became markers of Mod-social progress. The suit or the dress did not lose their social value but gained a new dimension – the Mod had simply taken its visible meaning, internalized it within the young working-class, and then redefined its use and value to apply to a different context. Post-war society was still visibly segregated along archaic class lines and, to a certain extent, was reflected in the outward dress of Britons.
Pattie Boyd & The Rolling Stones looking rather Mod
For the early Mods, fashion was much, much more than Carnaby Street which would rightfully, but much later, take its place in the Mod imagination. Mod fashion was a unique new experience in consumption and consumerism for the recently economically-liberated; Mod fashion might have been, for many at least, the very first suit owned to make the wearer show off.
Bands like The Yardbirds and Small Faces came to popularize and disseminate Mod-fashion sensibilities even further, freeing rural Britain from the “rocker” aesthetic that was only previously available to youths in the country. Where style reigned supreme, the would-be Mod was required to reinvent and combine objectively disparate elements of respectability into symbols of rebellion. When Her Majesty’s Colours were themselves re-imagined into everything from drapes and dresses, it was a deliberate exclamation of Britain’s place in the world. London, bereft of all that stuffiness and hard-up war years, was swinging once again, using all the very symbols of her age-old empire as the foundation of a new Mod culture.
Author: Robert Elms
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 2005-04
Length: 278 pages
Format: Hardcover
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/columns_art/w/wee-waywewore-cover.jpgThus, the Mod took apart and reinvented British fashion. Suddenly, the curmudgeonly hallmarks of British institutions were revamped – it was cool to be patriotic again and embrace all that was British, but there was a distinct underlying hint that it was all a big laugh. Tweed, so beloved of Oxbridge alums, was re-installed as autumn jackets for the playful and young. Debonair scarves so beloved of the heroes of the RAF were tossed casually around the neck and worn whilst driving recklessly; the RAF roundel itself became a symbol of the new British woman, emblazoned on bags, printed on. Oh what a lovely war indeed…
The Mod had become such a compelling figure of the over-glamorous youth ideal that society, already well on its way to follow the road down to the pursuit of all things youthful, simply co-opted it back into the fold. And why would it not? The Mod, in his dapper suit and her miniskirt, came to symbolize a reassertion of a uniquely British popular culture. While the empire eroded, America rose, and Russia threatened, there were the Mods who were the progenitors of a truly unique British phenomenon. Bands like The Who and The Kinks who, in their early careers indentified as Mods, came to international prominence, and provided a new British cultural export. But even as the Mods appropriated styles, the Mods themselves could not resist the commoditization of Mod-fashion.
As the Mods deliberately adopted the forms of respectability, it made it easier for the powers that be to re-appropriate the Mods. Arguably, when a style of dress can be described with authority (as it did with Ready Steady Go!), when it comes to symbolize an era and a nation, it has lost its credibility as a ritual of resistance. After 1964’s “Second Battle of Hastings”, with the proliferation of all things “pop”, and the elevation and adoption of the previously radical into the folds of contemporary culture, what the Mods had gained in affect, they had lost in stature.
The movement had lost something. The original Mods had to work to define themselves; they blazed new ground by doing the ordinary. Once the individual could “buy-in” to Mod culture, being a Mod lost its original rebellion – it became simply a fashion choice. The Mod became another face to be encountered on the streets of London and not, as Stan Cohen would describe in Folk Devils and Moral Panics, “out of place actors”. The stage that was London had become a deliberate platform for a carefully prepared (and implicitly directed) mainstream social and cultural trend.
Revived, but not Resucitated
Mod revivals would take place periodically with Phil Daniels’ memorable portrayal of the quintessential East End Mod in Quadrophenia (1979) lead to a short-lived, Scarborough-centric resurrection; Southern California too hosted an unlikely rebirth in the mid-‘80s, blending the anarchic ‘80s surfer look with buttoned up Italian wool. What these revivals attempted to replicate was the Mods’ lifestyle – the fashion consciousness, the music, and the parties. What they failed to do, however, was re-assume the ideology.
While the revivalists might look like the Mods, they could not portray the original Mods critique of social hierarchies or disaffected national consciousness – there simply was not the scenario and opportunity to do so. The idea of the Mods, however, retained that vitality of youthful energy – the one facet so perfectly appropriated for commercial purposes – and with that, took the defining symbols of Mod fashion to be re-adopted, re-examined, and re-circulated as new.
It took a very specific point in history of a very specific culture to produce the Mod. It could only have happened in post-war Britain at that specific point in her long history to see a finely-tailored suit become a symbol of both the power and the resistance simultaneously, to make the national colors both a symbol of national pride and appropriately tasteful underwear. The combination of foreign cultural imports, an empire lost after a victorious albeit devastating war, and a recently politically and economically liberated youth that found no purchase with a fading social hierarchy allowed the Mods to launch their own Very British Fashion.
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