Mod: Socially Mobile

Mod has oft been described as ‘Clean living under difficult circumstances’, which is eloquent, but perhaps misleading – after all, there wasn’t anything ‘clean’ about necking fistfuls of amphetamines of a Saturday night down The Marquee. But it sums up the essence of what Mod was originally all about: aspiration and a desire for a better lot when your circumstances suggested such things were permanently out of reach. Mod is usually thought of as a largely apolitical subculture, but the burning desire for social mobility that lay behind it - even only in the aesthetic sense - suggests there was a tiny political spark in its fast-beating heart. The pockets of the original Mods may have been empty, but they were lined with silk. They were of the present, looking forever forward.

South London 1964

Like a virulent strain of flu, post-war austerity long outstayed its welcome. As it wore off, there was another European invasion – that of French culture. Prototype Mods sat uncomfortably through the first wave of the New Wave, sported French Crops & wore Italian suits. But their allegiance to all things continental lapsed when they’d had an earful of French Jazz which was closer to Trad then Modernist, and when sartorially, they realised they could get what they desired closer to home. In 1962 Town magazine ran a piece in which young working-class men from Stamford Hill in north-east London enthused about the best tailors in the Smoke : “Bilgorri of Bishopsgate -  he’s ace, all the best faces go there. And John Stephens – he’s great on trousers.” From here on, Mod became a very Anglo Affair.

Arguably, this was the first time since the Dandies of the Victorian era that young men were openly enthusiastic about fashion and accessories, which when you consider that the twentieth century had rolled around to its seventh decade, is really saying something. Moreover, these were working-class and (largely) heterosexual men. One teenager, Marc Feld (later one Marc Bolan), complained to Town that many of his peers were overtly snobby about where they got their gear: “I saw a gingham shirt in Woolworths this morning – only ten bob. A few alterations and it would be as good as anything from John Michael or John Stephen.” His advice was probably taken up though, for this was a scene in which faces – as opposed to magazines and designers – set the diktats. Word would percolate out from Stamford Hill all the way to Wardour Street that this week, they’d be mainly wearing cufflinks, which might have been supplanted by cravats the week after.

Mr Marc Feld (front right) before his white swan came along

Modernist by name, Modernist by nature: it was a heady, narcissistic, fastidious, fast-moving, fast-evolving subculture, which moved that little bit faster with the adoption of Scooters (which also helped incorporate the Parka into the Mod uniform –fine tailoring needed protection from mud & rain). Vespas or Lambrettas with bumpers & side panels that had been electroplated till they gleamed gave a working-class kid accessible mobility, and in a pre-night-bus era an easy ride home after speeding their brains out to American R ‘n’ B till 6am on a Sunday, Stamford Hill Broadway not being walkable from Soho and all that.

The Mod allegiance to R ‘n’ B and soul had actually started in the coffee bars of the very late ‘50s and early ‘60s, despite that scene being associated with Beatniks and jazz. For many of the coffee bars had half-empty juke boxes which black American GIs stationed in Blighty for the Cold War would add their records to. Word got out. These same soldiers would also sell their rare booty – both R ‘n’ B and rare soul records – to young Mods, who were obsessed with the raw sound. With Jamaican ska and British Beat added to the mix, Mods of both genders could be seen showing off their moves and streamlined silhouettes down the Marquee, The Flamingo, Le Discotheque, The Roaring Twenties, and later at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester and of course, the Wigan Casino, as Northern Soul went from strength to strength.

Early revivalists, Streatham 1976

With their full wage packets in their pockets - no more donating half of it to the family teapot as their older Ted brothers may have done - these slender sorts would stalk the Kings Road and Carnaby Street of a weekend or lunch hour (were they not forgoing lunch for an hour of dancing in Noonday Underground, if you believe Tom Wolfe's account in The Pump House Gang). There, they would purchase the slimmest of suits, immaculate form-fitting shirts, whip-thin leather ties, cashmere V-necks, snowy white polo-necks, and winkle pickers as sharp as spearheads. For the working-class male, shopping had previously been the preserve of their sisters: now they joined ‘em. For while it’s often said Mod was very much a Boys’ Club, Mod Girls were arguably the first female members of a youth subculture. Teds had had loyal girlfriends - some even wore Drapes over their petticoats - but they were not autonomous the way Mod Girls were. Modettes had their own look, their own shops and thus jobs that allowed them to Mod-it-up all day, every day. They painted their lips cardiac-arrest white, their eyebrows black or brown, and while they coolly revelled in their sexuality, taking the mainstream mini to hitherto unseen heights (thanks to Ms Quant)  they also dabbled in androgyny with tufted, micro-fringed crops a la Julie Driscoll, or else geometric bobs sharp enough to take your eye out. 

Girls a la mod(e)

There was a feminine influence in the attire of the male Mods too in the form of cravats, in smooth, lacquered, blow-dried hair, and also in their dancefloor behaviour: much of the African-American soul was swooning, romantic music. There were harder Mods of course, who preferred the fast skanking rhythm of blue beat and ska, shorter hair, Fred Perry and Sta-Prest and who would later evolve into skinheads. But for now, they shared the dancefloor, each lost in their own moves; and if music is sex, as they say (and the rhythms of Mod music were nothing if not carnal) Mods of both genders were indulging in very public masturbation. Come ’64, and the Mod sound exploded with the dishonestly named The Pretty Things and of course, The Who. (The Faces, who came along in ’69, were almost revivalist).

It was inevitable that Mod was going to move out of the margins and into the mainstream, but commercial assimilation was not what sounded the death knell for Mod – nor was it the first whiff of patchouli oil that signified the Hippie takeover that was around the corner (Hippie was Mod’s diametric opposite – only a bunch of kids from privileged backgrounds could afford to look so scruffy, so shabby). No, the real reason was that few of the Mods and Modettes escaped the gravitational pull of their backgrounds; most of them found themselves up the aisle and up the duff come 25. This is not to say many of them didn’t Keep the Faith (well into middle age and beyond in many cases), but those in their late twenties and early thirties simply didn’t register on the cultural radar the way youth did.

'ard Mod couple 1971

By 1979, New Mod found itself on the frontlines of the post-punk style wars. This baffled some original Mods, who pointed out that since Mod derived from Modernist it was all about looking forward, not back. But this was to miss the point of Mod’s essential timelessness, its innate modernity – for the Mod look (and attitude) hasn’t got a hint of anachronism about it. Unlike a be-mohawked Kings Road throwback still charging tourists £1 a snap by Camden Lock, a Mod need not indulge in such a con. 

Your author's cousin Darren, with Lambretta and aunty's fetching nets, Sheffield 1979

Originally published on Queens of Vintage.com, March 2010