Skinheads: a Hard Case

Skinheads have long been misunderstood. This subculture’s perceived links to far-right politics have somewhat soured their contribution to subcultural style. To make claims for it is to hit a cultural nerve and be laid open to accusations of filtering out noxious ideologies to concentrate on aesthetics alone.

However, things are rarely as black and white as they seem, if you’ll pardon the expression, and while there were undoubtedly factions of racist and violent Skins or 'boneheads' – those who were afraid of everything and worked overtime pretending they were afraid of nothing – there were legions of other Skins whose way of life was a celebration not of whiteness, but of roots: they were working-class with class.

Dress to the left c.1972

The original sixties Skins morphed out of the Mod scene. For Mods whose means were as slender as their silhouettes, petrol-blue Italian mohair suits were out - but Sta-prest, button-down Brutus shirts and steel-capped leather boots (shiny enough for a modette to stare into and make up her Ace Face) were in. The template for this approximated look was the dockyard worker’s uniform: with a few tweaks and some painstaking attention to detail, it was sharp, clean and tough enough to be seen in during an amphetamine-fuelled evening of skanking to blue beat, ska and soul in the racially mixed and harmonious dancehalls of south-west London.

Suedeheads c.1971

By and by, like ice floes in the spring, these Mods (‘Hard Mods’) split from their peacock-like brethren (‘Smooth Mods’). By now, the latter wore their aspiration tonsorially by adopting hairstyles that spoke of leisured grooming while the former went to the other extreme with a clipped head that spoke of practicality, manual work and self-assurance. This style, the original Skinhead crop, was inspired by the young West Indian men they danced beside. These Rude Boys kept their wiry, unruly & coarse locks under strict control by keeping one step ahead of the razor. From this cut Skinheads would receive their new name come the fag-end of that most mythologized decade.

Best foot forward, c.1971

In 1969, many male Skins had partings shaved into their crops, running from crown to forehead, though this was mostly hidden beneath a pork-pie trilby, worn on the back, not the top of the head. Over the check shirt (Brutus, Ben Sherman or Jaytex) an original Skin would wear a Wrangler or Levi’s denim or corduroy jacket, or perhaps an RAF great coat or donkey jacket. Anything, infact, as long as it wasn’t fashion, that most bourgeois of concerns; this was about style. However, all coats and jackets faded in the grand shadow of the sheepskin coat, the Skin Symbol par excellence.

'ard Modettes c.1968

The distaff members of the Skin and Suedehead cult distained the buttock-hugging acrylic strides favoured by their mainstream sisters of the ’69-72 period (though the Skinbird’s affection for the mini-and-fishnets combo came later), but their faces owed much to the Modette style:  lips painted cardiac-arrest pale, Cleopatra eyes, and eyebrows plucked to oblivion. Their hairstyle was also modernist at this point – a tufty, micro-fringed crop with feathered sides. Beneath their flat-fronted slacks or bell-bottoms, they’d more than likely be wearing monkey boots or clumpy flare-heeled brogues. Their brothers and boyfriends would be shod in a bewildering array of reflective leather: loafers, Italian brogues, leather-uppers, 8-eyelet DMs, or Norwegians.

Jackie-friendly suedehead couple c.1973

Come the very early seventies, Skinheads began to evolve into Suedeheads - some of who took their terrace stomp all the way to Top of the Pops in the form of Glam (Slade, after all, started out as faithful Suedeheads). 

Nobody's Fools: Slade in 1969

With a softer, smoother surface up top, the silhouette broadened at the shoulders with the arrival of the Crombie (more often than not a Chesterfield masquerading as Crombie, but let’s not split stubble) in all its midnight black or natty navy sleekness. A pocket square was often pinned in the breast with a diamond-studded pin. Amazingly, a brolly and bowler was sometimes added to this get-up, thereby creating a bizarre caricature of a City Slicker.

Skins and Suedeheads were increasingly less easy to spot in the mid-seventies period, largely because their style had evolved so far from its origins that they were virtually unrecognisable, walking the mean streets of the East End in knitwear, polo-necks, cords and, surreally, long fringes. 

But in the wake of the punk explosion, a new generation of Skins emerged alongsidethe countless other youth cults of the 1979-83 period, and this was when racial politics really entered the equation along with the emergence of Two Tone. The East End of London was the principal territory of the new Skin, but in the New Towns - those concrete citadels of the Home Counties - Skinhead was huge.

Sorts

Skins now wrapped up against the chill wind of Thatcherism in Harrington jackets (burgundy or black cutting the sharpest dash), accompanied by orange-tab Levis with three-inch turn ups, all the better to expose the inky-black DMs rising up their calves. Added to this were form-fitting Fred Perry shirts, V-neck sweaters and whip-slender braces. Hair ranged from the near-bald ‘shadow’ of the number one crop to smoothies and suedes. Skinhead girls (or ‘Skinbirds’) now sported the classic feather (or ‘Chelsea’) cut – short on the crown, with fringes at the sides and front; the crown might even be shaved, with feathery bangs flopping over the forehead. Many Skinbirds had a tendency to bleach their remaining follicles to within an inch of their lives - and they never let their roots grow out. Ever. Denim minis were worn with itchy black fishnet tights and spotless cherry red DMs (or white socks with shoes). Snug Fred Perry t-shirts and Ben Sherman check shirts were often a real boon for those Skinbirds blessed in the mammary department.

Skinbirds, Brighton 1980

Overall, the look became more extreme (tattoos were widespread), but it was no less sharp, although suits were never seen on Skin revivalists. But the rot had set in, and Skinheads began to splinter spectacularly: into Trojans (originals), Neo-Nazis, SHARPs (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), casuals and ‘plastic’ Skins (i.e. High Street pretenders), Two-Tone and Oi! fans and later, gay fetishists. For a subculture that had originally stressed roots, pride and respect, the fact that some Skins could now be seen Mod-bashing on Margate seafront or in Bethnal Green underpasses showed how withered those roots had become.

Neo

Like all the subcultures of the post-punk era, true Skins still exist, albeit in diminished numbers. Many 21st-century Skins are often a combination of the best elements of the subculture; their politics, if they have any, do not interfere with their love of ska, Fred Perry or feather cuts. But then as now, there are those who sully the name: a head case is a hard case to crack.

Reggae-pop! 1970

Potential Piccadilly Palaver 1970

Sharp

Blur busy appropriating, 1993

Allen's Oeuvre

El Tel and the Boys: The Specials in 1979

Skinbirds c.1982

Kids are United

"Don't care for you or your camera, mate."

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