// Key Look// Mod// Fred Perry

25th May 2011 16:53:36

The start of the mod movement came in the late 1950s and has its roots in Bohemian London and modern jazz. It wasn’t so long ago that reduced Sunday opening times and universal eleven o’ clock closing times were accepted as par for the course. In the late 50s cafe culture grew and with no restrictions on trading times young hipsters and creatives would negotiate the small hours. The coffee houses would often have a jukebox and the odd one or two had space for customers to spin their own records, and from there a scene grew momentum.

This was the first time young people had the freedom to pull away from what they saw as their parents antiquated past. It was the first generation of young people that didn’t need to contribute their earnings to maintain a household; the disposable income this generated allowed the working classes to grab onto the late night culture that was growing in Bohemian London. This created a real melting pot of culture mixing African American soul with Jamaican ska and British beat music.

The sense of style grew as well, again in antipathy to the past, drawing a line in the sand and saying ‘this is now where we stand and this is what we do.’ The young men would dress sharp, wearing Italian inspired suits with sharp lines and tailored finishes. The girls had their own identity too sporting short bobs and short dresses with geometric prints, but most significantly they were seen as one of the gang, one of the boys nonetheless. Iconic is a word that seems to be banded around like a rolled up tenner at an after party, but the scooters that are synonymous with the movement are just that. The Italian influence is there again with Lambrettas and Vespas becoming entwined in to mod fabric.

It was with some certainty that the popularity outgrew its origins. It became dilute and input became top down as the scene swelled beyond its frame, breaking out and expanding into the mainstream. The mods faded as most scenes do, after all it was always only going to be as long as it was still heady. After enjoying just less than ten years of prominence its shelf life had expired. As the mod originals became late twenty something family men and women with responsibility, mortgages and standing orders the seventies brought punk, glam, and prog. The fad passed, no wait, fad is too weak a word, convolution seems more fitting, either way it passed through the swinging sixties.

The super-seeding subcultures ultimately did not last forever either and it wasn’t until the hippy’s offspring decided their parents were as antiquated as those of the 1950s that a mod revival gathered momentum. Sharp suits were again all the rage but with the ethnically diverse shores of Britain a rich working of style and influences came around mimicking the mods rise to popularity. Fred Perry polos, even Adidas originals could be donned while braces held up drain piped jeans. Checked shirts and pork pie hats came with the chequered ska design, and the British dandy was invigorated through revivalists such as The Jam.