Youth subculture mods. British subculture fashion

Fashion- youth subculture, which is based on following fashion and music. The current originated in London, UK, in the late 1950s and peaked in the mid-1960s. This British subculture of the 1960s. replaced the Teddy Boys. If the latter symbolized an attempt to return to the values ​​of the working guy, then the purpose of the "mods" was to create a dapper "hippie" image. Fashion arose on the basis of the "modernist" movement, copying the clothing style of young American blacks. The Mods came from families of professional, highly paid workers and employees. Focused on white-collar work (clerk in a bank, store, etc.). The motto of the mods is "Moderation and accuracy!" Narrow collar shirts, elegant jackets, pointed shoes, always white socks and neat short hairstyles. Speed ​​was a metaphor for the lifestyle of mods: Italian scooters, amphetamines (mods are the first English subculture with the attributive use of psychostimulant drugs), dancing. Work for the mods did not matter, vanity is a positive quality.

The main types of mods: "Hard-mod" - in jeans, rough work boots (aggressive style, which later gave rise to the style of skinheads). "Scooterist" - the owners of scooters, in jeans and jackets with hoods. The main group - in suits, neat, in tight trousers, polished boots, accompanied by elegant, dignified girls with short haircuts.

The main word in the fashion lexicon is obsessed. This obsession was also in music - they listened to modern jazz, blues, soul, Jamaican music.

The image of "fashion" with its mass character prepared a short-term phenomenon, which in the mid-sixties would be called " swinging London. In 1963-65, the famous confrontation between rockers and mods began in the seaside cities of England, and up to a thousand people sometimes participated in mass brawls on both sides (the rockers came from poor strata of society, and listened to hard rhythm and blues, such as Rolling Stones").

In 1964 the "mod" movement split into "heavy mods" (work boots, short jeans, short hair, amphetamine aggressiveness) and stylistically sophisticated mods. By the end of the 60s, the “skinheads” subculture (skinheads) was formed from the “cool mods”. In 1968 the mod movement is dead.

rockers appeared in the mid-60s and reached their peak in the late 60s and early 70s, both in England and on the continent. Rockers - come predominantly from families of unskilled workers, without education and often from single-parent and "problem" families. Rocker clothes - leather jacket, worn jeans, rough big shoes, long hair combed back, sometimes tattoos. The jacket, as a rule, is decorated with badges and inscriptions. The main element of the rocker subculture is a motorcycle, which is also decorated with inscriptions, symbols and images. An important place in the subculture of rockers is occupied by rock music, listening to records is one of the main activities of rockers. One of the manifestations of this style is the use of nicknames, the popularity of "physical" ways of communication.

Rud boys, rudiz (two-tone)- a semi-criminal subculture of the African diaspora that arose in the slums of Jamaica. In the early 1960s The Rude Boys subculture was brought by a wave of immigration to the UK. Musical style - "reggae" (Bob Marley). Reggae is slowly becoming a pop culture phenomenon. Numerous African motifs became the distant basis of "reggae". The first peak in the popularity of Jamaican youth culture in the UK falls on 1969-71. "Rudiz" gave the "skinheads" not only music, but also the manner of dressing, and jargon. Distinctive features: smoking marijuana, honoring Bob Marley, using the green-yellow-red color combination, dreadlocks.

Swinging London, psychedelics - 1966-1967 In the second half of the 1960s. a special psychedelic culture spread. The boom in the use of psychedelics (LSD, hallucinogens, drugs) occurred in the mid-60s. and is associated primarily with the activities of Timothy Leary, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, who widely used LSD in his work with students, as well as the American writer Ken Kesey. Since 1966 first began to use the term "psychedelia" in relation to youth culture. And suddenly it became entrenched in the youth lexicon - the design of posters and records, strange clothes and music - everything became "psychedelic". Psychedelic culture is associated with psychedelic music. Includes both music created under the influence of psychedelics, and that to which listeners are predisposed under their influence. Psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock) is a musical genre that arose in the mid-60s. in Western Europe and in California (San Francisco and Los Angeles). A characteristic feature of psychedelic rock was the long solo parts of the leading instruments. Live performances by bands in this genre are usually accompanied by a vibrant visual show using lights, smoke, video installations and other effects (The Doors, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett, Rolling Stones).

In the summer of 1964, the writer Ken Kesey, novelist "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" founds a commune in San Francisco "Merry Pranksters". They buy an old school bus, stuff it with records, movie cameras, and the then-legal hallucinogen LSD, which Kesey was exposed to in the mid-fifties (he offered himself to a psychiatric clinic as a "guinea pig" to test the effects of new hallucinogenic drugs), and set off. on a journey across America to "stop the end of the world". Thus began the Psychedelic Revolution.

The leader-theorist of psychedelists became Harvard professor Timothy Leary who founded with his adherents "League of Spiritual Discoveries"". Leary's ideas: Psychedelic substances are the only means of enlightenment for Western man, and they completely ignored their negative impact on the unstable psyche, not to mention the social consequences of their use.

Hippie("fashionable, stylish") - a youth subculture popular in the USA, Great Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, which protested against generally accepted morality through the promotion of free love and pacifism (their main protest was directed against the Vietnam War).

In the 40s-50s of the 20th century in the United States, among the representatives of the “broken generation” (beatniks), there was a term hipsters, denoting jazz musicians, and then the bohemian counterculture that formed around them. The hippie culture of the 60s developed from the beat culture of the 50s in parallel with the development of rock and roll from jazz.

1. Passive resistance, non-violence.

2. Movement, hippies hitchhiked across Europe, Asia, Latin America. Internal travel is associated with taking drugs, meditation, oriental mysticism.

3. Expressiveness, creative search.

4. Hippies created many communes (the most famous commune is now in Denmark - Free City of Christiania).

5. Identification through age group. Young people see themselves as part of a generation, not an organization. Authorities and heroes are not recognized.

6. The desire for openness, for the comprehension of all aspects of feelings, motives and fantasies.

Because hippies often weaved flowers into their hair, distributed flowers to passers-by and inserted them into the muzzles of policemen and soldiers, and used the slogan "Flower Power" ("power" or "flower power"), they began to be called "flower children." In Britain, the Flower Generation was called the New Society.

In the 1970s, the hippie movement gradually began to lose popularity.

Skinheads -(English) skinheads, from skin- skin and head- head) - the name of the representatives of the youth subculture, formed in London in 1969. Skinheads copied the style of "heavy mods": heavy boots with high lacing, wide trousers with suspenders or cropped jeans, rough jackets, white T-shirts, shaved heads. Skinhead ideas of the 60s: protecting the traditions of the working community, fighting the Asian, the hippies. Skinheads were fans of "black music", reggae.

From 1965 to 1968 in the history of "skinheads" there is an "incubation" period. In 1968 skinheads were ardent football fans. In 1972 some skinheads loosened their hair, wore black windbreakers, wide-brimmed hats, and black umbrellas ("smoothed skinheads"). In 1978 split in the skinheads camp. Some skinheads began to join nationalist groups.

The main groups of skinheads:

Traditional skinheads ( Traditional Skinheads) - arose as a reaction to the emergence of political offshoots from the original subculture. Their goal is to follow the image of the first skinheads - “apoliticality” can be considered an unofficial slogan. Closely associated with reggae music.

Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Appeared in America in the 1980s as the opposite of the ultra-right skinheads, but without political overtones. "Squads of vengeance, justice and brotherhood."

"Red" and anarcho-skinheads, the ideas of socialism, communism, anarchism.

Bonheads ( Boneheads) - National Socialist skinheads, are the protégés of the British National Front Party. They promote right and ultra-right political views and values. Appeared in 1982. In Great Britain. Then the symbolism of the Celtic Cross was borrowed for the first time and the image of the Aryan skinhead-crusader was formed - a street soldier of the "holy racial war" against numerous immigrants from third world countries, beggars, homeless people, drug addicts, left and left-wing radical youth.

Yippie- a political movement that arose in 1967 in the United States. Founder Abby Hoffman. They professed the ideas of anarchism, anti-capitalism. The Yippies didn't want to accept any authority, any rules - everyone was their own authority. The Yippies had no leaders. The ultimate goal of the yippies is to end the willlessness of the hippies and unite in the fight against the system. According to the leaders, the Yippies were a political movement of hippies.

30. Youth subculture of the USA, Great Britain in the 1970s. .

In the early 1970s transitional period in the youth movement. Rock ceased to perform the main function of expressing alternativeness, the protest movement died out. There were rockers, skinheads, the hippie movement died out, the heyday of the Rudiz, the Rastafari.

In Britain arose progressive rock("Pink Floyd" and others) - here progressiveness was understood as the use of non-traditional musical forms in the construction of compositions.

Funk - the direction of African-American pop music is closely related to the social status of the black population of the United States. Funk is an independent direction within the framework of soul music, appears in 1967. Since the 1970s, soul and funk have developed quite independently in the USA, being opposed to white guitar rock music.

A distinctive feature is moving bass lines, clear rhythm and short melodic patterns. Appeared in the black ghettos of America. Reasons for appearance: music (crime) was the only way to succeed for African Americans. He was played main performers - George Clinton, Sly Stone, "Fankadelik" and "Parliament") at first only in black clubs. The funk slogan is "One nation united in a single impulse." The most powerful and influential figure in funk music was James Brown.

glam- youth subculture of the 1970s. Glam rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the UK in the early 1970s. Its performers were characterized by a bright image, exotic costumes, abundant use of makeup (David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan). They insisted that the improvement in appearance was part of the continuation of the "cultural revolution" of the sixties. The key role in this process was played by the most popular performers of the early seventies - Marc Bolan and David Bowie.The latter created the image of "Space Travelers". "Glam" and "funk" were similar in their rejection of "hippies" with their idea of ​​"back to nature", to which they put forward their alternative - an appeal to the theme of "space".

Funk, glam: heyday in the mid-70s, disappearing due to the advent of punks.

Headbangers (metalheads) is a youth subculture that appeared in the 1970s. The "metal" style combined the features of the hippie movement (long hair, fringe, jeans), "psychedelics" (badges, colorful drawings) and "rocker" "leather" style.

Punks - subculture that emerged in 1976. in the UK, in the USA, whose characteristic feature is the love of fast and energetic rock music and freedom. Founders of the punk movement in the UK: Malcolm McLaren ( Sex Pistols and Vivian Westwood.

Members of this subculture violated social rules. The punk subculture is associated with musical flow"punk rock". The musical origins of punk went back to the work of John Cage, minimalism, rock music New York Doles, Lou Reed. The punks represented the opposition to the hippies. Punks are a musical protest against the official rock music, which has departed from the harsh reality. Spokesperson for disillusioned youth. Musically, it is the most primitive form of rock throughout its existence, since attention is paid, first of all, to the lyrics.

The main features of the punk subculture: apoliticality, protest against everything, outrageousness, deliberate rudeness, clothing style: black slanting leather jackets and jackets. Motto: “everyone who wants to play”, “there is no future”. The main style setting of “punks” is unlimited possibilities for self-expression . Punks in the UK were from the lower strata of society, a small part represented the professional working class. In New York, punk culture was an alternative middle-class culture. In the US, punk culture was not particularly popular (unlike the UK) due to the appeal of hippie ideas. The reasons for the appearance of punks in England: another conflict between generations, the realization of the failure of most of the ideas of the “hippies” of the sixties; rising unemployment and general economic stagnation. Since 1977 punk culture began to spread in the USA, Japan, Europe.

Hello.

Bikers on hefty Harleys are not the only subculture of the two-wheeler family. There are several more branches of evolution, some of which turned out to be dead ends. This article will focus on the Mods, a youth subculture of the 50s that originated in the UK and used scooters as a means of transportation and an object of worship.

Yeah, and I don't give a damn if anyone out there doesn't like scooters! Fashion was one of the most stylish subcultures and for its time was quite a powerful movement, quite competing with the subculture!

So let's go!

The term "Mode" originated from the word "modernism". The Mod subculture originated in London in the 1950s and reached its peak by the mid-1960s. Mods were a youth subculture that made special demands on appearance. Initially, the preference was given to tailor-made suits, later - just suits of Italian and British brands.

From music, preference was given to American soul, SKA, beat and R&B. In addition to the fact that the representatives of this subculture were primarily associated with the consumption of huge amounts of amphetamines and noisy parties in London clubs, they rode scooters.

Story.

The mods were a youth subculture made up of Italian fashion-oriented members of the working class. Mods used to get together on scooters and hang out in clubs or cafes in London, as the Pubs at that time closed around 11 pm and the cafes were open until the morning and, in addition, there were jukeboxes.

The mods weren't cohesive, they didn't have a cohesive idea, there weren't clubs like the Outlaw motorcycle clubs, where the ideas of brotherhood and unity of the motorcycle club are promoted. They were just young people, gathering at night and hanging out until the morning. And, nevertheless, they left a mark in history with their bright appearance and peculiar tuning of their scooters.

By the summer of 1966, the Mod movement had already lost momentum. Not only did a stronger and more massive hippie movement appear, and some of the Mods got off amphetamines and switched to weed :), the fashion for clothes has also undergone significant changes. And in the late 60s, the most radical representatives of this subculture also spun off from the Mods, calling themselves skinheads .. Somehow even strange against the backdrop of general hippie sentiments ..

So everything fell apart. Then there were several revivals in the 1980s and 2000s, but these were already short-term phenomena, after all, it must be admitted that the Mod subculture was bent in the 60s.

Characteristic features of the Mod style.

Fashion.

The mods were formed from the first post-war generation, which had a small surplus of money. Deliberately elegant clothing - suits for men and short skirts for girls - is a natural reaction to the hardships that their parents had to endure.

Clubs and music.

Clubs: The Roaring Twenties, The Scene, La Discoth?que, The Flamingo and The Marquee in London.

Music: The Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and The Kinks and, of course, The Who.

Scooters.

Well, finally we got to the scooters, because of which Mods ended up on this site.

Mods used Italian brands of scooters such as Vespa or Lambretta. Since the Mods consisted of working youth, for many, these scooters were the only way to escape from the gray everyday life.

Mod scooters have been subjected to heavy but not expensive external tuning. Their scooters were painted in two colors, and gum wrappers often stuck to them. The owner's name was traditionally written on windshields.

And, of course, the most characteristic feature of the subculture was the abundance of tourist trunks, arches and foglights on scooters.

Subcultures of England in the 20th century. Style, ideology.

Introduction. The concept of subculture

Subculture(lat. sub - under and cultura - culture; subculture) - a concept denoting a part of the culture of a society that differs in its behavior from the prevailing majority, as well as social groups of carriers of this culture. The concept of "subculture" usually expresses an opinion that is strictly opposite to the ideas of morality and the laws of society, young people who wanted to express themselves also needed to distinguish "their" from "them", dividing according to musical, fashion and life preferences. This phenomenon became especially widespread after the end of the war, when 70% of young people joined one or another subculture. This article explored the most striking and significant subcultures of England in the twentieth century.

In the mental map, you can see a greater number of subcultures of England of the twentieth century, as well as those that were studied in more detail in the article.

Venngage's infographic resource visually and concisely displays the most important aspects style, values, worldview and image of the three studied subcultures.

teddy boy

British researchers as the first youth subcultural group call «" teddy boy"» . This group announced itself in the middle 1950 -s. " Teddy”, earning some pocket money with unskilled labor, became relatively independent financially from their families and could spend this money on their own needs. Their needs were small: cafes, cinemas, discos. But their main cultural niche was American rock and roll. As British scientists note, the appearance of " Teddy”combined the features of an English gentleman and an American sharpie: a long draped jacket with a velvet collar, trousers with a pipe, micropore boots, a lace tie. " Teddy"were troublemakers of the British peace in cinemas and ballrooms, where they actively explored rock and roll. This process often ended in mass fights and acts of vandalism. " Teddy” were of conservative values, sometimes aggressive nationalism (racial riots) was inherent in them. " Teddy» disappeared to 1964. However, it was they who declared the youth not as an age group, but as a social group.

Fashion

"British Phenomenon" fashion- Appeared in 1962. But there is an opinion that the first mention of fashion in the media in 1962-63 years was, in fact, not the beginning of the movement, but its swan song. It was then that ideology was sacrificed to popularization and accessibility. Fashion lived in their own small world, where only the chosen ones got. And it was enough to exchange a few words, to take a quick look at the clothes in order to understand - "one's own" or not. It was then that what later became known as the “dress code” of youth subcultures appeared. They despised mass culture, designed for the "average layman", for them the very term was humiliating. But, despite all these conventions, it cannot be said that mods had a manifesto.

Many of them left their parental home at the first opportunity and rented some kind of wrecked house on the outskirts or even in the suburbs for little money. Housing was not the main item of their expenses - the lion's share of earnings went to clothes, music and scooters.

Fashion, the so-called first wave, preferred to listen to American black jazz, blues and soul - then these were close styles, and often they were simply called soul. Of the British artists, they were interested in the work of Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe, Zoot Money Big Roll Band, Long John Baldry, Graham Bond Organization, etc. The discs of these record companies were originally a rarity in Albion, they could be proud of no less than expensive clothes and a good scooter. In general, the records in the culture of mods were and remain one of the most valuable fetishes.

Punks

Impossible to ignore punk culture. Word " punk” is ambiguous in English, but before the advent of punk rock, it was most often used as a curse word.

Exactly first wave punk In Great Britain ( 1976 -1978 ) counts punk era and is considered by most researchers. There are two main trends in it. First, there was "core" punk- an environment in which the proclaimed slogans were the center of the worldview and social action. This environment can be confidently attributed to the phenomenon of counterculture, to protest education. On the other hand, there is a use of the idea of ​​punk, there are pseudo-punks using the language of the subculture, its style, but ignoring it ideological content. The purpose of such cultural formations is to make money and vulgarize the concepts of culture. Punk. In this case, they can be defined as phenomena of mass culture.

Punks are distinguished by colorful outrageous image. Many punks dye their hair in bright unnatural colors, comb it and fix it with hairspray, gel or beer to make it stand up. In the 80s, the mohawk hairstyle became fashionable among punks. Sneakers are also popular among punks. Biker jacket - was adopted as a rock and roll attribute from 50s when motorcycle and rock and roll were inseparable components. The punks of the first wave sought to restore to rock music the same deliberate badass and drive that the mass commercialization of music had eventually taken away. The clothes are dominated by the "DEAD" style. Punks put skulls and signs on clothes and accessories, wear wristlets and collars made of leather with spikes, studs and chains. A lot of punks get tattoos. Representatives of this movement love torn, worn jeans, and chains from dog leashes are attached to jeans. The Ramones are considered the first band to play punk rock music. The Sex Pistols, The Damned and The Clash are recognized as the first British punk bands.

Clothing elements

Using the WordItOut resource, we were able to explore which items of clothing these three subcultures paid the most or least attention to.

On this word cloud you can see the differences and similarities of the studied subcultures. For the study, a text was taken, which contains the main features of the style and images of Teddy, Mods and Punks. Considering similarities and differences given youth trends of the twentieth century, we can conclude that special attention in all three subcultures was paid to shoes, and in particular, boots.

Influence on contemporary culture

Looking at just a few youth informal currents in the UK, one can see a strong influence on the younger generation as a whole. Adolescents at all times constituted a special socio-demographic group, but in our time a specific teenage culture has developed, which, along with other social factors, plays an important role in the development of the student. " Youth subculture"- a system of values ​​and norms of behavior, tastes, forms of communication, different from the culture of adults and characterizing the life of adolescents, youth from about 10 to 20 years old.

Informal youth movements have been noticeably developed in 20th century. Youth subculture, being one of the institutions, factors of socialization of schoolchildren, plays controversial role and has an ambiguous effect on adolescents. Youth subculture wears entertainment and consumer character, and not cognitive, constructive and creative. In Russia, as in the rest of the world, it focuses on western values: American a way of life in its light version, mass culture, and not on values national culture. Aesthetic tastes and preferences of schoolchildren are often quite primitive and are formed mainly by means of television and music. These tastes and values ​​are supported periodicals, contemporary mass art that has a demoralizing and dehumanizing effect.

Fashion(English) mods from Modernism, Modism) is a British youth subculture that formed in the late 1950s. and peaked in the mid-1960s. Mods replaced teddy-boys, and later the skinhead subculture spun off from the environment of the most radical mods.

A distinctive feature of mods was their special attention to appearance (initially, fitted Italian suits were popular, then British brands), love for music (from jazz, rhythm and blues and soul to rock and roll and ska). By the mid-60s, the music of such British rock bands as the Graham Bond Organization, Zoot Money Big Roll Band, Georgie Fame, Small Faces, Kinks and The Who (whose album was based on the film " Quadrophenia). The film was received ambiguously, to this day there are disputes about its adequacy and role in popularizing the fashion movement.

Motor scooters (especially the Italian Lambretta and Vespa models) were chosen as modes of transport, and collisions with rockers (owners of motorcycles) were not uncommon. Mods tended to meet in nightclubs and seaside resorts such as Brighton, where in 1964 the infamous street clashes between rockers and mods took place.

In the second half of the 60s. the mod movement waned and has only sporadic revived since then. At the end of the 70s. mod style has been adopted by some punk bands (Secret Affair, The Undertones and The Jam).

And in English:

Mod(from modernist) is a subculture that originated in London, England, in the late 1950s and peaked in the early-to-mid 1960s.

Significant elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits); music, including African American soul, Jamaican ska, British beat music, and R and motor scooters. The original mod scene was also associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night dancing at clubs.From the mid-to-late 1960s and onwards, the mass media often used the term mod in a wider sense to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable, or modern.

There was a mod revival in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, which was followed by a mod revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in Southern California.

Etymology

The term mod derives from modernist, which was a term used in the 1950s to describe modern jazz musicians and fans. This usage contrasted with the term trade, which described traditional jazz players and fans. The 1959 novel Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes describes as a modernist, a young modern jazz fan who dresses in sharp modern Italian clothes. Absolute Beginners may be one of the earliest written examples of the term modernist being used to describe young British style-conscious modern jazz fans. The word modernist in this sense should not be confused with the wider use of the term modernism in the context of literature, art, design and architecture.

History

Dick Hebdige claims that the progenitors of the mod subculture "appear to have been a group of working-class dandies, possibly descended from the devotees of the Italianite style." Mary Anne Long disagrees, stating that "first hand accounts and contemporary theorists point to the Jewish upper-working or middle-class of London's East End and suburbs."Sociologist Simon Frith asserts that the mod subculture had its roots in the 1950s beatnik coffee bar culture, which catered to art school students in the radical bohemian scene in London. Steve Sparks, who claims to be one of the original mods, agrees that before mod became commercialized, it was essentially an extension of the beatnik culture: "It comes from 'modernist', it was to do with modern jazz and to do with Sartre" and existentialism. Sparks argues that "Mod has been much misunderstood... as this working-class, scooter-riding precursor of skinheads."

Coffee bars were attractive to youths, because in contrast to typical British pubs, which closed at about 11 pm, they were open until the early hours of the morning. Coffee bars had jukeboxes, which in some cases reserved some of the space in the machines for the students" own records. In the late 1950s, coffee bars were associated with jazz and blues, but in the early 1960s, they began playing more R&B music Frith notes that although coffee bars were originally aimed at middle-class art school students, they began to facilitate an intermixing of youths from different backgrounds and classes.At these venues, which Frith calls the "first sign of the youth movement", youths would meet collectors of R&B and blues records, who introduced them to new types of African-American music, which the teens were attracted to for its rawness and authenticity. .According to Hebdige, the mod subculture gradually accumulated the identifying symbols that later came to be associated with the scene, such as scooters, amphetamine pills, and music.

Decline and offshoots

By the summer of 1966, the mod scene was in sharp decline. Dick Hebdige argues that the mod subculture lost its vitality when it became commercialized, artificial and stylized to the point that new mod clothing styles were being created "from above" by clothing companies and by TV shows like Ready Steady Go!, rather than being developed by young people customizing their clothes and mixing different fashions together.

As psychedelic rock and the hippie subculture grew more popular in the United Kingdom, many people drifted away from the mod scene. Bands such as The Who and Small Faces had changed their musical styles and no longer considered themselves mods. Another factor was that the original mods of the early 1960s were getting into the age of marriage and child-rearing, which meant that they no longer had the time or money for their youthful pastimes of club-going, record-shopping and scooter rallies. The peacock or fashion wing of mod culture evolved into the swinging London scene and the hippie style, which favored the gentle, marijuana-infused contemplation of esoteric ideas and aesthetics, which contrasted sharply with the frenetic energy of the mod ethos.

The hard mods of the mid-to-late 1960s eventually transformed into the skinheads.Many of the hard mods lived in the same economically depressed areas of South London as West Indian immigrants, and those mods emulated the rude boy look of pork pie hats and too-short Levis jeans.These "aspiring "white negros"" listened to Jamaican ska and mingled with black rude boys at West Indian nightclubs like Ram Jam, A-Train and Sloopy"s.

Dick Hebdige claims that the hard mods were drawn to black culture and ska music in part because the educated, middle-class hippie movement's drug-oriented and intellectual music did not have any relevance for them.He argues that the hard mods were also attracted to ska because it was a secret, underground, non-commercialised music that was disseminated through informal channels such as house parties and clubs. The early skinheads also liked soul, rocksteady and early reggae.

The early skinheads retained basic elements of mod fashion - such as Fred Perry and Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Levi's jeans - but mixed them with working class-oriented accessories such as braces and Dr. Martens work boots. Hebdige claims that as early as the Margate and Brighton brawls between mods and rockers, some mods were seen wearing boots and braces and sporting close cropped haircuts (for practical reasons, as long hair was a liability in industrial jobs and streetfights).

Mods and ex-mods were also part of the early northern soul scene, a subculture based on obscure 1960s and 1970s American soul records. Some mods evolved into, or merged with, subcultures such as individualists, stylists, and scooterboys, creating a mixture of "taste and testosterone" that was both self-confident and streetwise.

Fashion

Jobling and Crowley called the mod subculture a "fashion-obsessed and hedonistic cult of the hyper-cool" young adults who lived in metropolitan London or the new towns of the south. Due to the increasing affluence of post-war Britain, the youths of the early 1960s were one of the first generations that did not have to contribute their money from after-school jobs to the family finances. As mod teens and young adults began using their disposable income to buy stylish clothes, the first youth-targeted boutique clothing stores opened in London in the Carnaby Street and Kings Road districts. Maverick fashion designers emerged, such as Mary Quant, who was known for her increasingly short miniskirt designs, and John Stephen, who sold a line named "His Clothes", and whose clients included bands such as Small Faces.

Two youth subcultures helped pave the way for mod fashion by breaking new ground; the beatniks, with their bohemian image of berets and black turtlenecks, and the Teddy Boys, from which mod fashion inherited its "narcissitic and fastidious tendencies" and the immaculate dandy look.The Teddy Boys paved the way for making male interest in fashion socially acceptable , because prior to the Teddy Boys, male interest in fashion in Britain was mostly associated with the underground homosexual subculture's flamboyant dressing style.

Clubs, music, and dancing

The original mods gathered at all-night clubs such as The Roaring Twenties, The Scene, La Discothèque, The Flamingo and The Marquee in London to hear the latest records and to show off their clothes and dance moves. As mod spread across the United Kingdom, other clubs became popular such as Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester. They began listening to the "sophisticated smoother modern jazz" of Dave Brubeck and the Modern Jazz Quartet." They became "...clothes obsessed, cool, dedicated to R&B and their own dances."Black American servicemen, stationed in Britain during the Cold War, also brought over rhythm and blues and soul records that were unavailable in Britain, and they often sold these to young people in London. Although the Beatles dressed "mod" in their early years, their beat music was not popular among mods, who tended to prefer British R&B based bands. specifically mod bands also emerged to fill this gap. These included The Small Faces, The Creation, The Action, The Smoke, John's Children and most successfully The Who. The Who's early promotional material tagged them as producing "maximum rhythm and blues", but by about 1966 they moved from attempting to emulate American R&B to producing songs that reflected the Mod lifestyle. Many of these bands were able to enjoy cult and then national success in the UK, but only the Who managed to break into the American market.

The influence of British newspapers on creating the public perception of mods as having a leisure-filled clubgoing lifestyle can be seen in a 1964 article in the Sunday Times. The paper interviewed a 17-year-old mod who went out clubbing seven nights a week and spent Saturday afternoons shopping for clothes and records. However, few British teens and young adults would have the time and money to spend this much time going to nightclubs. Jobling and Crowley argue that most young mods worked 9 to 5 at semi-skilled jobs, which meant that they had much less leisure time and only a modest income to spend during their time off.

Amphetamines

A notable part of the mod subculture was recreational amphetamine use, which was used to fuel all-night dances at clubs like Manchester's Twisted Wheel. Newspaper reports described dancers emerging from clubs at 5 a.m. with dilated pupils. Mods bought a combined amphetamine/ barbiturate called Drinamyl, which was nicknamed "purple hearts" from dealers at clubs such as The Scene or The Discothèque. Due to this association with amphetamines, Pete Meaden's "clean living" aphorism may be hard to understand in the first decade of the 21st century. However, when mods used amphetamines in the pre-1964 period, the drug was still legal in Britain, and the mods used the drug for stimulation and alertness, which they viewed as a very different goal from the intoxication caused by other drugs and alcohol. Mods viewed cannabis as a substance that would slow a person down, and they viewed heavy drinking with condescension, associating it with the bleary-eyed, staggering lower-class workers in pubs. Dick Hebdige claims that mods used amphetamines to extend their leisure time into the early hours of the morning and as a way of bridging the wide gap between their hostile and daunting everyday work lives and the "inner world" of dancing and dressing up in their off -hours.

Dr. Andrew Wilson claims that for a significant minority, "amphetamines symbolized the smart, on-the-ball, cool image" and that they sought "stimulation not intoxication ... greater awareness, not escape" and "confidence and articulacy" rather than the "drunken rowdyness of previous generations." Wilson argues that the significance of amphetamines to the mod culture was similar to the paramouncy of LSD and cannabis within the subsequent hippie counterculture. The media was quick to associate mods" use of amphetamines with violence in seaside towns, and by the mid-1960s, the British government criminalized amphetamine use. The emerging hippie counterculture strongly criticized amphetamine use; the poet Allen Ginsberg warned that amphetamine use can lead to a person becoming a "Frankenstein speed freak."

Scooters

Many mods used motorscooters for transportation, usually Vespas or Lambrettas. Scooters had provided inexpensive transportation for decades before the development of the mod subculture, but the mods stood out in the way that they treated the vehicle as a fashion accessory. Italian scooters were preferred due to their cleanlined, curving shapes and gleaming chrome. For young mods, Italian scooters were the "embodiment of continental style and a way to escape the working-class row houses of their upbringing". They customized their scooters by painting them in "two-tone and candyflake and overaccessorized with luggage racks, crash bars, and scores of mirrors and fog lights", and they often put their names on the small windscreen. Engine side panels and front bumpers were taken to local electroplating workshops and recovered in highly reflective chrome.

Scooters were also a practical and accessible form of transportation for 1960s teens. In the early 1960s, public transport stopped relatively early in the night, and so having scooters allowed mods to stay out all night at dance clubs. To keep their expensive suits clean and keep warm while riding, mods often wore long army parkas. For teens with low-end jobs, scooters were cheaper than cars, and they could be bought on a payment plan through newly-available Hire purchase plans. After a law was passed requiring at least one mirror be attached to every motorcycle, mods were known to add four, ten, or as many as 30 mirrors to their scooters. The cover of The Who's album Quadrophenia, (which includes themes related to mods and rockers), depicts a young man on a Vespa GS with four mirrors attached.

After the seaside resort brawls, the media began to associate Italian scooters with the image of violent mods. When groups of mods rode their scooters together, the media began to view it as a "menacing symbol of group solidarity" that was "converted into a weapon".With events like the November 6, 1966, "scooter charge" on Buckingham Palace, the scooter, along with the mods" short hair and suits, began to be seen as a symbol of subversion. After the 1964 beach riots, hard mods (who later evolved into the skinheads) began riding scooters more for practical reasons. Their scooters were either unmodified or cut down, which was nicknamed a "skelly".

gender roles

In Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson's study on youth subcultures in post-war Britain, they argue that compared with other youth subcultures, mod culture gave young women high and relative autonomy. They claim that this status may have been related both to the attitudes of the mod young men, who accepted the idea that a young woman did not have to be attached to a man, and to the development of new occupations for young women, which gave them an income and made them more independent.

In particular, Hall and Jefferson note the increasing number of jobs in boutiques and women's clothing stores, which, while poorly paid and lacking opportunities for advancement, nevertheless gave young women disposable income, status and a glamorous sense of dressing up and going downtown to work. The presentable image of female mod fashion meant it was easier for young mod women to integrate with the non-subculture aspects of their lives (home, school and work) than for members of other subcultures. look for women demonstrated the "same fussiness for detail in clothes" as their male mod counterparts.

Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss claim that the emphasis in the mod subculture on consumerism and shopping was the "ultimate affront to male working-class traditions" in the United Kingdom, because in the working-class tradition, shopping was usually done by women. They argue that British mods were "worshipping leisure and money... scorning the masculine world of hard work and honest labor" by spending their time listening to music, collecting records, socialising, and dancing at all-night clubs.

Conflicts with rockers

Main article: Mods and Rockers

As the Teddy Boy subculture faded in the early 1960s, it was replaced by two new youth subcultures: mods and rockers. While mods were seen as "effeminate, stuck-up, emulating the middle classes, aspiring to a competitive sophistication, snobbish, phony", rockers were seen as "hopelessly naive, loutish, scruffy", emulating Marlon Brando"s motorcycle gang leader character in the film The Wild One by wearing leather jackets and riding motorcycles. Dick Hebdige claims that the "mods rejected the rocker"s crude conception of masculinity, the transparency of his motivations, his clumsiness"; the rockers viewed the vanity and obsession with clothes of the mods as not particularly masculine.

Scholars debate how much contact the two groups had during the 1960s; while Dick Hebdige argues that mods and rockers had very little contact, because they tended to come from different regions of England (mods from London and rockers from more rural areas), and because they had "totally disparate goals and lifestyles".However, British ethnographer Mark Gilman claims that both mods and rockers could be seen at football matches.

John Covach's Introduction to Rock and its History claims that in the United Kingdom, rockers were often engaged in brawls with mods. BBC News stories from May 1964 stated that mods and rockers were jailed after riots in seaside resort towns on the south coast of England, such as Margate, Brighton, Bournemouth and Clacton.The mods and rockers conflict led sociologist Stanley Cohen to coin the term moral panic in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s. early 1960s, both at seaside resorts and after football games. He claims that the British media turned the mod subculture into a negative symbol of delinquent and deviant status.

Newspapers described the mod and rocker clashes as being of "disastrous proportions", and labeled mods and rockers as "sawdust Caesars", "vermin" and "louts".Newspaper editorials fanned the flames of hysteria, such as a Birmingham Post editorial in May 1964, which warned that mods and rockers were "internal enemies" in the United Kingdom who would "bring about disintegration of a nation"s character". The magazine Police Review argued that the mods and rockers" purported lack of respect for law and order could cause violence to "surge and flame like a forest fire".

Cohen argues that as media hysteria about knife-wielding, violent mods increased, the image of a fur-collared anorak and scooter would "stimulate hostile and punitive reactions" among readers. As a result of this media coverage, two British Members of Parliament traveled to the seaside areas to survey the damage, and MP Harold Gurden called for a resolution for intensified measures to control hooliganism. One of the prosecutors in the trial of some of the Clacton brawlers argued that mods and rockers were youths with no serious views, who lacked respect for law and order. Cohen says the media used possibly faked interviews with supposed rockers such as "Mick the Wild One". As well, the media would try to get mileage from accidents that were unrelated to mod-rocker violence, such as an accidental drowning of a youth, which got the headline "Mod Dead in Sea"

Eventually, when the media ran out of real fights to report, they would publish deceptive headlines, such as using a subheading "Violence", even when the article reported that there was no violence at all. Newspaper writers also began to use "free association" to link mods and rockers with various social issues, such as teen pregnancy, contraceptives, drug use, and violence.

(According to Wikipedia)

Mods (Eng. Mods from Modernism, Modism) is a British youth subculture. It appeared in the late 50s of the twentieth century and existed until about the end of the 60s. Mods have become a kind of successor to the teddy boys. The post-war generation, unlike their predecessors, was able to earn more money and, consequently, spend more on clothes and accessories. From teddy boys, fashion has adopted panache in clothing and attention to detail. Mods wore fitted Italian-style suits (usually tailored), jumpers, shirts and tight ties, Chelsea shoes, girls - short dresses, pencil skirts, flat shoes. Elegance, moderation and accuracy are the features typical representative mods. The mod subculture was rather closed, they consciously opposed themselves to traditional British society with its values, listened to American music (jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and roll), collected records, carefully followed fashion and took care of to look cool and stylish. Mods usually moved along the street on motor scooters, and parkas (military jackets with a hood trimmed with fur and a loose fit) were put on top of smart clothes to protect them from dirt and dust. Mods can be called the dandies of the 20th century, despite the fact that they were practically all working class and often spent their entire paychecks on a suit and a cool motor scooter with lots of mirrors.
By the end of the 60s, the mod subculture ceased to be such by promoting it to the masses with the help of radio and television. Later, the British punks of the 70s adopted something from the mods.