The Teddy Boy: My View

The Teddy Boy: A Witness' Account

Jan Land was born in 1951 and she can remember first hand what the Teddy boys were like.

 

Can you describe a specific scenario in which you remember the Teddy Boys?

Jan: The teddy boys I saw in the 50's used to meet together and walk along the seafront in Scarborough. To a young girl they seemed frightening. There were a great number of them and they used to take over the pavements and mess about as young men do! Their clothes made them stand out among the general throng of holidaymakers. Dad used to moan about them being rowdy too!

Do you remember ever seeing the Teddy Boys in the media?

Jan: I didn’t take much notice of them in the media, but if there was any trouble on the foreshore I imagine I would have seen it on the TV. We had a TV from the early 50's.

Did you live in a largely White British community?

Jan: Yes the community was totally white. I remember that the first coloured family Moved into Seamer in 1964.

Were all the Teddy Boys you remember seeing White British?

Jan: Nope, the whole community was white.

Did you hear about the Notting Hill race riots?

Jan: There was coverage on TV and that may have contributed to my fear of teddy boys. I was a nervous child and I thought the people who attacked black (and white) people in London in 1958 were walking round the streets of Scarborough in the summer of 1959. Who knows what they may do? I didn't really understand the racial bit, thought they just attacked any one they pleased. My family had no problems with immigrants to my knowledge and I never heard any racial criticism from them, just criticism of the teddy boys.

 

What can you remember seeing the Teddy Boys wearing?

Jan: There seemed to be a lot of them in blue or beige jackets with black collars and the distinctive hairstyle. Lots of ordinary lads wore the thick soled shoes and did their hair like that like my cousin who was 16, but I think you needed quite a bit of money to buy the jackets.

Do you remember seeing any Teddy Girls?

Jan: I don't remember teddy girls, though I suppose they were there, just remember the gangs of lads.

Did you ever wear any clothes that were adopted by the Teddy Boys/Girls? Why or why not?

Jan: The fear coloured my judgement about the fashion and it never appealed to me even in the seventies and eighties when there was a revival. Think it only appealed to a certain type of person.

Did the look eventually become quite mainstream?

Jan: It never really became mainstream after the fifties when it was at its height among young men in their teens and twenties.

Do you remember the 1970's revival of the Teddy Boys?

Jan: Yes I sort of remember it, though it was not as widespread as in the fifties. Think it appealed to a smaller group of people in the seventies.

 

What sort of person took part in the revivals?

 

Jan: In the 50's it was the main way to challenge the accepted dress code of the mainstream man in the street. Young people wanted to be different from their parents, more edgy and distinctive and had more money than ever before. By the 70's we had had a variety of youth revolts (the swinging 60's) and there were a number of options for young people to pursue to make their mark. It probably appealed to the young working class type person who had some money though I don't know for certain.

Did they dress the same?

Jan: Think the clothes had a softer look to them perhaps slightly more romanticised and were taken up by some pop stars, but there were a lot of different styles of music by then and a lot of different ways to dress.

 

The Teddy Boy: Public Reaction



In the beginning the media treated the Teddy boys as a joke and questioned their sexuality due to the absence of their father’s during the war. It wasn’t long before the term ‘Teddy boy’ was synonymous with juvenile delinquent, so much so that they are the basis for the costumes of the thugs in The Clockwork Orange. This reputation was mainly due to the Notting Hill Race Riots that took place in late August and early September 1958. These were racially motivated attacks on members of the black community by white Teddy Boys. The riots were influenced by groups like the White Defense League attempting to ‘Keep Britain White’ after an increased number of Caribbean migrants arriving in Britain after World War II.

Also some Teddy Boys formed gangs initiating public fights with their rivals. This could be seen as the start of the media’s sometimes negative attitude towards youth culture. Having said this, most people in today’s society do not read the term ‘Teddy boy’ as a negative. We mainly view it as a style of dress with references to rock ‘n’ roll. This amnesia of the negatives is due to the 1970’s revival of the subculture. The Teds came back to life as a sort of nostalgia for the time before drug-taking hippies and aggressive skinheads. This was made more attractive in the media when the Punks came along with their desire to shock, the Teds were from a much more harmless, comfortable era.

The Teddy Boy: Fashion

 

 

The Teddy boy represented their values and ideas. They wore long coats with velvet collars and pocket flaps. Original Teddy boys wore separate non-matching waist coats, jackets and trousers whereas later Teds sometimes wore three piece drape suits. The drape jackets were normally dark in colour with straight sides (not tucked in at the waist) and didn’t have a vent in the back to create a boxy look. The drainpipe trousers were normally high waisted and left the socks exposed. With these the Teddy boys wore a loose collared, high necked white shirt with a Slim Jim or bootlace tie. Brogues or thick soled Brothel Creepers were their shoes of choice. The most popular hair style donned by the subcultural group was a quiff slickly combed back into a ‘duck arse shape at the back’. There were other styles such as the Boston, the pompadour and the jelly roll. They were all strongly moulded and heavily greased.

 

We hear a lot about the Teddy boy style but not much about the girls. The Teddy girls wore similar velvet collared drape jackets. However instead of drainpipe trousers they wore pencil skirts or rolled up jeans. The Teddy girl’s choice in clothes was their way of rejecting post-war austerity. They were mostly young women from the poorer districts of London. The style they wore would turn heads and had trickled down from the haute-couture houses that had created collections reminiscent of the Edwardian era.

The Teddy Boy: Music

It is widely thought that rock ‘n’ roll saw the birth of the Teds; however this is not the case. Initially songs were created specifically for the Teddy Boys by artists such as Ted Heath and Ken Mackintosh. It wasn’t until 1956 when the likes of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley’s hits made the journey from America that the genre became synonymous with the New Edwardians.

 

  Ken Mackintosh, Strings On Wings (1950). An original Teddy Boy song.

 

Bill Haley, Rock Around The Clock (1956). This was one of the first Rock ‘n’ Roll songs to take the Teds by storm.

This strong influence of music on the Teddy boy scene meant that dancing in clubs was a big part of the culture. A well-known dance adopted by the Teddy Boys was ‘the creep’ which was a slow shuffle. The song The Creep was released by Ken Mackintosh in 1953.

The Teddy Boy: An Overview



After the war in Britain there was a need for the nation to regain pride in itself. The tailors of Savile Row started to create suits reminiscent of the ones worn when Edward VII reined. This symbolised a time when Britain was seen as great. However throughout the war the working classes had been promised a less class-ridden society and these new Edwardian style suits were opposing this. At the same time the increased number and spending power of adolescents had been noted by the marketing and advertising industries. Previously there had been no gap seen between childhood and adult hood, this sparked the birth of ‘the teenager’. In the late 1940’s–early 1950’s in mainly working class parts of London such as Elephant and Castle, this new youthful group adopted the Edwardian style of dress attempting to gain what they had been promised of a more classless society. Originally named Cosh Boys, they were eventually dubbed ‘New Edwardians’ or ‘Teddy Boys’.

Subcultures: Mods

 

Mods were a subcultural youth group during the late 1950s to early 1960s. They were extremely interested in fashion and spent a lot of their time shopping due to their recently acquired disposable income. They had a strong passion for music of multiple genres, the motor scooter is seen to represent the mods and they had strong links with Amphetamines. There was a mod revival in the late 1970s.

 

 

It was a common misconception that they wore parkas displaying lots of badges. The original mods followed the ‘less is more’ aesthetic. They wore smart suits, mohair clothes, thin ties, button down collar shirts, wool and cashmere jumpers, pointed winklepicker shoes, Chelsea boots and bowling shoes. Some Mods went against gender norms of the era by enhancing their appearance with eye shadow, eye pencil or even lipstick. They were very image conscious people and the song ‘Dedicated follower of fashion’ by The Kinks pokes fun at the Mod’s obsession with fashion. The original mods did wear parkas but only saw them as a practical garment, to protect their expensive suits when riding their scooters.

 

The most important fashion accessory for the mods was the scooter. They were a cheap and accessible form of transport. In that period of time public transport stopped early so they needed a way to get home at night after clubs and dances. The scooters were chosen over motorbikes because scooters' use of body paneling and concealed moving parts made them cleaner and less likely to stain an expensive suit with grease. Normally they road Italian branded scooters like Vespas or Lambrettas. They preferred these due to their clean lines, curving shapes and gleaming chrome.

MODs originated from the Teddy boys of the early 50’s. The Teddy boys were very much ‘Englanders’, whereas Mods thought of themselves as Modern - embracing everything from black American Rhythm and Blues to Italian cuisine. A lot of their look was based on European style. The suits they wore originated from slick Italian designs. Their hair was in the style of actors from nouvelle vague cinema – very controlled, slicked back and cut quite short. Nouvelle vague was a French cinema movement in the 50’s and 60’s, seen as cinema for the youth. This links in with the fact that Mods were a youth culture. This was a new concept in those days, the Teddy boys’ were the first real youth culture only 10 years before.

During the mod movement some women started to have disposable income as there was a raise in female retail jobs. They dressed up more to go to work; they felt the need to look cool and glamorous. This highlights the commercial mind set of the mods. The women had the same smart clean aesthetic as the men. This meant they could wear the same clothes to work, home and school unlike other subcultures like punk. The female look was androgynous short haircuts, men’s trousers or shirts (sometimes their boyfriends), flat shoes and minimal natural looking make up. It stayed like this until Mod fashion became more mainstream, and the look, whilst still being minimal, became a little more glam.

This was partly due to women icons like Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. Shrimpton was the subject of photographer David Bailey’s famous New York Vogue shoot which represented the acknowledgement of youth culture by the magazine. Twiggy’s classic make up look including painted on eyelashes became popular. She also had slicked back short hair like the men’s. Mary Quant miniskirts and boxy shift dresses became popular. The young mod women pushed parental tolerance, new things, nothing would have been worn that short before, it would’ve been seen as inappropriate.

It was the mod revival of the 1970’s and 1980’s that created stereotype that we know today. They wore parkas, harrington jackets, and Fred Perry polo neck shirts. The revival was a lot more casual, less slick and smart. They had stickers on scooters and when a law was passed saying there must be at least one mirror on the scooters they took it to extremes by covering them in them. They did not follow the less is more style.

The early mods were known for listening to African American Soul, Jamaican Ska, British R&B and Blue Beat. British R&B was performed by bands like the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Animals.The music was called blue beat after the record label that produced most of it. The influx of Caribbean immigrants at the time had a big impact on the music they listened to. It is said that the relationship between the two groups and their music interest helped to break down race barriers and reduce tension within London. Mod style music has changed throughout the decades:

·         Early mod Music. - More mellow

·         Mod revival music. - More rocky, to match the time.

·         Mod Style music now. - More mainstream.

The original mods of London frequented clubs like The Roaring 20s and The Flamingo. The Flamingo in Soho, 33-37 Wardour Street, played British R&B and jazz. The fans of that music would meet together no matter what skin colour. With its increasing popularity there were many performers who graced the stage at Flamingo, including Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. In the 60s the club was well known for its all night parties where the club opened until 6am on Fridays and Saturdays. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix were all regulars. The club closed in the late 60s.

 

Apart from clubbing, socially a lot of mods spent their time listening to music with friends, learning new dance moves, riding around on their scooters and shopping for the latest clothes. Drugs were also big part of their recreation with Amphetamines (speed) being their drug of choice. Pre-1964 the drug was actually legal. They took it on nights out to make them more alert and to help them appreciate the music they were listening to more.

 

Mods and Rockers did not get on. Rockers thought Mods were effeminate, stuck-up or snobbish. It was a common jibe that they "couldn't tell the birds from the blokes". Mods thought Rockers were old-fashioned, dirty, greasy and uncouth. However, there was not an all-out war between the two tribes.
 
Mods and Rockers rarely met, except for Bank Holiday weekends in Margate, Brighton, Hastings, Southend and football games from 1964 onwards. Their violent clashes were constantly and sensationally reported in newspapers such as the Daily Mail.

The first such incident was at Clacton on the Easter Bank Holiday in 1964. It was reputedly one of the worst Easter Bank Holidays on record: cold and wet. The Easter Sunday was the coldest for 80 years. Groups of youths arrived at Clacton for the Bank Holiday break. They were bored and frustrated and rumours were circulating that a local café was refusing to serve them. Violence broke out between different groups. This was reported sensationally in the national press.

 

The scale of the disturbance and the violence was exaggerated. However, from now on the 'Mods and Rockers' phenomenon was born. The question in the press and for local magistrates was, 'which town would be next?'
 
In 1964 Mods and Rockers clashed at Margate, Hastings, Bournemouth and Brighton at Whitsun and August Bank Holidays. Once again the actual events were grossly exaggerated in the media.

 

 

Modern day mods include the Gallagher brothers, Paul Weller and Bradley Wiggins. Lots of clothing that was worn during the MOD period has been recycled into today’s fashions. A lot of people still wear Fred Perry and Khaki Parkas are still in fashion too. Tasselled loafers are also quite popular at the moment.  Although there aren’t that many true mods left, there are a lot of older men, mainly in their 40s, which have adopted this style.