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08.03.2025 09:21
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Now available as a single article on Medium
medium.com/@endofacentu...
Now available as a single article on Medium medium.com/@endofacentu...
Agreed. These items become props that can be picked up for a 'look' rather than be indicative of a deeper lifestyle/ belonging. Nothing wrong with that, just interesting
As ever, if you enjoyed this look at British Youth Culture, please like, follow and share. More to come over the weekend!
#youthculture #popculture #popsky #teddyboys #1950s
Their subversion of the look aimed at their social ‘betters’ would be adopted by Mods in the 1960s, while the moral panic they caused would be repeated again and again. Without clothes rationing and the subsequent overcorrection though, they may never have existed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbrW...
The significance of the Teds mainly rests on them being the first major British youth culture that distinguished itself from the adult world, using clothing and hair to symbolise membership and setting the boundaries of what membership of a youth culture looks like.
The look still has devoted followers, although the passage of time means they are getting fewer and fewer.
Ironically one of Sex Pistols manager and punk PR man Malcolm McLaren's first ventures was a Teddy Boy themed shop, Let It Rock.
The look continued to be worn by diehard teds throughout the 60s and 70s, some teds being notable for their opposition to punks in the late 1970s with cross-generational street fights taking place. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECyg...
![Mud - Tiger Feet (1973) [Restored]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ofoczjseao7hdfig5ga3jjv7/bafkreif7esh6cvogcmzlet6wib6ku7fwg2gehyosxqi56fe2r3bdq6ja6u)
There was a revival of sorts of the Teddy boy look in the early 1970s, as glam rock acts such as Mud, Alvin Stardust and later Showaddywaddy appropriated elements of the Teddy Boy look. The appeal was more limited this time and did not translate to their audiences.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzp9...
Dressing to differentiate from one’s elders became more commonplace, and fashions for young men began to be stocked in high street stores such as John Collier, which expanded across the country.
In common with many youth cultures, it is easy to overstate the number of actual teddy boys. Very few young people wore the full regalia. But what teds did was move fashion onwards and made young men in particular more aware of what they wore.
In 1959 Antiguan Kelso Cochran was killed by Teddy boys, but such was the grip they had on the local population, nobody faced trial for the murder. Events such as this saw Teddy Boys gain a reputation for racist violence, despite being the actions of a few.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfkI...
This violence reached its peak in 1958 with the Notting Hill Riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in 1959. Resentment towards migrants in West London escalated into violence carried out by Teddy Boys, culminating in rioting over the August Bank Holiday of 1958.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDI...
And two well-reported incidents at dances in Bromley in 1954 (St Mary Cray) and 1956 (Orpington), saw Teddy Boys arrested carrying a range of weapons including carving knives, stilletos, wooden stakes and socks filled with sand. The Teds’ reputation for violence continued to grow.
Photographer Don McCullin caught his first break photographing the criminal gang the Guvnors who lived in his area of Islington in North London and dressed in the Teddy Boy style. The Guvnors were implicated in the murder of another police officer.
In fact, the fear of Violence was closely associated with Teddy Boys throughout the 1950s – the infamous Derek Bentley and Chris Craig murder of a police officer in Croydon saw the pair painted as troublemaking Teddy Boys.
A screening of the film, which featured the single ‘Rock around the Clock’, at the 3,000 seat Trocadero cinema in South London, led to dancing in the aisles, seats ripped out and mayhem in the street. This was presented as a ‘Teddy Boy Riot’ and their position as folk devils further secured.
The UK release of Blackboard Jungle, a film about juvenile rebellion in a New York school, was the catalyst for more pearl-clutching from the nation’s media.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JGa...
Although later generations would associated Teds with rock’n’roll, as can be seen their existence predates Elvis and Buddy Holly by several years. However it is equally true that with the sound arriving in Britain in 1956, the Teds quickly associated with it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNYW...
In subsequent reporting of events, the Daily Express in October 1953 published an article about Teddy Boys, sparking the first of many moral panics about young people in the post war years, and bringing Teds to national awareness.
There is evidence of the style existing around 1950, particularly the Savile Row version of the New Edwardian look. But Teddy Boys first really came to national attention in 1953, when a clash between two groups of young people on Clapham Common led to a stabbing and the death of a 17 year old.
They were readily identified by the aforementioned suits – long jackets, embroidered waistcoats, bootlace ties, skinny trousers – worn with thick soled ‘brothel creepers’. Topping the look off was longer hair than was the norm, brushed up in a quiff and swept back into a ‘D.A.’ or Duck’s Arse.
Whichever story is true, the role of clothes rationing and the reaction it brought about was vital in their origins. But who were the Teddy Boys? They were very much a working class subculture that seems to have first emerged in South London.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYfQ...
A final theory puts the emphasis on America, as so many elements of youth culture were to originate, and cites the influence of the zoot suit worn by black and Latino Americans, with its flowing, drapey cut in opposition to the austere demob suits seen in the UK.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWnB...
At this point virtually every high street would have a Burtons or a Five Shilling Tailor where suits could be made to a customer’s specification.
Another theory has the same origins, that of the New Edwardian look being pushed by Savile Row tailors, but posits Soho as the meeting point of classes, where the well-to-do’s look was identified and appropriated by the young and taken back to their local tailors.
But, as the theory goes, it did not really catch on and the suits that had been created as examples ended up in South and East London tailors where they were spotted and adopted by working class youngsters.
One story has Savile Row tailors trying to recreate the Edwardian look of long jackets and elaborate waistcoats in an attempt to get their clients spending more after the restrictions of the war years. The ‘New Edwardian’ look was primarily aimed at the young professionals and guardsmen of Mayfair.
