The rise of London Subcultures were first noted to have begun in the 1950s when groups of young people started to define themselves through their differences in music, fashion and lifestyle preferences. The youth confidence was partly based on an increase in Britain's prosperity which had started to change social habits in the 50s. Average earnings had gone up by 70 percent between 1950 and 1970, and young people as well as families, had money left over from their average wages, which they spent frivolously.
‘Subcultures’ were usually expressions of deliberate opposition to established ideas of morality and public order.
Teddy dress was inspired by the Edwardian era.
Teddy boys wore knee-length drape coats with half-length velvet collars, suede shoes and elaborate bouffant hairstyles.
Mods - ‘Mods’ were the fashion-conscious and sharp dressers of the 1960s. Their rising was in part from the jazz modernists of the 1950s, and partly from working-class traditions (especially competitive dressing) where Mods aspired to the look of middle-class businessmen. They wore Italian-cut, custom-made suits from designers like Cecil Gee and teamed them with Pringle polo shirts and neat Vidal Sassoon haircuts. They rode Vespa scooters.
Young Mod women turned towards style icons such as the model Twiggy for inspiration. Ladylike accessories were abandoned in favour of figure-hugging sweaters, mini-skirts and shift dresses.
Mods listened to Black music and many who had grown up with neighbours from the West Indies attempted to adopt the tradition of Black styling and listened to Jamaican Ska.
London Mod bands of the 1960s included the Small Faces, The Who and The Kinks.
Rastas - From the late 1960s, young Afro-Caribbean Londoners took up the Rasta lifestyle which was originally practised by Rastafarians from the Caribbean. This practically meant wearing dreadlocks, listening to dub reggae music, and smoking cannabis. This new lifestyle was an attempt to take a strong stand towards a Black identity that would be distinguished from that of earlier generations who had been happy with being acknowledged as ‘West Indian immigrants’.
The disadvantages encountered by Black youths in the 1970s, combined with the forever increasing racial tension made Rasta lifestyle a political as much as a style statement.
Rastas saw London as a place of alienation and conflict, an example of which can be seen in Max Romeo’s 1976 release, 'War Ina Babylon'.
Skins - The subcultures of the 1970s had taken a turn to a more aggressive look. Skinheads, or ‘Skins’, were mostly working class. The dress code consisted of a shaven head, sta-prest flat-fronted slacks or other dress trousers or jeans (normally Levi's, Lee or Wrangler), braces and Doctor Marten boots.
Skins listened to Black music which at that time was reggae, and used Black slang in their speech.
Racial tensions increased at the beginning of the 1970s and Skinheads also started to become associated with racism and far-right political parties.
Punks - Punks appeared in the mid-1970s as another working-class and outwardly aggressive group. They backed themselves as the ‘blank generation’ and identified with alienation and anarchy.
Punk’s disloyal attitude and provocative dress was set by Jonny Rotten of The Sex Pistols: safety-pinned denims, jackboots and spiked-up hairstyles. The band’s manager Malcolm Mclaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood, who ran ‘Sex’, a shop on the King’s Road, were the minds behind the look.
The principles of punk continued after the Pistols disbanded in 1977 thanks to the likes of bands such as The Clash and Buzzcocks.
In 1980, three magazines appeared on the streets of London that were dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture: The Face, i-D and Blitz.
A new generation of identities was created by London’s youth. At the heart of this generation of youth social groups was music, style, clubs, and drugs had also begun to play a big role in these subcultures.
New Romantics - The New Romantics were a glamorously dressed development from punk and wore kitsch, dandified clothes.
They attended clubs like Billy’s in Soho which had opened in 1978, and Blitz, where their mindless habit of mid-week clubbing gave them the name the ‘Blitz kids’.
New Romantics listened to synthesised electro-pop by groups such as Spandau Ballet.
Goths - The period of the Goths developed from the underground punk scene. They believed in all things ‘gothic’ such as gothic literature and horror movies. They wore black clothes, dyed their hair black and made themselves up to have chalk-white faces.
They listened to the dark lyrics of bands such as Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Joy Division, and Siouxie and the Banshees.
Casuals - Casuals came from the ever-strong tradition of working-class male ‘sharp dressing’. Casuals dressed down in customary menswear, but wore pricey labels: Fred Perry shirts, Pringle jumpers, and Burberry accessories. They were as likely to gather at football matches as at soul-music clubs in Essex.
