The Teddy Boys or Teds were a mainly British youth subculture of the early 1950s to mid-1960s who were interested in rock and roll and R&B music, wearing clothes partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period, which Savile Row tailors had attempted to re-introduce in Britain after the Second World War. [1]
A mainly British phenomenon, [2] the Teddy Boy subculture started among teenagers in London in the early 1950s, and rapidly spread across the UK, becoming strongly associated with American rock and roll music. After World War II, male youths in delinquent gangs who had adopted Edwardian-era fashion were sometimes known as Cosh Boys, or Edwardians. [3] [4] The name Teddy Boy was coined when a 23 September 1953 Daily Express newspaper report headline shortened Edwardian to Teddy. [5] Nevertheless, the term had previously been used in Edwardian England to refer to members of the Territorial Army (see for example The Swoop! written by P. G. Wodehouse in 1909). [6] This was a reference to the king, Edward VII, in whose service they were.
In post-war Britain, rationing continued to affect the fashion industry until it ended in 1949 and men's tailors in central London devised a style based on Edwardian clothing hoping to sell to young officers being demobilized from the services. [7] However, the style—featuring tapered trousers, long jackets similar to post-war American zoot suits, and fancy waistcoats—was not popular with its target market, leaving tailors with piles of unsold clothing which, to recoup losses, were sold cheaply to menswear shops elsewhere in London. [7] While there had been some affluent adoption—"an extravagant upper-class snub to the post-war Labour Government and its message of austerity" [1] —it was predominantly suburban working-class youth who adopted and adapted the look ("spiv" and cosh boy associations also hastened its middle-class rejection) and, around 1952, what became the "Teddy Boy" style began to emerge, gradually spreading across Britain. The 1953 film Cosh Boy (US: The Slasher), written by Lewis Gilbert and Vernon Harris, makes an early reference to the style when the character, Roy (James Kenny), speaks the words "[it's a] drape...the latest cut". [1]
Although there had been youth groups with their own dress codes called scuttlers in 19th-century Liverpool and Manchester, [8] Teddy Boys were the first youth group in Britain to differentiate themselves as teenagers, helping create a youth market. The 1955 US film Blackboard Jungle marked a watershed in the United Kingdom. When shown in an Elephant and Castle cinema, south London in 1956, the teenage Teddy boy audience began to riot, tearing up seats and dancing in the cinema's aisles. [9] After that, other riots took place around the country where the film was shown. [10]
Some Teds formed gangs and gained notoriety following violent clashes with rival youth gangs as well as unprovoked attacks on immigrants. The most notable clashes were the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, in which Teddy Boys were present in large numbers and were implicated in attacks on the West Indian community. According to reports released decades after the riots, "Teddy boys armed with iron bars, butcher's knives and weighted leather belts" participated in mobs "300- to 400-strong" that targeted black residents, in one night alone leaving "five black men lying unconscious on the pavements of Notting Hill." [11] Teds were also implicated in the clashes of the 1958 St Ann's riots in Nottingham. [12]
The violent lifestyle was sensationalised in the pulp novel Teddy Boy by Ernest Ryman, first published in the UK in 1958. [3]
Teddy Boy clothing included drape jackets reminiscent of 1940s American zoot suits worn by members of Italian-American, Chicano and African-American communities (such as Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan), usually in dark shades, sometimes with a velvet trim collar and pocket flaps, and high-waist "drainpipe" trousers, often exposing the socks. The outfit also included a high-necked loose-collared white shirt (known as a Mr. B. collar, because it was often worn by jazz musician Billy Eckstine); a narrow "Slim Jim" tie or western bolo tie, and a brocade waistcoat. [14] The clothes were mostly tailor-made at great expense, and paid through weekly installments. [15]
Favoured footwear included highly polished Oxfords, chunky brogues, and crepe-soled shoes, often suede (known as brothel creepers or beetle crushers). Preferred hairstyles included long, strongly moulded greased-up hair with a quiff at the front and the side combed back to form a duck's arse at the rear. Another style was the "Boston", in which the hair was greased straight back and cut square across at the nape.
Teddy Girls (also called Judies) [16] wore drape jackets, pencil skirts, hobble skirts, long plaits, rolled-up jeans, flat shoes, tailored jackets with velvet collars, straw boater hats, cameo brooches, espadrilles, coolie hats and long, elegant clutch bags. Later, they adopted the American fashions of toreador trousers, voluminous circle skirts, and hair in ponytails. [17]
The Teddy Girls' choices of clothes were not intended strictly for aesthetic effect; these girls were collectively rejecting post-war austerity. They were young working-class women from the poorer districts of London. They would typically leave school at the age of 14 or 15 and work in factories or offices. [18] Teddy Girls spent much of their free time buying or making their trademark clothes. Their style originated from a head-turning, fastidious style from the fashion houses, which had launched haute-couture clothing lines recalling the Edwardian era. [19] "It was our fashion and we made it up," declared one "Judie", [20] succinctly writing the mantra of the Teddy Girl ethos.
The style was documented by Ken Russell in a June 1955 series of Picture Post photographs titled "Teddy Girls". Russell noted that the female counterpart of the Teddy Boy subculture was overlooked, saying: "No one paid much attention to the teddy girls before I did them, though there was plenty on teddy boys." [21]
A photo shoot by Liz Ham titled "Teddy Girls" was published by Oyster in 2009 [22] and then in Art Monthly Australia in 2010. [23] [ importance? ]
Although Teddy Boys became associated with rock and roll music, prior to the advent of that genre, Teddy Boys also listened and danced to jump blues, R&B, jazz and skiffle music. [24] A well-known dance that the Teddy Boys adopted was The Creep, a slow shuffle that was so popular with Teddy Boys that it led to their other nickname, Creepers. The song "The Creep" came out in 1953 and was written and recorded for HMV by Yorkshire-born big band leader and saxophonist Ken Mackintosh. [25] Although this was not a rock and roll record, it was widely taken on by the Teddy Boys of the time. [26] From 1955, rock and roll was adopted by the Teddy Boys when the film Blackboard Jungle was first shown in UK cinemas, [27] and Teddy Boys started listening to artists including Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Eddie Cochran.
Although not as big as the Americans, British rock and roll artists such as Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard, Dickie Pride, and Joe Brown became popular with the Teddy Boy culture, as did the Merseybeat scene in the early 60s. The Beatles' George Harrison and John Lennon emulated the Teddy Boy style in the early formation of the band. [28] Original British rock stars such as Billy Fury also moved to the latest of rock and roll, such as beat music during the early 1960s. [1]
Following The London Rock and Roll Show held at Wembley Stadium in August 1972 (featuring American performers including Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Bill Haley, plus UK-based support acts), [29] [30] the music enjoyed a renewed period of popularity. [31] Musical momentum was maintained by the release of films such as American Graffiti and That'll Be the Day [32] (both 1973) and glam rock reworkings by bands such as Wizzard, The Glitter Band, Mud and Showaddywaddy topping the pop charts from 1973.
Concurrently, a resurgence of interest in Teddy Boy fashions was promoted by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren through their shop Let it Rock, on London's King's Road. [32] The new generation of Teds adopted some aspects of the 1950s but with a large glam rock influence, including louder colours for drape jackets, brothel creepers, and socks and shiny satin shirts worn with bootlace ties, jeans and big-buckled belts. The 1970s Teddy Boys often sported flamboyant pompadour hairstyles in addition to long sideburns, and they added hairspray to grease/pomade to style their hair.[ citation needed ] In the late 1970s, the new generation became the enemies of the Westwood and Sex Pistols-inspired punks. In the spring of 1977, street battles between young punks and ageing teds happened on London's King's Road, where the earliest new-wave shops, including Westwood and McLaren's Sex (which were by then no longer selling zoot suits and ted gear), were situated.
In the late 1980s, there was a move by a number of Teddy Boys to revive the 1950s Teddy Boy style. In the early 1990s, a group of Teddy Boy revivalists in the Tottenham area of north London formed "The Edwardian Drape Society" (T.E.D.S.). The group concentrated on reclaiming the style which they felt had become bastardised by pop/glam rock bands such as Showaddywaddy and Mud in the 1970s. [33]
The punk subculture includes a diverse and widely known array of ideologies, fashion, and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. Largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotion of individual freedom, and the DIY ethics, the culture originated from punk rock.
A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youths in England, in the 1960s. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Motivated by social alienation and working-class solidarity, skinheads are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel toe work boots, braces, high rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The movement reached a peak at the end of the 1960s, experienced a revival in the 1980s, and, since then, has endured in multiple contexts worldwide.
Punk fashion is the clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, jewellery, and body modifications of the punk counterculture. Punk fashion varies widely, ranging from Vivienne Westwood designs to styles modeled on bands like The Exploited to the dressed-down look of North American hardcore. The distinct social dress of other subcultures and art movements, including glam rock, skinheads, greasers, and mods have influenced punk fashion. Punk fashion has likewise influenced the styles of these groups, as well as those of popular culture. Many punks use clothing as a way of making a statement.
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English fashion designer and music manager. He was a promoter and a manager for punk rock and new wave bands such as New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow, and was an early commercial architect of the punk subculture.
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Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Media coverage of the two groups fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and they became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.
Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries. It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz. Elements of the mod subculture include fashion ; music and motor scooters. In the mid-1960s, the subculture listened to rock groups such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.
Greasers are a youth subculture that emerged in the 1950s and early 1960s from predominantly working class and lower-class teenagers and young adults in the United States and Canada. The subculture remained prominent into the mid-1960s and was particularly embraced by certain ethnic groups in urban areas, particularly Italian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Latin Americans.
The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many subcultures.
Winklepickers or winkle pickers are a style of shoe or boot worn from the 1950s onward, especially popular with British rock and roll fans such as teddy boys. The feature that gives both the boot and shoe their name is the very sharp and long pointed toe, reminiscent of medieval footwear and approximately the same as the long pointed toes on some women's high-fashion shoes and boots in the 2000s. They are still popular in the goth, raggare and rockabilly subcultures.
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Sex was a boutique run by Vivienne Westwood and her then partner Malcolm McLaren at 430 King's Road, London between 1974 and 1976. It specialised in clothing that defined the look of the punk movement.
Brothel creepers, sometimes shortened to creepers, are a style of shoe that has thick crepe soles, often in combination with suede uppers. This style of footwear became fashionable in the years following World War II, seeing resurgences of popularity at various times since then.
The mod revival was a subculture that started in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and later spread to other countries. The mod revival's mainstream popularity was relatively short, although its influence lasted for decades. The mod revival post-dated a Teddy Boy revival, and mod revivalists sometimes clashed with Teddy Boy revivalists, skinhead revivalists, casuals, punks and rival gang members.
Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short skirts were replaced by the soft femininity of Christian Dior's "New Look" silhouette, with its sweeping longer skirts, fitted waist, and rounded shoulders, which in turn gave way to an unfitted, structural look in the later 1950s.
Cosh Boy is a 1953 British film noir based on an original play by Bruce Walker. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert and featured James Kenney and Joan Collins. It was made at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
Bodgies and widgies refer to a youth subculture that existed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1950s, similar to the rocker culture in the UK or Greaser culture in the United States. Most bodgies rode motorbikes but some had cars, many of which were hotted-up with accessories such as mag wheels and hot dog mufflers. Males were called bodgies and females were called widgies.
The pompadour is a hairstyle named after Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), a mistress of King Louis XV of France. Although there are numerous variations of the style for men, women, and children, the basic concept is having a large volume of hair swept upwards from the face and worn high over the forehead, and sometimes upswept around the sides and back as well.
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. A subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics, it is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. The genre has also been described as coming out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express anger, rage, and frustration, emotions considered socially acceptable for male songwriters but less commonly for women.
The Flying Saucers were an influential Teddy Boy rockabilly band from Edmonton, North London, England. The group formed in 1972, released six albums, completed numerous world tours and appeared in the international film Blue Suede Shoes, before disbanding in 1986.
