HISTORY OF MOD STYLE
The history of mod style can be traced back to late 1950s in London, England and peaked in the early to mid 1060s. The mod movement originally began from Britain where the mod style was first a subculture developed by teenagers. According to Dick Hebdige, the progenitors of the mod subculture “appear to have been a group of working class dandies, possibly descended from the devotees of the Italianate style. But according to sociologist Simon Frith, the mod style or movement had its origin from 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 amongst the original mods agreed with Simon. And he has the view that before mod became commercialized, it was originally an extension of beatnik culture, it derives from modernist, and it’s more concerned with modern jazz and with Sartre as well as existentialism. Looking at the origin of mod style, the youth during 1950s were more attracted to coffees bars. In those days coffee bars or shops were associated with jazz and blues. But in the beginning of 1960s they began playing more R&B; music. Hebdige claims that the mod subculture or movement slowly accrued the identifying symbols that later came to be linked with the scene, such as scooters, amphetamine pills, & music.
In the mod style history, the year 1966 shows a sharp decline in the mod scene. With the popularity of the psychedelic rock and the hippie in the United Kingdom, people were more drifted away from mod style. This was a great turning point in the history of mod style. It has been revealed that some of the popular or great Mod bands like The Who and The Small Faces had changed their styles and they no longer considered as a part of Mods. However, the peacock or fashion wing of mod style have changed into Bohemian style of London hippie culture or style favoring the gentle, marijuana-infused reflection of esoteric ideas & aesthetics, which contrasted crisply with the frantic energy of the mod ethos.
In the history of mod style, the revival of mod style began in the late 1970s in the England. There was a small group that did not associate with middle-class hippie movement & intellectual music. They started listening to Jamaican Ska as well as attended underground house parties and clubs. They adopted the Rude Boy look of pork-pie hats and too-short Levi jeans. These ‘Hard Mods’ soon evolved into the first skinheads, a non-political group who hung with black Rude Boys in West Indian clubs. These early skinheads retained some of the basic elements of Mod clothing such as Fred Perry and Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Levi’s jeans but they mixed them with working-class oriented accessories such as braces and Dr. Marten work boots.
