‘What’s fashionable – or What’s the business? – this summer?’ asked the Young Observer section of the Observer Magazine of 13 July 1980 (‘Fashion on the Streets’). ‘Anything you like, it seems, so long as you follow a particular group and a particular style.’
There’s a rundown by the teenagers featured of the definitions of mods, teds, skinheads, punks, rude boys and girls and, slightly oddly, ‘individuals’, who would ‘rather adapt or dye old clothes or hunt for second-hand cast-offs at jumble sales’.
Some were unaware that they were not quite as individual as they thought. Jerry, 15, a ted in a regulation drape jacket, said: ‘It takes me three-quarters of an hour each day to do the quiff… I don’t like any of the mods and skinheads – I’m an individual.’
Then there was Dave, 16. ‘I’m a punk rocker,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be yourself.’ He looked the absolute spit, so to speak, of Sid Vicious with his dyed black hair, leather jacket and metal-studded wristband. In fact, they all look so sweet. You realise it’s their own version of conformity and belonging.
Beverly, 16, said: ‘I used to be a punk before it died, but my boyfriend is a skinhead and so I changed because he asked me to.’
Mandy, 16, and her sister Kim, 14, were holding what look like two copies of Greatest Hits Vol 1 by the Cockney Rejects. ‘Do you like our bum flappers?’ Mandy asked. Reaching for a copy of Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, I discovered that she was referring to their split mini-skirts.
Displaying the burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit of the decade to come was rude girl Dawn, just 14. ‘I got my hat from Dunn’s of Piccadilly and it cost £17,’ she said. ‘When I get bored with this lot, I’ll sell it off to friends at school. I sold all my skinhead stuff to buy this outfit.’
