Vivienne Westwood: 36 Years in Fashion
Until June 10th, at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. (Want to go!)
Related links:
(Both websites above have lots of slow-preloading Flash content... very annoying)
Via Tony Tye's 2-Tone website:
It would be cool to see this.
Related link: Wikipedia definition of Two-Tone.
I posted The Specials: "Message To You Rudy" music video on this blog a few days ago. It really belongs in this entry so I'm moving it over here.
There is a lot of information on Rude Boys and Teddy Boys (eg, Dick Hebdige), but rarely do you read about or see Rude Girls and Teddy Girls on the web or in books. Coincidentally, this week we found two interesting websites...
RUDE GIRLS: www.getupedina.com
TEDDY GIRLS: www.teddygirls.co.uk
Essay and photoseries by Ken Russell. Gallery HERE.
"Yet, just as much as the boys, the Teddy Girl was creating a new world for herself. It may be that the Teddy Girl was difficult to see because fashion was naturally considered a female sphere. Working class boys suddenly wearing their own distinctive but rapidly changing fashions were noticeable, but girls changing styles was simply taken for granted. The Teddy Girl, however, is clearly not simply following a male fashion for Edwardian garb. Instead, she wore a variety of personal styles. Cameo brooches and other accessories hark back, but the fact that these girls wear trousers is very interesting. Most surprisingly the younger girls even wear jeans. As the boys look back for inspiration to a bygone era, the girls seem to be looking forward to modernity, out towards the future." (essay)
Via World of Kane - wonderful André Courrèges creations. Photos by William Klein.
"Back In The Days" has been on our wishlist since it first came out. Now with the release of sequel: "A time Before Crack", we went searching for book #1 and it's already gone from the local bookstore and out of print on Amazon! (thank god for eBay) There is some awesome, fun and superstylish photographic reference here, for the early days of hip hop.
Related Links:
SKINHEADS
MODS
REGGAE
There are some inspirational photos by Janette Beckman in this great book! A cool visual companion to Robert Elm's "The Way We Wore" if you are as obsessed with the style and fashion of Youth-Music Subcultures as we are.
BOY LONDON Kings Road 1979; Mods in Streatham 1976
'Blue Rondo A La Turk' 1982; Steve Strange - Covent Garden 1981
More images from the book HERE.
Robert Elm's The Way We Wore is brilliant, entertaining and educational.
This book, besides being an amusing autobiography which focuses on his obsession with changing fashion trends and getting the right clothes; also serves as an engrossing history and etymology of London's Youth Subcultures from the 50's to the 90's. He's got everything covered here in glorious detail - Teddy Boys, Rude Boys, Mods, Skinheads, Northern/Southern Soul Boys, Bowie/Glam types, Punk and its offshoots (Goth, Two-Tone, Rockabilly etc), New Romantics & Blitz Kids... there's even an amusing mention of what he calls "Bedsit-Depression chic"... (that 80's trend of looking as ordinary and glum as possible (eg, Joy Division, The Smiths)
Excerpts:
It took me a while to understand the mechanics of youth fashion, that it is a perpetual-motion machine powered by some collective psychological engine, which runs off vast reserves of pure, high-grade adolescent desire. There is always a kid somewhere who's not content with the current dress code, who wants to play the game, but by his own rules, wants to fit in and yet shine out.
England was an untamed, dysfunctinal, yet fiercely creative place. The French could do cuisine, the Italians could do furniture, we could do football violence and punk rock. (....) This sickness was also our saving grace. The two great creative engines of youth culture, music and fashion, have always been black America and working-class England, both siphoned off and segregated from the mainstream of their respective societies. And as the 1980's, a time of perpetual revolution, arrived, that's all we were good at - creating and exporting exciting, tribal youth cultures, good and bad, In 1980 this sickly land had three things to call its own; fighting at football, street fashion and The Face.
Elms seems like the perfect person to chronicle this stuff. He grew up in Notting Dale in the 50's. His old man was a Ted. One brother was one of the original Mods; the other brother was an original Skinhead... Elms had plenty of inspiration. First as a nine-year old Skinhead; then from teenage Soul Boy to Punk to Blitz Kid. What a life! Not only did this guy write for The Face magazine (which as I understand it, never took off in the USA as it had in the UK and Australia); he came up with the name for Spandau Ballet and dated Sade!
Pity (but natural) that his enthusiasm stops in the mid 80s with Acid House/"Dance culture" - which he hates.
Anyway, someone needs to make a movie of The Way We Wore.
Related links:
Review on Camden New Journal (with photos)
RETROPLANET:The True Story of the German Swing Youth (via this Rummage Through The Crevices post)
…Curious about the movie
