Teddy Boys

Teddy Boys or 'Edwardians' began to appear in the early 1950s on the streets of South and West London. Dandified street gangs; their extravagant dress and defiant pose made them popular subjects for the expanding media of magazines and television in the 1950s. Like the Spiv of the Second World War, the Teddy Boy became a media folk devil, but the media that villified them also spread their image far beyond the original metropolitan gangs, until the Teddy Boy became a nation wide teenage style and the first post-war teenage subculture.

As inner-city working class youth they appropriated the expensive Edwardian 'Ted' suits designed for wealthy city gents in the early 1950s, or the 'drape' jackets favoured by the growing number of American rock 'n' roll stars.
'Teenage Terrorists - Absurd But Deadly'.
Headline in Illustrated, May 1954.

The Teddy Boy image sent a powerful message. The adoption of upper class dress by working class youths was a defiant act. However, the exaggerated style of their dress also made them an easy target, the media constantly attempted to discredit the Teddy Boys by ridiculing their appearance. A charicature of the Teddy Boy as a 'monkey in a drape' was printed in the Brighton Evening Argus in 1954 and clearly illustrates the general public's perception of Teddy Boys and their dress style.

The Teddy Boy outfits in Royal Pavilion & Museums' Renegade collection illustrate two phases in Teddy Boy style, representing both the style of the early 1950s, and that of the 1970s. However this is complicated further by the earlier style outfit having actually been made in the early 1980s. This therefore represents a third phase of Teddy Boy style; that of the Teddy Boy as a vintage or retro style to be copied.