Style: the development of the look 1950s-1970s

Teddy Boy style changed dramatically between the 1950s and the 1970s

1950s

In the early 1950s tailors on Saville Row started reproducing Edwardian suits for wealthy young clients that worked in the city. These luxurious clothes attempted to reassert the sartorial supremacy of both the Saville Row tailors, and that of the wearers. This Edwardian-style bespoke dress was a signifier of class, almost an attempt to revive a pre-war notion of class heirarchy in the face of the advancing social mobility of the working and middle classes.
For working class youth to appropriate a clearly upper class dress style for their own purposes was a serious challenge to the old order. Teddy Boys used backstreet tailors or bought suits second hand, and although it began as something of a London style, by the mid 1950s gangs of be-draped teenagers could be found throughout Britain's cities. Their suits were worn with narrow 'slim-jim' ties, crepe soled suede shoes, and a hairstyle known as the 'Tony Curtis' or, if worn longer at the back, in a style known as a 'Duck's Arse'.
Their image sent a powerful message of defiance, but it was the murder of a youth on Clapham Common in 1952 by a gang of teenage boys that quickly cemented the media image of the Teddy Boys as violent juvenile delinquents. This image was to follow them for the rest of the decade. Teddy Boys became the first rebel teenage subculture and the first media folk-devils of the 1950s.

1970s

The Teddy Boy revival of the 1970s transformed the original style into something altogether more eye-catching. Sharing the colourful elements of the Glam Rock style of the early 1970s, Edwardian style suits were replaced with brightly coloured drape jackets trimmed with contrasting satin or velvet, drainpipe trousers worn almost halfmast to expose lurid socks in fluorescent nylon (right) or glitter-lurex, and brothel creeper shoes in coloured or patterned material such as fake leopard skin. Because the look was so over the top the 1970s style is often referred to as The Cartoon Look and typified by the 1970s Rock 'n Roll revival bands such as Showaddywaddy and Darts.

The 1970s Teddy Boys also became known for violence that was particularly directed at the fledgling Punks. The Punks, whilst borrowing elements of Teddy Boy style such as the brothel creepers and the drape jackets, were anti-royalist and faux-anarchist, offending the largely royalist and politically conservative Teddy Boys. Ironically, it had been punk's stylists Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, with their first shop Let it Rock on London's King's Road, who had catered for the then scarce Teddy Boy revivalists.

1970s Style, CTMAS000012