Who Were the Mods?

Music and fashion in our pop culture eventually become a regular part of our life because we hear, wear, or see them every day. We tend to forget that some pop cultures first started out as a subculture or even a counterculture. In fact, if we look back in history many trends were actually a response to the social, political, and economic environment. Many of course started as a youth lifestyle characterized by the music and fashion youths strongly identified with.

During the 50’s in the UK, a new urban youth culture called the mod (from the word modern, because the youths were into modern jazz) began to emerge. Like other social or cultural changes that have happened in the past, coffee houses were also an important part of the mod social setting. The mods would cruise around the city at night on their scooters and hang out in coffee houses where they listened to jazz and ska out of a jukebox—popular music genres of postwar Britain.

The mods had a distinct style and were very fashion conscious. Influenced by French and Italian art films, these youngsters wore tight suits and pointed shoes. The mods came from urban working-class communities who, because of better economic conditions and job opportunities after the Second World War, were able to live a somewhat consumptive lifestyle of fashion and staying out at night. Buying clothes was an important part of the mod lifestyle, where mods spent most of their wage.

Mod women popularized androgynous fashion by wearing masculine leather jackets as they rode their scooters through the night. Women were quite visible in the mod culture. As working women, their economic independence allowed them to adopt the mod lifestyle.

At a glance, the mod lifestyle may appear to have no political relevance, but it was a political statement in itself: a rebellion against the conventional postwar English life of hard work and conformity. The youths felt that the values their parents held did not get them anywhere better.

In the swinging 60s, the mod style became a trend in London’s center of fashion, Carnaby Street, and overnight the fashion industry launched Twiggy as a mod fashion icon. Likewise in the music scene, mod was the buzzword and new rock bands, such as The Who and The Small Faces, identified as mods. David Bowie also sported the Mod look. Once a counterculture, mod became commercialized and turned into pop culture.

The mods later evolved into the skinheads. These original skinheads had reggae and ska on their jukebox playlist, and were a mixed-ethnic group of working class youngsters; quite different from what would be commonly associated with the skinheads of today.

Fashion and music associated with mods experienced a series of revivals, especially in the ‘80s. Rather than being too fashion conscious, the mods of this era took a lot more interest in political issues. Such is the case with bands like The Jam and The Style Council who sported the mod look.

Nice to see that mod-influenced fashion is still present today, although unrelated to what mod had stood for and only reminiscence of the rebellion the counterculture once inspired.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2019)

You might be interested to read: The Rise and Fall of the Rockers and the Mods https://wordsmith.social/cappuccinogirl/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-rockers-and-the-mods

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