Teddy Boys

British youth movement and ensuing fashion. In 1950 the British edition of Vogue stated that “there is a new formality, verging on the Edwardian, in men’s dress in London, which recalls the years before 1914.” That had been a glorious period for British high society, a period that many certainly wished to bring back. The young snobs of the London fashion district decided to go ahead and do it. The new Edwardians adopted as their apparel-uniform pipestem trousers, stiff, high white collars, and damask vests. Beginning in 1954, however, their style was adopted with a provocative and satirical intent, reworked in a less expensive version by the young proletarians of the outlying areas of London, the so-called Teddy Boys. And Teddy was the working-class modification of the Edwardian expression. The Teds were accused of all sorts of criminal acts, from racist assaults to thefts. And their clothing was transformed into a synonym of their vandalism. They also wore drape-suits, turned-up or buttoned collars, drain-pipe trousers, bootlace ties, thick-soloed suede shoes and they pomaded their long hair with brilliantine, combing them into quiffs. The movement vanished toward the end of the 1950s. Every so often it reappears as a lifestyle phenomenon. In the 1980s it was linked to the rockabilly revival in a slightly cartoonish and cinematic version, in the American-graffiti style.