Mods: A Way of Life

Patrick Potter

Hardcover | 16.5 x 22 cm | 192 pp

Carpet Bombing Culture | 2018 | 9781908211590

Sometime around the beginning of the 1960’s, a number of stars aligned. A small but fanatical group of young men and women, mostly no more than teenagers, created their own elite club of stylists. The old world was cracking up, and they were looking for new kicks. They wanted something no teenager had ever thought possible before. They wanted to be famous, on their own terms and in their own style. This urge coincided with cash in the back pocket courtesy of the post-war boom and relatively cheap access to tailoring. Add to this the influx of American soul music and a pocket full of purple hearts. Throw in a little Carnaby Street and a soupçon of French  new wave cinema with just a twist of Italian style. Mix it up with London gangster and Jamaican rudeboy in a Soho basement club. Then bake it in the oven of a new, hip consumerism for two years and put it all on national television with a Ready, Steady, Go.

The Mods invented youth culture. Alight, there were youth cultures before. The Teds, the Bright Young Things and all kinds of bizarre tribes prior to them. However, the Mods invented what we now call British youth culture. They may not have had a political agenda, but they believed in the reality of their desires. And the Mods did change the world. They wanted to live right now, not later.