"Are You Screwing Me!?"

“There was an attempt to recapture a sense of working class solidarity and identity in the face of a tide of social change”. Bill Osgerby.


Forget the swinging, glamorous sixties it was more swinging for each other on the council estates of England. For the working class, thanks to “Lady” Margret Thatcher, life was tough and people became tough. Skinheads were looked upon as the modern day “chav”. Shorter hair also meant shorter tempers. The Ben Sherman shirt was the Burberry of the time. Levis jeans, small turn ups, doc martin boots, Ben Sherman shirt with braces was the uniform and the shirt you wore symbolised your status. This trend represented something only you and your mates knew about- you were part of a gang, you belonged.

Skinhead culture emerged in the early/mid 1960s as a result of two changes in British culture and society at the time. Firstly, the Mod scene which had begun to split into the middle class Mods who were able to carry on buying the latest Carnaby Street clothes and fashionable haircuts, whereas the working class Mods could not afford to - so they became creative. The "hard Mods" emerged with shaved hair, tight jeans, braces, and work boots - based on the typical style of British workingmen at the time. At the same time, there was an influx of Jamaican immigration to London bringing with them rude boy culture, reggae and ska. Many of them went to work in London’s docks and lived in the working class communities of London’s East End.


Skinhead attire lives on with Marc Jacobs incorporating braces into his S/S 07 collection. Raf Simons now collaborates with Fred Perry producing clothes inspiring a whole new generation. Neil Barrett’s S/S 07 collection combined elements from the city of London, with skinhead attitude. Fashion in London today anything goes, if you saw a “skinhead” it most probably wouldn’t conjure up the same feeling as it would have in the sixties, speaking stereotypically we have our very own modern day skinhead nowadays – the ‘hoodie’....well, at least their heads are warm.