This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Sometime during the summer of 1963, producers of a brand-new music TV show tentatively made their way to the dark, beating heart of London’s Soho. Far from the hipster heaven it is today, back then it was a warren of dirty back alleys where sex and pills were currency—and a dangerous but exciting haven for the denizens of the nighttime world and those who dared to enter.
Their destination was a tiny square, tucked round the back of buildings a mere few yards away from the shining lights of Piccadilly. A place called Ham Yard, the location of one of London’s hottest dance clubs and the epicentre of Mod culture: The Scene. It was here that the most underground of youth subcultures had found its spiritual home.
To the red hot sounds of soul and r&b spun by the influential DJ Guy Stevens, the youth of London, the Home Counties and beyond pledged allegiance to the way of life that was Modernism. They smoked, drank, looked impossibly cool and danced all night.
Unlike today, this was not a look that you could buy ready-made from any high street store. The very concept of fashion we have today was a long time ahead in the digital and overcolourised future where we now reside.
What you wore—and how you wore it—was thought out to the n-th degree. Tailors such as Sonny Bilgorri in London’s East End would cater to these stylish young men who by day worked as clerks, milk men, labourers and the like, and by night were the lords of the Scene’s dancefloor. When it came to fabric, sleeve length, vent, and lapel shape they would indulge their every whim.
Suitably attired, they made their way up west past the tourists thronging in Leicester Square like pigeons, flirted with the angels of Great Windmill Street, slipped through the door of 4 Ham Yard and down the steps into the small dark room where it was all about the music and the admiring looks they attracted from everyone.
As the producers of the series nervously made the same journey, they reminded each other of their goal. This was the hottest place in the city, with the most stylish and finest dancers around. Their mission, to secure their services on the dancefloor of Rediffusion studios on TV’s newest music show “Ready Steady Go”, all under the watchful eye of super cool presenter and Queen of the Mods, Cathy McGowan.
In the early hours of the next morning they were tired, sweating, but happy: their mission was complete.
On Friday August 9, 1963, just past six PM, the willing dancers from The Scene were beamed live to teenagers in grey post-war households across the land. Mod was now fodder for the masses, and whilst the producers and TV execs couldn’t have been happier, for true modernists this was the beginning of the end.
Shocked that their beloved lifestyle had been wrenched from their Soho sanctuary and fed to a clueless public unaware of its deeper meaning, they knew what would follow. The surface would barely be scratched, the music covered by shiny pop stars, the look cheapened and marketed to the vacant high street hordes. Just three years later, The Scene was no more, and The Mods retreated further underground, evolving into Skinheads, Suedeheads and eventually Casuals.
Sadly, popular culture remains an all-consuming behemoth; but if you look past the overly excitable, shiny and media-driven culture, something of that cool and edgy spirit remains. If you look closely enough and have an eye for detail, you’ll spot the aesthetic of modernism still breathing just below the surface in music, fashion, art, and design. It’s still there—just deeper underground, waiting to be discovered and still as cool as it was over 60 years ago.
Dedicated to my late father Douglas and his brother, my inspirational Uncle Guillermo. Both rock & rollers at heart who became Mods of their own making. They navigated the dizzying path that took in the French Nouvelle Vague via the lights of swinging ’60s London, Paris & Barcelona to the Ivy League and beyond, still retaining the values of true Modernism – always moving forward and with style.
