Related #2: What's Your Time Period?

If I had to pick a time period, I'd pick the 60's and be a mod.  Typical of people who always want that they can't have, I don't have the legs for micro minis and am deathly afraid of scooters (or any two-wheeled transport).  I would be a terrible mod.

In yesterday's post, I talked about my dad and the punk movement in Dublin.  Any street style phenomenon that predates digital cameras in Ireland is usually woefully underdocumented.  Maybe it's because Ireland is such a small country, maybe it's because we're all really lazy - who knows?

On top of that, Mod culture is also woefully underdocumented (at least in comparison with other subcultures like punk) so there's not a lot to go on.  But here are a few Mod Links...

Mods go wild in Margate after a clash with rockers (source)

For all things Mod, Modculture is the go-to place.

Polka dot mod mini from Nod to Mod Vintage (could there be a more appropriate name for this shop?)

Do you want to organise your very own Mod Club Night?  Click here.

Richard Nicoll's collection for Fred Perry has more than a whiff of Mod to it.

Listen to the Modcast - more music oriented, but worth a listen.  Guests have included Matt Berry.  Oh Matt.  I love your dulcet tones.

Minidress from Hellhound Vintage

From Dave's Mod Photos

Recollections of a Mod life (lots more pics here)

Jumper Dress from Novella Bleu

Kinda Sorta Love...

...The Eurovision, which for one night only turns everything the most amazing shade of camp.  This is the Serbian entry Nina, who sang... er, I have no idea.  In my mind, it sounds a bit like this.

Source



Need more pictures of this act. Source

  Coloured tights, bright colours, patterns, sharp bobs, heavy eye make-up, micro minis.  Remind you of anyone?

Sandie Shaw, Eurovision winner 1967.  Source

Wild for Kicks: The Beat Girl (Part II)

Beat Girl title card, image via Imageshack

 Some of you readers may remember a post I wrote back in November about 'Beat Girl', a 60's teensploitation film.  It has everything: Christopher Lee as a strip club operator, rebellious teens, rowdy beatnik tunes and an bouffanted ingenue who later became a successful ye-ye (nothing to do with yo-yos) singer in France - you know, all the things a modern girl wants in a good film.

Teenage exploitation flicks are highly underrated as a genre. Granted, the scripts are usually terrible, dialogue is delivered in the manner of Bela Lugosi at the dentist and I could burst several car tyres in the many plotholes that spring up all over the place. Then again, the appeal of these films is in the general apathetic yet highly self-involved natures of the characters, which makes them embark on many a high-spirited, poorly thought out, self-destructive adventure. They're just SO stylish, with their casually thrown on, yet meticulously put together outfits (it doesn't hurt that the films were made in an era that is now looked on nostalgically in terms of style). It's for the same reasons that so many people love watching Skins today.

Now, thanks to the Movies section on Youtube, you can watch Beat Girl in it's unadulterated, sleazy, slightly crackly form! Don't say I'm not good to you. Watch this film while doing the frug and smoking gauloises (or just with a cup of tea - make sure that you do the frug at some stage though).



P.S: Now THIS is how you do the frug.  Snazzy plaid-jacketed dancing partner optional.

Frug instructions via Flickr

Hells Angels - not your typical Old Ladies

One of those authors that I always felt that I should get into, and yet never did, was Hunter S. Thompson. I studied him as part of a New Journalism class in college and really enjoyed it, but I hit a massive stumbling block with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I read one chapter, then put it down. At this late stage it's like telling a friend that you'll call them for coffee, but you end up forgetting, then when you meet them in town there's this frosty silence... It's a bit like that.

I tried to read Hells Angels too, I really really did. But I just ended up forgetting about it as well. When I think about it I can see Thompson as one of those authors that you're supposed to like, but not everyone does. Case in point - I was seeing a guy on and off for a few years and throughout several house moves he always had a copy of Fear and Loathing beside his bed. As far as I know, it's still there. And I bet he still hasn't finished it.

The photos below (excuse the arrows on either side, the images are screen grabs) have nothing to do with Thompson, but a lot to do with Hells Angels.  More specifically, the wives and girlfriends of the Hells Angels, charmingly titled the Old Ladies. The pictures above and below were taken by Life photographer Bill Ray in 1965, but have never been published or seen by the public until now.  I love looking at the Old ladies and their mix of mannish clothing with bouffants, eyeliner and a smidge of amphetamines.

Maybe this will help me to finish Hells Angels after all... but then again, maybe it won't.

A taste of London

It amazing what pops up when you google 'Swinging London', isn't it?  I was looking for something suitably Carnaby Street-esque and when I stumbled upon this gem.  Below are stills from the film Smashing Time, which I've never seen but will probably now make it my life's work to get a copy based just on captions of these pictures alone.

The film stars Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham (now regrettably forgotten star of totally amazing Brit film, A Taste of Honey - add it to your download list and weep) as two Northern Lasses who move to London Town as get into all sorts of now iconic comical mishaps.  Captions are taken from the Tushington webpage so *spoiler alert* ahoy!

Brenda and Yvonne, two naive lasses from the north of England, arrive in Swinging London.

"If you're bold, you'll spend your gold, As I do ... On new ... CLOTHES!"
Brenda makes the scene, looking grand in her fashionably trendy new clothes – secondhand, of course!

Still wearing their nightclub-hostess clothes, Yvonne and Brenda drag themselves home at dawn...

Brenda inspects the mod merchandise at her new job at the Too Much boutique.

With Tom's help, Brenda becomes a successful model.

But anyway, I'm getting over what was supposed to be the original point of my post.  I'll be going to London for a few days in September with the boyfriend for some art, some shopping and lots and lots of eating.  So, if anyone has any suggestions of places to go, people to see and things to eat that might be slightly off the beaten track, please leave a comment and let me know!  All Londoninium-related feedback is incredibly welcome.

Decades Festival Inspiration

This weekends marks the second year of the Decades Festival, a massive dress-up weekend that is centred around the many pubs and clubs in Cork City.  The premise is simple - pick a decade in the 20th century, dress according to that decade and see which pubs are putting events to which decade.  Events include 80's raves, dignified dos with flappers and cocktails and (my favourite) a 50's bowling event with milkshake cocktails.  Mmm, cloying...

I've been fantasising about what I might dress up as and, as usual, I've picked the two decades most unforgiving to a real body type, the 60's and the 20's.  Here are some shots from some great magazine editorials.  The first is Face Of '66 for September's L'Officiel Singapore, which is all lithe limbs, Vidal Sassoon hair and meticulously outlined eyes.










Here are a few pages from a much larger spread in TEST.  Shot by Nicholas Lawn using vintage photo effects, it's atypical of the 20's styling we'd usually see (like OTT almost baroque Galliano homages to the Bright Young Things) but it's a good source for inspiration for those who want to do the twenties a little bit differently.








Images via Fashion Gone Rogue