The photographs were taken earlier in the year and the magazine published in September 1962. Later on, the young men were made clear that their style and fashion had changed by the time the magazine was published.
A Mod (short for ‘modernist’) was a subculture that began in late 1950s London and spread throughout the country, influencing fashion, music and youth culture. Stamford Hill in the 1960s had all the key ingredients of the Mod movement – a community of working-class and upwardly mobile Eastenders, young people with access to American rhythm and blues music on their doorstep, high street retail stores with the newest fashions, and access to tailors in the City of London.
The Stamford Hill Mod Icon: Marc Bolan
In September 1962 Town magazine introduced the country to Marc Bolan, then just 15 years old, and his two mates, Peter Sugar and Micheal Simmonds. Town started life as Man About Town and was one of the earliest British men’s style magazines. Its 1962 feature about ‘young men who live for clothes and pleasure’ captured the fashions and aspirations of the Mod subculture many young people identified with. For young men, this included fashion, often tailor-made suits; music including American soul, rhythm and blues, ska, and jazz; and scooters, usually Italian Lambrettas or Vespas.
Mark Feld (later Marc Bolan) was born on 30 September 1947, the son of Simeon and Phyllis Feld. In 1962 Simeon was a lorry driver and Phyllis worked in Berwick Market in Central London and they lived at 25 Stoke Newington Common. Mark attended Northwold Primary School in Clapton and then William Wordsworth Secondary Modern School in Shacklewell Lane before his family moved to a prefab house in Wimbledon. Music and clothes were obsessions from an early age, he wanted to be different from the other kids and wear the newest fashions.
“I’ve got ten suits, eight sports jackets, fifteen pairs of slacks, thirty to thirty-five good shirts, about twenty jumpers, three leather jackets, two suede jackets, five or six pairs of shoes thirty exceptionally good ties.”
Mark Feld, Town magazine, September 1962
This huge wardrobe also meant responsibility for caring for your clothes and Mark’s mum said ‘He irons his shirts himself. I can’t do them half as well’. In 1965 Mark ditched the Mod look and changed his name to Marc Bolan. His upbringing in Stamford Hill and involvement in the counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s led to him founding Tyrannosaurus Rex, initially playing psychedelic rock music and then pioneering the Glam Rock music genre, and finally he became a teen pop idol with T.Rex in 1971. He was killed in a car crash in 1977.
Looking Sharp
1960s Mod fashion was characterised by clean lines, sharp tailoring, and bold patterns and outfits that were youthful, vibrant, and versatile. A Mod three piece men’s suit had a clean close fitting line, was single breasted, three buttoned with two and a quarter inch wide lapels, ticket pockets and low fitting trousers with slanted frog mouth pockets. Suits were usually either Italian made, or handmade, often by local East End Jewish tailors like Bilgorri in Bishopsgate or designer-made by John Stevens in Carnaby Street. Sometimes they were bought from menswear shop Burtons and fashion retailer C&A.
Kingsland Waste Market was the place to get a tailor-made pin collared, button down shirt in different colours. A bargain would also be found in clothing retailers like C&A and Woolworths and then taken to a tailor to have it altered to look like those made by influential menswear designer John Michael Ingram. A tailored suit or handmade shoes could cost up to two weeks’ wages for some people.
Stamford Hill had a large Jewish community and many of the young boys were introduced to suits as part of their bar mitzvah, a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony for a 13-year-old boy that marks his transition into religious adulthood. Many Jewish Mods found their passion for fashion after this event in their life.
“…the Jews[ish boys] had a Bar-Mitzvah at the age thirteen when they were required to get a suit, and their fathers being tailors they had the pick of the new materials – they had the Nylon, the Rayon, the Mohair, so these kids were dressed in these…the Jews again were the first people I ever saw wearing them [suits] on Stamford Hill and there shops that sold them.”
Penny Reel, Hackney Museum 2013.119
of the 1960s.
By the early 1970s a well-made suit was no longer fashionable for young men as a rite of passage. Fewer young people were following family footsteps and training to be tailors. Established tailors like Harry Bilgorri, who had grown up in Stoke Newington, saw a steady fall in customer demand and skilled staff and ended up closing their businesses.
Access to the Newest Music
British Mod music evolved alongside the fashion choices of the era and it was central to the identity of local Mods. In the 1960s, a network of independent shops selling an assortment of household items saw selling vinyl records with American influenced R&B, soul, jazz and ska music as an excellent business opportunity. Some record shops branched out and set up their own record labels, releasing music which they felt would sell in the UK market.
Jewish couple Rita and Benny Isen (later King) of Stamford Hill were among the first to release American and Caribbean influenced music in Britain. Their record shop opened at 282 Stamford Hill and then a few years later moved to 260. By 1963 they were releasing records on their own label, R & B Records Ltd. While Benny looked after the shop, Rita travelled abroad to meet producers and licence music for release in the UK. The shop was packed on Friday evenings after the Sabbath and all day Saturday, with Mods listening to the newest releases.
“Rita’s always had it. Vinyls in those days were like gold dust. If you wanted something you’d heard on [Radio] Luxembourg or whatever programme you were listening to, you’d go to Rita’s and say have you got this, she’d trundle off upstairs and come back with a pile of ‘em.”
Ian Kleinberg, remembering the first record he bought at R&B for his Mum’s birthday.
Mod Youth Culture
Many considered Stanford Hill a good place to be a teenager. Some remembered meeting up with friends at the Wimpy bar, Montegino’s the Italian café, the Casbah café, Carmel’s or the E & A salt beef bar where they could get a salt beef sandwich on rye bread with hot mustard. They could go to the Victoria Boys Club or the tea house in Springfield Park. Others remembered hanging out and playing pinball at the Amusement Arcade, known as the Schtip, or going to the first ten-pin bowling alley in Europe, opened in a converted ABC cinema in Stamford Hill, a popular place to meet girls.
One of the most popular places for local Mods to meet was on Stamford Hill where people recall there would be at least 200 Mods gathered, showing off the latest in jackets, shirts and shoes, trying to find out where the best Saturday party was. Mods went to clubs or dance palais, or dancehalls, like Loyola Hall in Stamford Hill, the Tottenham Royal, or Ilford Palais. Barrys in the Narrow Way in Hackney Central was one of the few local clubs. Many Mods went to central London dancehalls and clubs including the Discotheque, Whiskey Go Go, The Scene Club or The Flamingo, or even as far as Croydon to the Calypso Hall to dance to soul, rhythm and blues, ska, and jazz music.
“Just a bit ago me and Michael were at this dance hall in Hackney. We twist a lot. We were twisting … and it used to cause a lot of trouble that we were told to stop it. Nowadays everyone twists so we have a different twist. I mean there’s the straight twist and the rock twist and the sophisticated twist, you have to be different.”
Peter Sugar, Town magazine, September 1962
The original Mod era was short lived between 1962-1965 but it transformed British popular culture and Stamford Hill had a key role in this with singers like Hackney-born Helen Shapiro who performed in Stamford Hill as a teenager; R&B records which transformed young people’s access to the newest music from North America; and Marc Bolan, whose profile in Town magazine popularised what became known as ‘Mods’.
Watch this film of Marc Bolan’s old friends remembering how the Mod movement began to form in the late 1950s Hackney and Stamford Hill, and reminisce about the clubs, music, shops and fashion that shaped it throughout the 1960s.
Content for this blog featured in the display ‘Stamford Hill Mods: Genesis of Marc Bolan’ at Hackney Museum 7 November 2012 – January 2013. Many people were involved in this display, sharing their memories, research and Mods memorabilia and we would like to thank all of them.