A mainly British phenomenon, the Teddy Boy subculture started among teenagers in London in the early 1950s, and rapidly spread across the UK, becoming strongly associated with American rock and roll music. After World War II, male youths in delinquent gangs who had adopted Edwardian-era fashion were sometimes known as “Cosh Boys”, or “Edwardians”. But the name Teddy Boy was coined when a 23 September 1953 Daily Express newspaper report headline shortened Edwardian to Teddy. Nevertheless, the term had previously been used in Edwardian England to refer to members of the Territorial Army (see for example The Swoop! written by P. G. Wodehouse in 1909).. This was a reference to the king, Edward VII, in whose service they were.
In post-war Britain, rationing continued to affect the fashion industry, and men’s tailors in central London devised a style based on Edwardian clothing hoping to sell to young officers being demobbed from the services. However, the style—featuring tapered trousers, long jackets similar to post-war American zoot suits, and fancy waistcoats—was not popular with its target market, leaving tailors with piles of unsold clothing which, to recoup losses, were sold cheaply to menswear shops elsewhere in London. While there had been some affluent adoption—”an extravagant upper-class snub to the post-war Labour Government and its message of austerity”—it was predominantly suburban working-class youth who adopted and adapted the look (“spiv” and cosh boy associations also hastened its middle-class rejection) and, around 1952, what became the “Teddy Boy” style began to emerge, gradually spreading across Britain. The 1953 film Cosh Boy (US: The Slasher), written by Lewis Gilbert and Vernon Harris, makes an early reference to the style when the character, Roy (James Kenny), speaks the words “[it’s a] drape…the latest cut”.
Although there had been youth groups with their own dress codes called scuttlers in 19th-century Liverpool and Manchester, Teddy Boys were the first youth group in Britain to differentiate themselves as teenagers, helping create a youth market. The 1955 US film Blackboard Jungle marked a watershed in the United Kingdom. When shown in an Elephant and Castle cinema, south London in 1956, the teenage Teddy boy audience began to riot, tearing up seats and dancing in the cinema’s aisles. After that, other riots took place around the country where the film was shown.
Some Teds formed gangs and gained notoriety following violent clashes with rival youth gangs as well as unprovoked attacks on immigrants. The most notable clashes were the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, in which Teddy Boys were present in large numbers and were implicated in attacks on the West Indian community. According to reports released decades after the riots, “Teddy boys armed with iron bars, butcher’s knives and weighted leather belts” participated in mobs “300- to 400-strong” that targeted Black residents, in one night alone leaving “five black men lying unconscious on the pavements of Notting Hill.” Teds were also implicated in the clashes of the 1958 St Ann’s riots in Nottingham.
The violent lifestyle was sensationalised in the pulp novel Teddy Boy by Ernest Ryman, first published in the UK in 1958.
Teddy Girls
Teddy Girls (also called Judies)[16] wore drape jackets, pencil skirts, hobble skirts, long plaits, rolled-up jeans, flat shoes, tailored jackets with velvet collars, straw boater hats, cameo brooches, espadrilles, coolie hats and long, elegant clutch bags. Later, they adopted the American fashions of toreador trousers, voluminous circle skirts, and hair in ponytails.
The Teddy Girls’ choices of clothes were not intended strictly for aesthetic effect; these girls were collectively rejecting post-war austerity. They were young working-class women from the poorer districts of London. They would typically leave school at the age of 14 or 15 and work in factories or offices. Teddy Girls spent much of their free time buying or making their trademark clothes. Their style originated from a head-turning, fastidious style from the fashion houses, which had launched haute-couture clothing lines recalling the Edwardian era.
The style was documented by Ken Russell in a June 1955 series of Picture Post photographs titled “Teddy Girls”. Russell noted that the female counterpart of the Teddy Boy subculture was overlooked, saying “No one paid much attention to the teddy girls before I did them, though there was plenty on teddy boys.” (Wikipedia)
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