00:00Good morning. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to speak to
00:07Martin this morning. Martin, who is Curator of Fashion and Textile at Brighton and Hove Museum.
00:12A really exciting exhibition coming up. It's the In Crowd, Mod, Fashion and Style, 1958 to 66.
00:22Sounds like kind of exhibition that more or less has to happen in Brighton, doesn't it?
00:25Could be London, but has to be Brighton, really.
00:30I think it has to be Brighton. Yeah, Brighton is the spiritual home of mods.
00:34You know, if they weren't in London in the 60s, they were down in Brighton, you know, on their scooters.
00:39And it's since the 60s, really, it's all held the legacy of mod, the mod movement, mod lifestyle, mod music.
00:47So even today, in August, we have a big mod weekend.
00:53And yeah, we're thrilled that the museum's staging the exhibition, got incredible clothes.
00:58Really interesting thing, isn't it? There's so many fashions come and go, don't they?
01:02But as you were saying, there are still millions of mods around.
01:05So how come this one has had such a, this fashion has had such a hold on people all these years later?
01:11Yeah, no, it's, well, it's, I mean, we're just sort of, you know, there's other street sort of fashions that come and go, it's all punk rockers and goths.
01:21But I think because mod is, it's perennial, you know, they took their influences from everywhere.
01:29So whether it was from English tailoring, American sportswear, Italian knitwear, you know, so it took on lots of influences.
01:38It's very smart and everyone looks great in it.
01:41So I think that's why it's stayed.
01:44It's still part of the fashion industry.
01:45You know, you get, you know, you look at Dior's menswear collection of just a year ago and it's completely mod.
01:51So it's, it's still here and it's not going to be going away.
01:55And it was men waking up to fashion, wasn't it?
01:57That was a key part of it, fashion that they'd probably always ignored.
02:01Yeah, well, exactly.
02:04I mean, men had always sort of been not really allowed to engage with fashion.
02:11If you took too much interest in your own appearance, you know, it was deemed as sort of not one, you weren't a particularly serious person.
02:19Or, you know, you were maybe considered gay, which in times gone by, wasn't considered, you know, a lifestyle to be, you know, to aspire to.
02:29Thankfully, that's all changed.
02:31But, you know, from fashion in men's life has always been quite a difficult thing across the 20th century.
02:37And lots of people didn't want to engage with it.
02:39And then mods come along with absolute focus on clothing and the way they looked.
02:45And it was men dressing for themselves.
02:48So they would dress to sort of not compete, but to actually impress their mates.
02:53So they wanted to be the best dressed within their circle of friends.
02:58So they dressed for each other.
02:59And that really hadn't happened before.
03:01These guys were working class guys.
03:04So it was the first time that they felt that they had a voice in the world and that they could, through dress, they could be part of a bigger world.
03:13So it was really, really important guys to engage with fashion.
03:18You say a statement, having a voice.
03:20It was a statement, wasn't it?
03:22What was a mod in 1958-59 saying by dressing as a mod, do you think?
03:27It was a rejection of what had gone before.
03:30You know, you have to remember the war finished in 1945.
03:35There was full employment.
03:38This was the first time that teenagers existed.
03:41You know, teenagers hadn't existed before the war.
03:42And for us, it's quite a strange thing to consider.
03:46But there was no money.
03:47Teenagers, people that were from, you know, 12, 13 to 20, they weren't in employment before the war.
03:54They had no money.
03:55There was no reason for there to be any culture.
03:57And then post-war, this teenager emerged because kids were going to work and they were earning money.
04:06They were at home.
04:08They didn't have to spend money on mortgages, on bills.
04:11You know, they might pay their parents a bit of rent.
04:13But really, they had a big disposable income.
04:16And then all of a sudden, this whole sort of culture emerged.
04:20And it was to do with music.
04:22It was to do with fashion.
04:23It was to do with shopping.
04:24It was to do with clubbing.
04:26And so these people created their own scene where they were sort of in control of what they wore, who they saw, what they did.
04:34And, you know, create their own world.
04:37It sounds a fascinating exhibition.
04:39It's the in-crowd, mod, fashion and style, 1958 to 66 at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.
04:45Martin, lovely to speak to you.
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