Mod to Suedehead

yankmod said:

Basset,speaking of the Duffle coat (I always liked them,never had one)like you say a few years ago in NYC,the winter coat selection went from synthetic materials to wool coats of every shape and size.Lots of pea coats and especially the Duffle coat as well.NY(and I suspect London)Is extremely trendy.Each season there is an item or items that everyone and their maid starts wearing.Autumn 2004 it was Clark's Desert boots in a thousand colors.Everyone had them.And the year before it was Converse All Stars.I always wore what I wanted(being a bohemian and self employed I didn't answer to anyone)But every once in a while what I was wearing became trendy in NYC and sometimes I would switch and sometimes I would not.The Duffle Coat to me is an early 50's(pre R & R)Ivy League item.Although I've seen photos of The Sonics wearing them in the early 60's.

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Speaking of the high street bringing stuff back
Probably around 4 years ago is when I went from just throwing on whatever I had lying around to caring about what I wore. It was a dramatic change. I'm can't really remember what triggered it but it was probably a combination of at least my dad's Vespa, his Ski music and This is England. Doing some research on the two (Mods and Skin), I could see they looks sharp and I thought to myself 'what am I doing?'. So from then on I read, researched and started building a wardrobe knowing I wanted Harringtons from the start.

More to the point. I didn't want to order a Baracuta online, unsure of fit (and I knew by then, fit was important!), so I decided to wait it out until I had the chance to try one on. Low and behold, November 2010, Misfits series 2, the lead character is wearing a black Harrington and everyone is buying cheap eBay ones and cheap Camden market ones before I'd had the chance to buy my pride and joy.

Question time:
You guys (UK, it appears Baracuta were more common in the US) speak of Sky Jump as THE Harrington from the day.
1) Do they fit closer to the original G9 or the slim fit G9? (I'm a skinny lad unfortunately)
2) Why do I never see any Sky Jump's on eBay? I'd like something original to sit along side my Baracuta's



yankmod said:

Good one M.O.M.

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Don't encourage him...

Man-of-Mystery said:

Where the M6 is cobbled and rainbows are in black-and-white, right?

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Very witty - I have always had the impression that everything north of Watford was seen as black and white - no grey areas and bluntly spoken. - perhaps thats just Yorkshire !! ??

Basset said:

Indeed i did Ed, started off scratching me name in pebble dash/render etc, before moving on to a permanent marker, usualy leaving me name, other things would be a band name, what mob you knocked about with, football as mentioned, what you'd got up to with a girl, or a good old fashioned insult i.e name... is a bellend, but my fav was the comedy penis complete with vinegar effects.

Never bothered with a spray can, to bulky to carry around, expensieve and a waste if you were doing up a bike.

Heres some from up the road from me, those who've read pressure drop's book will know what it's about, theres not much of this left in Bristol now

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The Tote we remember it well .. horses on the terraces .

For MoM the contact details of the bird's pic I posted some weeks back:

http://www.friendsreunited.com/things-we-wore-1970/Memory/71883d0c-d6f1-4a7f-ba01-a0830142b745

She may (even) have more?

Have we had this one?



Click on to enlarge... looks like a few civilians caught on the edges of this one. (Ooops!)



Ed Vaughan said:

For MoM the contact details of the bird's pic I posted some weeks back:
http://www.friendsreunited.com/things-we-wore-1970/Memory/71883d0c-d6f1-4a7f-ba01-a0830142b745
She may (even) have more?

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How lovely, Ed - must have missed the first posting. Let's hope so.

Yes, welcome back Little Queenie – although I have not been very constant myself lately. A biggish change on the work front and some time away in Israel over the last couple of months have meant that I have become very neglectful on the ‘social networking’ side of things!

So much good stuff to catch up on. I like the snapshots of life back in the day. As has been said there were so many similarities.

Saturdays were always tricky for me in 1969 as I found myself working in an old fashioned department store. This meant getting up to Ilford Palais on time was a bit of a rush. No time for the fry-up that Roy so lovingly recalls, there was just time to wash, change and then back on the train from Chelmsford to Ilford, changing at Shenfield and of course standing all the way in an empty carriage! The feeling of excitement as you walked through those doors and went to the bar which looked down on the dance floor is impossible to describe.

But I do think working in that store helped cement my growing taste for dressing. Old ‘account customers’ would come in and ask ‘I say old boy do you still have those vests in Sea Island cotton? I want one long enough to cover me thing!’ They were never on display, of course, but I knew where to find them at the back of the store room covered in a layer of dust. The year I spent there may have interfered with my social life but it left a lasting impression.

In particular I remember an old tailor who had a ‘club foot’ as we called it. He was always keen to foster our interest in tailoring and would carry out alterations, refurbs in his own time for a packet of No. 6 I think.

On a slightly different note, I see music referred to here off and on and wonder if for the book we might come up with a ‘top 100’ or something? Just an idea.



Youngj said:

Question time:
You guys (UK, it appears Baracuta were more common in the US) speak of Sky Jump as THE Harrington from the day.
1) Do they fit closer to the original G9 or the slim fit G9? (I'm a skinny lad unfortunately)
2) Why do I never see any Sky Jump's on eBay? I'd like something original to sit along side my Baracuta's

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Roy has some very clear memories of harringtons back in the day over here. Most of my friends got them from Millets, as I did, but I don't recall a particular brand. John Simons stocked harringtons but I am not convinced they were Baracuta back then.

1. don't know.

2. don't know!



Brideshead said:

Roy has some very clear memories of harringtons back in the day over here. Most of my friends got them from Millets, as I did, but I don't recall a particular brand. John Simons stocked harringtons but I am not convinced they were Baracuta back then.
1. don't know.
2. don't know!

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We wore Skyjump Harringintons, Most of us Had Four or Five, I bought mine in the Ivy Shop...but they were not Barracuta, I spoke to John Simmons years ago ..he said he stocked Barracuta in the 60s, But he did not,
I never saw any Skinhead wear a Barracuta, I would have noticed the awful collar, Like all the skinhead cloths back then...as the fashion caught on you could buy crap Harringtons down the market.
I remember going back to the Ivy Shop about 1980, I wanted to buy a Harrington, Brouges and a couple of shirts, he had no Royals, or Harringtons like we wore in the 60s ,so i bought a Barracuta, still not happy with the collar, the only decent American shirts he had was Harford and BD Baggies, which i still have, I left the shop with the Barracuta and a couple of American shirts, I ended up buying a pair of Alfred Sargent Brouges from A J Martin in Maida Vale here in London.

Ed Vaughan said:

Have we had this one?

Click on to enlarge... looks like a few civilians caught on the edges of this one. (Ooops!)

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Great photo Ed. Any idea on date? A quick look - the grebos look late 60s? Young kids on left in mid 60s anoraks. I think this is 64 - 66 - mods

Brideshead said:

On a slightly different note, I see music referred to here off and on and wonder if for the book we might come up with a ‘top 100’ or something? Just an idea.

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Its a good idea as it breaks up the text - besides reggae and tamla there were some decent records in the charts at the time



Aces and Eights said:

Great photo Ed.  Any idea on date?  A quick look - the grebos look late 60s?  Young kids on left in mid 60s anoraks.  I think this is 64 - 66 - mods

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No I would say 69 maybe 70, looking at this brilliant pic anywhere outside London, Western Super Mare, or some other Northern Seaside resort,



Aces and Eights said:

Its a good idea as it breaks up the text - besides reggae and tamla there were some decent records in the charts at the time

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***** Tonk Woman, Spirt in the Sky, Good morning Starshine, Sugar Sugar,Marrakesh Express, Lay Lady Lay, These are all Pop songs that Skinheads listened to in 69.



Lasttye said:

***** Tonk Woman, Spirt in the Sky, Good morning Starshine, Sugar Sugar,Marrakesh Express, Lay Lady Lay, These are all Pop songs that Skinheads listened to in 69.

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... and can I add (purely my faves, despite some being a bit 'hippy' ) : My Cherie Amour, 25:25, Living in the Past, and even Elvis', In the Ghetto... 1969 was a superb summer for me. (Lost my innocence, too.)