Yet further thoughts on New Romanticism and identity

Forgive my silence. I've been, well, doing stuff. I know real bloggers do stuff, and then this stuff is grist to their blogging mills. Happy they. The stuff I do - my dear, too tedious to trouble you with - simply gets in the way of the stuff I think about and sporadically write about. Especially this stuff, which happened way back in the past. So here, belatedly, is part two of my musty musings on New Romanticism and identity.

I'd broached the, largely rhetorical, notion that style might have a bit more substance when it appears at a definitive moment in our development. Specifically in my case, where a good measure of iconoclasm and cynicism (or 'smart-ass trouble-maker' as my teachers no doubt termed it), may have been cause or effect in my adoption of a style cult allergic to acquiescence.

Regard the 'erbert in the photo, which was me in my 'Brideshead' phase of image essaying. Consider that I had not been to a public school, in fact had got through and very swiftly out of the state school I attended, largely untroubled by education, and you might wonder what confounded conceit compelled such white trash from Croydon to get up in such high-faluting drag. The look of it, merely the look of it. 'Twas all that mattered back then.

Creativity, imagination, improvisation, were all in the service of self-expression, and, while still at school, provocation. 'Boys hair must not be longer than the collar at the back', as the school rules stipulated. So my fringe brushed my collar bone, cropped up neatly at the back. 'Girls must not wear make up to school'. Of course, sir... and boys? With what glee we brought about a gender-bending codicil to their sartorial statutes. A very velvet revolution. And at 16 I was out of there, sans qualifications. Hairdressing called, eventually at Kensington Market, the very Mecca of trendydom back then.

But then a funny thing happened. Looks led me to books, and through books into forging a very different identity for myself. 'Forging' in all senses, as there was more than a measure of guileless imposture in the transformation from hairdresser to intellectual, dunce to don, over the next 10 years. My journey from high lights to high table (Merton College, Oxford if you please), all started simply because I picked up Brideshead Revisited as a style manual, and discovered I actually liked reading books when not forced to by a teacher. The next revelation was that I had a brain (up yours Mr Jenkins, BEd), and there was plenty scope for cheek and iconoclasm, by whetting its edge against the thought and expression of the past. I also learned what was new about the Romanticism I'd been flirting with, and where the roots of those stances and sentiments lie. My pretentious apprenticeship was bearing fruit as song lyrics and allusions suddenly made sense.

It is difficult for me now to separate the dancer from the dance, the dandy from the don with any precision as to cause and effect. I can just be thankful my sartorial coming of age coincided with a highly creative moment in pop culture, and not soon after, when pop lost touch with ideas and yoofs forgot how to dress. Had it been sneakers, hoodies and student loans I might never have gained a glimpse of those stars.