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.

Fringe benefits (further thoughts on new romanticism)

So-called New Romanticism has been much on my mind of late. (a) because I’ve just secured tickets to see ABC perform the entire Lexicon of Love with full orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in April, and I’m wondering if I still fit into my gold lame jockstrap; (b) I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book called Bonfire of the Brands by a chap called Neil Boorman. Boorman was a brand fetishist, obsessed with constructing himself and judging others according to labels. He then underwent a Damascene conversion, saw how he was being hoodwinked by the black arts of marketing, and decided to destroy his colossal cache of branded schmuter in a public conflagration. What’s really interesting about the book is Boorman’s insights into how his identity and sense of self-worth had been built up over the years through the props of apparel. Like some scarecrow constructed out of designer dreams, he was entirely what he wore. He traced this tendency back to playground peer pressure, and turning up to school in the early 90s wearing the wrong brand of sneakers. The shame, the ostracism, from that moment he would always wear the right labels, so he would always be loved.

This set me thinking. Ten years older than Boorman, I had a very different experience, and wonder how much of what I’m about emerged from the crucible of pop cultural influence. So indulge me as I sprawl on the couch for a few sessions. Romance is about to get ‘New’, and all about Me (sorry).

Let me whisk you back to Croydon 1981, and what may have been my equivalent of Boorman’s defining moment. Whilst his milieu was the trainer tribes of street style (sic.), it just so happened that when I emerged into fully-formed fashion awareness the role models flitting glamorously before me subscribed to and encouraged a very different mindset. Discerning dissent, rather than tribal conformity, was the creed I signed up to, and this may also have had far-reaching effects.

‘New Romanticism’ was my moment. A Croydon-lite version of it, adopted long after the real innovators had moved on, but still resplendent with the originary spirit, which made it different from most style cults then or since. From Teddy Boys to Hoodies, most youth style cults prescribe uniforms of identification and identity. To ‘be’ and ‘belong’ depends on adopting tribal insignia. Length of coat, cut of hair, latest label, or coat worn inside out, upside down, or with the sales tag still dangling from it (yawn), the majority of movements encouraged cults of conformity. Mod was slightly different and more sophisticated (constantly moving on, yet still a cult, albeit for the cognoscenti); Punk ripped it up and started again, but was still easily emulated. ‘New Romanticism’ took the elitism of Mod, the extravagance of Punk and made dressing up less about belonging as escaping. It was anti-tribal, defined by an urgent need to actively avoid what the twerp next to you was wearing. This meant going to extremes, but that’s what the 80s were about (and Christ knows how we got away with it). The question was not what shall I wear, but who shall I be (Cossack, lounge lizard, dandy highwayman?) If two outfits were the same that night, you’d failed.

Yes, I know it all went horribly wrong. As the 80s became the 80s proper all this inventiveness and attitude somehow came to sanction mullets, far too much hair product and the triumph of style over substance (abuse). But I do wonder, if Boorman took his identity from this playground baptism into brands, whether I became a difficult little swine, a dedicated cynic and non-conformist (I’m not sure I even want to be labeled these things), partly because of the parade of powder, pout and pose that flounced past me at that moment. Its creed: dream, but also dissent; display but also discern. Can this unstable vinaigrette of sentimental cynicism I’ve been shaking and slopping before you derive from the mere accidental epiphany of a fringe flopped tantalisingly across a suburban TV screen nearly 30 years ago? I'm not talking about dressing up (I long gave up that lark), but some deeper vestige of this attitude that remained when I wiped the blusher off for the very last time? To be explored further…