Mod (subculture)

Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in late 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries.^[1] It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz.^[2]

Elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits), music (including soul, rhythm and blues and ska, but mainly jazz). They rode motor scooters, usually Lambrettas or Vespas. In the mid-1960s, members of the subculture listened to rock groups with rhythm and blues (R&B) influences, such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.^[3]

During the early to mid-1960s, as the mod movement grew and spread throughout Britain, certain elements of the mod scene became engaged in well-publicised clashes with members of a rival subculture, the rockers.^[4] The conflict between mods and rockers led sociologist Stanley Cohen to use the term "moral panic" in his study about the two youth subcultures,^[5] in which he examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s.^[6]

By 1965, conflicts between mods and rockers began to subside and mods increasingly gravitated towards pop art and psychedelia. London became synonymous with fashion, music, and pop culture in those years, a period often referred to as "Swinging London". During that time, mod fashions spread to other countries. Mod was then viewed less as an isolated subculture, but as emblematic of the larger youth culture of the era. As mod became more cosmopolitan during the "Swinging London" period, some working-class "street mods" splintered off, forming other groups such as the skinheads.

By the early 1970s, mod and psychedelia had faded in popularity, with hard rock and glam rock styles taking over. In the late 1970s, there was a mod revival in Britain, which attempted to replicate the "scooter" period look and styles of the early to mid-1960s. It was followed by a similar mod revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in southern California.^[7][8]