Iain McMillan Sept 2026
What is it all about then, the subculture? Misunderstood by many and lived by the few. All starting way back in the fifties when a post war generation got off on Rock n Roll and RnB. They paraded in drainpipe trousers and drape coats, slicked their hair into a duck’s arse. Parents were mortified and the public terrified. Just as it should be, but for those who were there it shaped them. You might have seen some of them as pensioners with the hair now nicotine stained and the tattoos faded but the signs were still there.
Next came the Mods. An elitest lot who emerged from the jazz scene in the late fifties. They wore the best clothes and rode slick Italian scooters wearing the fishtail army coats to protect their precious suits underneath. They knew what they liked. Rare soul music and RnB. Dancing all night chemically assisted. They idolised The Small Faces and The Who. As the sixties came to an end some tuned in, dropped out and grew their hair. The more working class amongst them shaved their heads and listened to reggae. Some of them were Mods for life. They reemerged in the late seventies and kept reinventing themselves in one form or another despite the plastics and the pretty green lot. Mod simply refused to die.
My first introduction to any kind of tribe was in the very early eighties as a kid who was now too big for Star Wars and needed a new fix. Too young to know better I was tuned to Top of the Pops every Thursday night with millions like me. The choice was endless. The Smiths were too weird for my young ears, some of the boys looked like girls, some of it wasn’t even music, it was all electronic. Suggs though, he knew the script. Madness was my everything. The music, that madness walk, the boots and the clothes. I signed up immediately. There were others like me who idolised the Nutty Boys. Some called them skinheads. Others rude boys. There were other bands like them too, The Specials, The Beat and Bad Manners. I will never forget the feeling I had while walking to school in a Fred Perry, Sta Press and Dr Martin boots. I was like a peacock. There was no going back. Not now, not ever.
With secondary school looming, I was introduced to a huge mish mash of tribes in this big school. Mods seemed to rule the roost in the cool stakes. Skinheads were the hardest. Punks were forever getting chucked out of school stinking of glue and goths got ran out of town. Nobody seemed to understand the misunderstood Smiths fans. Metal heads loved noise and never cut their hair.
With my Fred Perry V-necks and dog tooth trousers becoming old hat there was a new group emerging in the distance. This lot wouldn’t entertain black and white clobber. It was all pastel colours and sporty. Some called themselves The Casuals. There wasn’t a parent in the land who would be horrified at this lot’s dress sense. They wore golf jumpers, nice white tennis shoes, Farah slacks and cagoules. The biggest issue was the price of this new look. It was all Italian sportswear that cost an arm and a leg. The local market stalls didn’t cater for the casuals. You had to save up and go into Austin Reeds with the gentlemen who worked in the city and played tennis on weekends. But those first Pringle lambswool knits gave me that same feeling. Casual had a superiority complex. I worked my arse off through school on paper rounds and milk rounds chasing that feeling. Kappa ski jackets, kicker boots, Sergio Tacchini tracksuits, adidas Colorado hoodies, pod sandals (we try and not mention them), Lacoste polos, Jumbo cords, training shoes, lots and lots of training shoes, a Burberry scarf was a must. My parents horrified at the price and having to pick me up from the police station after football matches with me looking like an innocent victim in my pink sweatshirt and permed hair.
Casual took fashion and tribalism to a different level. Football replaced the music and you had to be willing to take your life in your hands and put your hand in your pocket. I loved it from the word go.
As I went into the world of full-time employment, I was lucky enough to work bang in the middle of the town. Glasgow in the early nineties was a treasure trove of shops. Greeves sports, Cruise, Smiths menswear, The Warehouse, Hoi Polloi and the newly opened Italian centre homing a shop stacked full of Armani. The £29.50 I was earning had to kit me out and fund my ever-emerging social life but somehow, I managed it. A good time to be young, particularly as some clever dick had invented these little white pills with a dove imprinted on them.
A whole generation took to dancing and staying awake all weekend travelling the length and breadth of the country feeling the love. Turns out a lot of the other casuals were actually alright as football became a bit less appealing. The casuals had started something with the clothes though and joe public had cottoned on and many who hadn’t stepped foot on a football terracing had adopted the look. Aspecto in Glasgow sold Timberlands in their thousands. Everybody’s jeans had that little gold eagle on the back pocket and don’t even start me on Ralph Lauren.
Like all tribes and subcultures, they emerge from those who appreciate the attention to detail wither that be in the clothes or the music. They light the way forward to like mined souls who sadly pass the baton to the masses, and it all gets watered down a bit and becomes old hat. Some people grow up and responsibility changes direction for them some simply lose interest. For some of us though the tribes and subcultures of our youth have shaped us and became a part of who we are. Lifelong friendships were formed and standards were maintained through the decades. It meant something far more than youth culture. Paul Weller one famously said, “I will always be a mod, you can bury me a mod”. Nailing your colours to the mast of mod for life is admiral in my opinion. A lifelong dedication to the cause. Sadly, the youth of today have very little choice in what tribe to belong to apart from maybe the Ultras in the football grounds across Europe.
I think no matter what age I reach there will always be a part of me driven by the youth I once was and I will always keep one eye of the ball when it comes to the holy trinity of football, music and clobber. Without it I would somehow feel incomplete. I’m grateful to grow up when I did and to have made the friends I have through shared passion. There are millions like me; we just lurk in the shadows a bit more these days.
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