Buying a car in the 1950s was prohibitively expensive so many young people, anxious to get themselves onto a set of wheels, choose motor cycles which, while not cheap, were more suited to the pockets of the emerging young generation.
And, just as today, young people gathered after work to socialise and so large groups of leather-clad motor bikers began to appear in city centres and around shopping areas. They also, and this was to bring them to the attention of the newspapers, went in droves to many of the UK’s seaside resorts for a day out. Inevitability, such large gathering attracted both attention and also trouble and the media began to cast the newly emerged Rockers, as they became known, as trouble makers.
They were called Rockers because of the early rock groups that they followed like Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry and, of course, Elvis Presley.
Bing’s excellent long page search has little material but is worth a skim through as there are some original or original looking photographs and a link is here.
There are some excellent images of Rockers Reunited here.
A very interesting and well worth reading section about the 59 club, it’s history and place in society can be found here.
There is an interesting group on Flickr for British Café Racers but, not surprisingly, most of the images are of motor cycles rather than clothes but it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in British bikes.
I had a look on Amazon UK and while there are some books at the link below, most concern themselves with motorbikes rather than clothes but they, too, are well worth a look.
Rockers clothing
Riders of motor cycles need substantial protection from the elements and also some good protection in the event of a fall and and leather is the material of choice for motor bike wear. So Rockers dressed themselves in stout and warm black leather jackets, slim-fitting trousers without turn-ups or other impediments and high, thick, leather boots that were usually black.
I have had to crop the photo at the head of this article but please click on the link at the bottom of the page to open the photograph from Wikimedia for a look. I think from looking at it that this is an original picture.
One thing that was a must was to personalise jackets by the use of badges, studs and other metal objects as well as by using trouser belt buckles. As I mentioned in my article on the later hippies culture, these accessories were sold at small stalls in many of the markets in the UK and nearly all of them were British made.
In fact, personalisation of clothing by the use of accessories was very much a product of the 1960s when, perhaps, for the first time ever, young people had money in their pockets and a desire to mark their own personalities on the world around the. Sadly, this idea of customised clothing seems to have largely disappeared today.
I want to deal with 60s men’s hairstyles separately but rockers all had distinctive hair that owed a lot to the early Teddy boys to whom the Rockers owed a lot of allegiance. Again, a look a the heading image from the link below will show these hairstyles more clearly.
Purchasing now
Unlike suits and mod and hippy clothing, the clothes used by Rockers seems not to have survived in anything like the numbers. A search on Ebay did not reveal too many original items although it did produce some excellent modern accessories. To get started a link to a basic Ebay search is here.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find much else to bring you but to recreate the look you need only find the jacket as tight jeans will serve as trousers and black boots are easy to find.
It has to be said that Rocker culture did not bring a lot to 60s fashion but it was an important group since without Rockers there may not have been any Mods and, as we will see next week, Mods were the creators of a lot of fashion that has endured to his day.
Rockers had a very tough, macho image and if you try wearing jeans, boots and a thick motorcycle jacket you will see what I mean. However, although they suffered from what we call now a bad press, most of them were just normal teenagers out to enjoy life. Of course, that is hard to believe when see them on the front page of the newspaper in their hundreds on route to the seaside on a bank holiday! This search here, again from Bing, will bring you some images.
Strangely, unlike the Mods who we will meet next week, Rockers seem to have disappeared now from our streets which is a shame because they were an important culture in the early 1960s.
The image used above is from wikimedia, please click to go to the page and then click again to open the image, the link is here.
Mens 60s Fashion part 1: Suits
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