Futurism on the streets of London

Abstract

Obvious evidence does not exist linking the Italian Futurists’ conception of men’s fashion in the 1910s and 1920s with the tastes of the Mod subculture in London of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet the aesthetic behind both Futurist fashion and the Mod subculture is strikingly similar and suggests that ideas on style and lifestyle can cross-pollinate each other across decades and countries, given the right circumstances. Both Futurists and Mods wanted to be, as Giacomo Balla put it in a 1913 manifesto, ‘Dynamic/Aggressive/Shocking/Energetic/Violent … [with] Pattern changes […] available by pneumatic dispatch; in this way anyone may change his clothes according to the needs of mood’. London’s Mod subculture came from a directly coincident desire to abandon traditional aesthetics and methods of expression in favour of a constant turnover. The Futurists promoted an artistic movement as a lifestyle, declared in manifestos and acted out in the streets and in politics and that bled into fashion as a manifestation of their ideas, worn literally on their sleeves. The Mods promoted a lifestyle as an art, acted out on the streets, with fashion as the manifestation of their individuality, brought down to the level of the tapering of their pants legs. In both cases, the expression of their lifestyle and values was consciously manifested in the clothes one wore on an everyday basis and connected through the talents of Italian tailors for quick, inexpensive alterations. The similarity suggests an association between Futurism and the Mod subculture, in the appeal of Italian men’s fashion to both groups and demonstrating that certain avant-garde ideals in western art had filtered to the level of the average person over the course of five decades.