Teen Trends
Teenage Fashion on Eldon Street and Beyond
Fashion has always been an important part of teen culture, signalling a sense of identity, belonging and personality. Throughout the decades, culture and clothing went hand in hand, with music, magazines, film and television having a strong influence on the latest teen looks and fashion choices. As the times changed, so did the outfits, with hairstyles and make up trends differing as well as the places people bought their clothes.
Before the explosion of the High Street and off-the-peg fashion, independent shops, dress makers and tailors were the go-to places for buying your clothes. Many teens would buy fabrics from Barnsley Market and visit the Singer Sewing shop at 52 Eldon Street to choose the latest patterns and have their clothes made by one of the many seamstresses in the town, or even make their own.
As the fashion scene really exploded in the 1960s, many well-known popular shops popped up – places like Chelsea Girl and Top Shop catered to the image conscious teens who wanted to emulate their idols. In and around Eldon Street were many well-known and well-beloved clothes shops including Pollyanna, Wilson’s, Frank Bird, and Mr Wayne – even Famous Army Stores became a surprise shopping destination for alternative teens in the 1990s.
Experimenting with hair and makeup as well as clothes, places like Leslie Frances coiffured and created the latest hairstyles and was a go-to destination for occasion styles and trendy cuts. Barnsley Market and other popular town centre shops could be relied upon to provide the latest make-up, nail polish and accessories, whilst going to Benjamin Harrals to get your ears pierced was seen as a rite of passage for teens in the area.
During this project we heard about teenage fashion looks from the Teddy Boys of the 1950s, the Mods of the Swinging 1960s and disco- inspired 1970s looks. As we moved through the 1980s we saw the influence that Heavy Metal, the New Romantics and Miami Vice had one the high street. Brit-Pop, Grunge and Nu-Metal dominated the 1990s. Whilst the clothes, trends and styles changed throughout the decades, the teenage obsession with fashion stayed strong.
Stuart and June – 50s/60s teens
June: “The day I got engaged, I’d got a knee peepers on. My dad said it was disgusting showing my knees. Minis were just coming in, my dad wouldn’t let me wear minis. There were no big labels and things like that then, you just bought what you could afford really. I had one or two different hairstyles. I used do it myself or go to Leslie Frances. When I got married, I had it done but I had it in curls, it was long then.”
Stuart: “We always tried to dress evenly when we were with The Jaguars [band], black trousers with different coloured shirts, a green or red and whatever, and a Scotch-plaid-type jacket. But when we moved to my band The Easybeats, we always wore white shirts, black trousers, black shoes and Dallas bow-tie, just fitted underneath the collar with a pearl button in it. We all had that, and we had some blue lurex jackets made which look a bit ostentatious nowadays, but that were it sort of thing. A Billy Fury style haircut, a DA, I tried to grow it a bit like Beatles, a bit long, but it never suited so I had it cut normal.”
Susan – 60s/70s teen
“I was always a follower of the fashion, Mary Quant, Twiggy. I had my hair cut unbelievably short a la the Twiggy look of the moment, then it was very definitely psychedelia all the way. Short mini dresses in an A-line, very short, and then PVC boots, white boots to the knee. Experimenting with eye makeup, the dark heavy eyes, just trying to replicate those looks. That was definitely my look. Back then, people still used to do a lot of dressmaking in Barnsley. A lot of my clothes were made by seamstresses, because of course, Barnsley has a very big heritage of sewing, one of the occupations for women in Barnsley was being seamstresses, mending and making. So it was dead easy and everybody used to make their own clothes; you didn’t go into fashion shops, you saw pictures in magazines, you bought a pattern and you had it made or you made it yourself. And that was really big in this particular chunk of time that we’re talking about. Singers on Eldon Street, the sewing machine shop, that was big business back in the day. Across the road on Eldon Street, down some steps there was Joe Edwards and there were loads of market stalls there that sold huge rolls of fabric, you went and bought your fabric for curtains, for cushion covers, for clothes – that was where you got your clothes from.”
Linda – 60s/70s teen
“Fashion and music, Beatles, makeup. I remember buying a magazine early on that had got free eye makeup stickers in, and it was stick-on eyeliner in different thicknesses, and I can remember floating about with this thinking I were amazing! Obsessed with fashion and then obviously not got money to spend on loads of fashion but I suppose you’re inspired by people. My absolute idol was Diana Rigg, I used to get a fancy glass out of the cupboard, a Babycham glass and fill it with lemonade and then I’d be leaping about the settee and pretending to be her. Magazines, Jackie, Romeo, all the ones that were out at that time, and then Chelsea Girl in town. I can remember getting some Levi’s off Barnsley Market, first pair of Levi’s and just absolutely thinking I was the business when I bought them. I got some shammy leather because there used to be a stall then and cutting strips off and stitching them on to make them a bit more unique. Getting in the bath to shrink them – my mother thought I were absolutely mental, but that’s what everybody said you did, so I did what they said!”
Wayne – 60s/70s teen
“In 1969, fashion had not really reached the provinces. The Carnaby Street revolution, which was around the Beatles, ’67/’68 were still a world away for people in Yorkshire. Fashion for a man in 1969/70 was going to a tailor’s and having a suit made and there were lots of tailors, John Collier, Burton’s the tailors, Peter Pell, Jackson’s the tailors, the high street was full of tailors, but not fashion. You went and bought a suit, and the suit was the same as what your dad had ten years previously. Fashion had not really sort of filtered its way down to the provinces.
I decided that I were a Mod, and again it was just very much in its early stages, the Mod look, but it were a look that suited me and I thought this is where I belong in the in the scheme of things. I weren’t a hippy, my brother were probably closer to being a hippy because he’d got long hair but I were quite smart and wore the sort of Mod type things. I used to wear Levi’s and of course, you had to have a wrangler jacket, a cord or a denim jacket – it were a uniform, it was a uniform that we had.”
A 1980s advertisement for Mr Wayne. Donated by Wayne Johnson.
Kath – 70s teen
“I had hot pants on, which my kids and grandkids just can’t even visualize but I did. I had some black hot pants, some boots that came up to here, you know? Platforms and wide trousers, big collars for the men. I had long hair at that time, long auburny sort of hair and various styles – bigger as we moved into the ’80s. One of the places that sticks in my mind is Benjamin Harrals, and I remember going to have my ears pierced there in my lunch hour. I always wanted my ears piercing and my mum said ‘You’re not having them done while you’re at school! When you’re working, you can please yourself, when you pay for them, sort yourself, you can go and have them don.’ And I remember coming home one day and saying, ‘I’ve had them done!’”
Tony – 80s teen
“We were trying to be Mods. We had stay pressed drainy’s on or Levi’s 501 straights. Harrington’s, t-shirts, buttoned down collar, Jam shoes – back then some people call them badger boots in Barnsley or monkey boots. We were all trying to be like Paul Weller, you could tell the Mods, like you can now, stand out a mile with their haircuts. There was a shop on Sheffield Road had these German parkas and they weren’t fish tails but it was better than nothing. You’d still put your patches on the back and the beer towels and everything but it wasn’t the same as the original fishtail parka.”
Taryn – 90s teen
“I had the standard army bag that everybody had in their teens, of course I had a parka, all that sort of stuff. In my teens, flares, trainers, I had loads of Fred Perry shirts that I loved. I tended to dress more like a boy in my teens. You went through a tracky bottoms stage, as everybody did. I think I were a normal teenager. When I were really young, I wanted to be a fashion designer, so I’ve always been really interested in fashion and having the influence of my dad – again it’s the music. It depended on the style of music I was listening to at the time that would influence little droppings of what I were wearing in my teens. But I think my standard uniform was a pair of flares, a Fred Perry shirt, and some trainers. Vintage Adidas tracksuit top, thinking I were Justine Frischmann. I had that sort of vibe. I’m sure there’ll be photos knocking about somewhere that say I wasn’t as cool as I thought I was.”
Jason – 90s teen
“With my group of friends at college, I think if you were to compare it to teenagers now, we’d have probably been called like emos, but it was really a few years before ’emo’ existed. We used to get called ‘bagheads’. We were just generally into like rock and metal and we used to wear black combat trousers, you’d have a chain hanging down it, and we’d have long dyed black hair, and we were into I suppose grunge music and metal. Famous Army Stores was famous for selling surplus army gear so army coats, combat trousers or cargo trousers. It was a big thing at the time amongst all kinds of people because of pop music at the time, pop bands like All Saints and Eternal. It was somewhere that people who were into alternative music could definitely go and get some stuff from, trousers maybe coats, you’d get those army coats with a little German flag on the shoulders. You’d go in there looking for some chain. I think eventually they did sell them as accessories because the trend caught on. And then your satchels – but that’d be people who were into indie music and also your punks, goths and art students as well. I imagined the staff in Army Stores when that first started happening, the staff were a little bit bewildered by all these goths coming in – ‘Are they coming in for the camping gear? No, they’re coming in for the chains!’”
Jess – 00s teen
“In high school, I went down the Emo route, all band t-shirts, going to Lucorum and going out with all these gothic Emo kids. I had long feathered, back-combed hair with coloured streaks. I didn’t really wear a lot of makeup though, just sort of eyeliner. I sort of wore red jeans and bright coloured tutus and anything neon that was on Wombwell and Barnsley Market at that time that. And then really bright cartoonish shirts. I grew a little bit older and it were coming towards college, I toned it down a lot. Kept quite Gothic, but toned down Goth. I’m mainly wore greys and blacks, cut my head short and I had skull accessories.”
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