“Since the late fifties certain trends in fashion have had strong links with music,” Smith writes. “Interestingly, the various styles or ‘looks’ were often not created by designers, but by groups of people, frequently from working class families, who wanted to express themselves and form their own identity.”
A lot of this can still be said about London today — the trickle-up effect of fashion from the street, the young creative underclass, and new fashion school talent. Quite a different aesthetic movement than American fashion, which, of late, has been decidedly trickle-down — socialites and celebrities rule the retail roost Stateside.