Morrissey’s flowers; Paul Morley’s rollnecks. As the exhibition North: Fashioning Identity opens in London,one sartorially savvy export dissects the style signatures of the region’s menIn 1986, 31 years before the Tory conference set up camp to bury Theresa May alive in its industrial shell, and the G-Mex centre in Manchester hosted the Festival of the Tenth Summer. Commemorating the Sex Pistols’ 1976 date at the Lesser Free Trade corridor,the unofficial starter-gun of punk parochialisation, top billing was shared between a royal flush of local heroes: the Smiths, and New Order,A Certain Ratio and The tumble. The audience wore a detailed array of micro-tribal uniforms in their honour – tattered Levi’s, national health specs, and secondhand car coats,Adidas Gazelles, flicks, or quiffs,short back and sides through which you could identify their record collections, drinking habits, or library cards,football clubs and sex drives. All the distinguished stuff. I was a tatty 15-year-old south Manchester schoolboy at the time, looking among the glorious rabble for an identity that might fit. A couple of mates and I hung around external in Nike cagoules, and breathing in the solemnly euphoric,superior air of northern style, flecked back then with the scent of Breaker lager, and Benson & Hedges,Paco Rabanne and deadheaded flower arrangements plucked from the beds of Whitworth Park to slip into back pockets, just like Morrissey. We identified songs by reverberating bass lines and cheer alone. Piling out late into the night, and every man looked amazing,in his own tastefully wonky way.
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Source: guardian.co.uk