You would meet your friends up at the clubs in Soho and Carnaby Street fitted in the middle of that scene. There were two different kinds of people: there were the rockers who looked like bikers and probably liked rock and roll, and the mods who were more modern and progressive in terms of their music and also in their dress. The mods would go to Carnaby Street, because it had the fashions that they liked.

When I started a band with Long John Baldry called the Steampacket in early 1965, we drafted in an unknown Rod Stewart and Rod became ‘Rod The Mod’, because that was his style of dress. Where I might go to Cecil Gee to Shaftesbury Avenue, because I was looking for Ivy League button down shirts and trying to emulate the look of the American jazzers of the time, Rod would go to Carnaby Street.

Baldry would just go to a tailor because he was 6 foot 6 inches tall, so he would have his stuff made for him, but he looked more like a mod in his dress, because he would wear these suits. Sometimes we would go to the Beatles’ tailor and have suits made by this guy, who had an eye for what was going on at the time. That was a more conventional look in a way, because they had suits and jackets, but different kinds of great plaid trousers and God knows what. And that was all in the Soho area.

Where did you buy your clothes in the Sixties? Were you a mod or a rocker? Share your memories here: