adidas
The trainers produced by the German sports
shoe firm are perhaps the only constant in the story of this movement. The
first shoe to really make it as a terrace staple was the adidas Samba, a black
trainer with a cream-coloured sole. After that, the likes of the Stan Smith,
Trimm-Trab (German for ‘keep fit’), LA Trainer, Jeans (a denim shoe) and Forest
Hills all made it to the top of the unofficial Adidas trainer tree. According
to Dave Hewitson’s The Liverpool Boys Are In Town, between 1979 and 1981, the city of Liverpool accounted for 30 per
cent of all adidas sales in the UK. Other notable adidas classics include the
ST2 padded anorak, the Ivan Lendl argyle tracksuit top and A15 tracksuit
bottoms.
See also: mythical ‘adidas Centre’ in Paris
that Scousers spent days looking for at the 1981 European Cup final. It didn’t
actually exist.
Bobble hats
Headwear was a big part of casual and none
more so than the bobble hat – though the actual bobble itself was often
removed, transforming the item into a ‘ski hat’. Most popular were ones that
displayed the wearer’s club on one side with either Celtic or Rangers on the
other, depending on his religious persuasion. In the 1988 film The Firm, young West Ham fan Yusef is angrily castigated by another member
of the crew for wearing a half-West Ham/half-Celtic bobble hat. ‘What have we
got to do wiv Celtic?’
Cockneys
Though London took to the scene shortly
after Scousers and Mancunians, by 1980 every team in the capital had a firm of
well-dressed ‘chaps’. Londoners displayed a fondness for pastel colours and
Bond St brands like Burberry, Gucci and Aquascutum, as well as the labels more
associated with the scene like Fila, Sergio Tacchini and Lacoste. They also
wore an awful lot of gold ‘tom’*.
*tom = tomfoolery = jewellery
Deerstalkers
Country casual met football casual with the approximation of the hunting look by fans in the early 1980s. If it wasn’t Barbour waxed coats then it was geography teacher-style tweed jackets, leather patches and all. Some even went the whole hog, buying fearsome-looking dogs (‘rotties’ and ‘staffs’ usually) to go hunting for rats with. The deerstalker hat sealed the look of refined menace.
Euston
The meeting point for London clubs leaving
town and north-westerners arriving for matches in the capital, midday on
Saturdays was not a place for the faint-hearted. Awaydays writer Kevin Sampson: ‘It was scary. You’d think it’d be like
something out of Green Street when we alighted,
but all I remember is people being really quiet, wondering when it was going to
kick off. Apart from mobs of Cockneys looking for you, there’d be ‘spotters’
from places like Stoke and Coventry waiting around to see what we were
wearing.’
Fanzines
One of the unintended consequences of this
explosion of creativity was the growth in fanzines that charted the everyday
experiences of casuals and the world they lived. Most notable were Liverpool’s The
End and London’s super-smart Boys Own, proving a launching pad for the likes of writer Kevin Sampson,
Peter Hooton from The Farm and DJ Andy Weatherall. These fanzines were the
inspiration for the sort of magazine you’re reading today. No fanzines – no Maxim.
Gold
If football was the game that the casuals
watched, tennis was the sport that dictated how they dressed. Nothing signified
tennis’s association with the European super-rich than the gold stripes on the
ultra-lightweight Adidas Forest Hills and the kangaroo skin Diadora Borg Elite
trainers.
Hooligan
Seminal ITV documentary from 1985 on West
Ham’s legendary ICF, which showed a group of mulleted Irons fans wandering
around London looking for bother with rival firms – notably Chelsea and
Millwall. Most memorable for an interview with a casual in a Lacoste cardigan,
in which he said, ‘You go other people’s grounds, you run ’em, it’s just
enjoyment all the time. You’ve gone to their manor, done what you’ve wanted to
do and they won’t do it you lot when they come down here.’
Israeli jacket
Iconic army jacket worn by Israel’s elite
forces and casuals alike. Could withstand low, night-time temperatures in the
West Bank and away trips to the likes of Leeds and Birmingham City. Not popular
with the PLO.
JD Sports
A shop that was built on the slavish
enthusiasm of young lads to the latest sportswear, JD is now the leading
trainer retailer in the country, while their Size? shops are the place to go for rare, reissued footwear. Gary Aspden, adidas: ‘Starting
out with one shop in Bury in the early ’80s, the people behind JD Sports
understood casual culture – arguably this was the whole foundation of their
business. JD revolutionised the UK sportswear industry by being the first to
understand, recognise and embrace its lifestyle appeal. They now have over 400
stores in the UK.’
Kickers and Kios
While trainers were the staple of the
scally, some shoes made it as matchday attire. Most popular were those made by
Kickers and Kios, who produced ungainly European numbers with thick soles and
rounded toes. Worn with cagoules and slim-fit jeans they enabled a group of
casuals on the prowl to look like a bunch of French exchange students. Until
they started lobbing chairs through the windows of pubs, that is.
Liverpool in Europe
It’s been said before, but Liverpool’s
domination of the continent was responsible for more luxury brands coming to
the UK than the opening of the Trafford Centre. They may have come from the
cold, wet banks of the Mersey, but their appropriation of the look of Europe’s
super-rich opened up England to velcro trainers (the adidas Tom Okker Comfort),
up-market tennis-wear (‘Australian’ brand trackies) and dodgy Italian zip-up
roll-necks (Kappa). There are shopkeepers in places like Switzerland and
Bavaria who still rue the day they decided to display their rare adidas
trainers in pairs.
Mancs and Scousers
Up until the mid-60s there was never a
great deal of trouble between Merseyside and Manchester. By the late 1970s the
games between Liverpool* and Man Utd resembled a particularly bloody war zone.
There’s also been controversy over who started the whole casual thing, with
Mancunians saying that casual was just a continuation of their home-grown
‘Perry boys’ style of the mid-’70s. Needless to say, this is dismissed by Liverpudlians.
* On these occasions it was common for
Liverpool and Everton scallies to team up against the common enemy.
Names
Got a mob? Get a name. The more obscure and
lowly the team, the more thought went into the tag of their casual firm, as
Peter Hooton explains, ‘When I was producing The End fanzine we got letters from the Derby-Leicester Alliance*, Wrexham
Frontline, English Border Front, Wolves Subway Army, Cambridge Main Firm,
Lincoln Transit Elite… the list goes on.’
* A one-off super-mob put together to
tackle Nottingham Forest’s Executive crew.
Ordinary, The
It was only in the 1960s that football
supporters started following their teams in other parts of the country. To
facilitate this, British Rail put on ‘football specials’, which would take
well-behaved supporters to their ground of choice and whisk them back safely.
Sadly, with no time to stop off for drink/scrap and the worst trains BR could
find, smart fans soon dispensed with the specials and got on the ‘ordinary’,
where you’d get less bother of the police and more time to peruse local men’s
boutiques for pre-Switch ‘cashless’ purchases. A punch in the face was often
included in the price of a ticket.
Peter Storm and Patrick
The kings of the cagoule, these brands
produced the must-have outerwear for trips away in autumn and spring, as Gary
Aspden testifies. ‘It rains a lot in the north-west of England so you need
something to keep you dry. Patrick cagoules came in loads of colours, we used
to name ours after flavours of bags of crisps. They were intrinsic to casual
fashion.’
See also: ‘paninari’ – the fashionable
Italian youths found hanging about outside sandwich (panini) shops in Milan,
Rome etc. More inclined to razz about on 4cc mopeds whistling at girls for days
on end than their English counterparts.
Queer
The first well-dressed lads at the match
were deemed to be gay because of the effeminacy of their dress and haircuts.
This changed when said effeminates starting using Stanley knives to reassert
their masculinity.
Reissues
If you want to gauge the cultural power of
casual, just check out how many iconic and not-so-iconic labels have reissued
‘classics’ in an attempt to cover themselves with casual cool. adidas Originals
trade heavily on their well-earned status, this year reissuing the ST2 coat and
Kegler Super trainers – two absolute early-80s classics. Other brands have
also got in on it with Farah producing whole ranges on the back of the
popularity of their sta-prest trousers during the 1980s.
Scotland
While casual is seen as a specific period
of time south of border (roughly 1977-1988), in Scotland, the term is still
used to denote a violent, smartly-dressed football fan. The first crew to get
on it were the Aberdeen, who, after meeting Liverpool in the European Cup of
1980, appropriated the Scouse look. Dons fans also followed sides like
Tottenham and Arsenal, enabling shopping trips to London to stock up on
designer gear. Later, Aberdeen were joined by Motherwell and Hibs in their
fashion endeavours, but the twin giants of Scottish football, Celtic and
Rangers remained oblivious to the cult.
See also: Stone Island, without doubt the post-casual label of the 1990s, and now undergoing a renaissance.
Tracksuits
As well as heralding the era of
label-worship, casual also took the tracksuit from the tennis court to the
terraces and breakdance mats of urban Britain. Made as luxury items for tennis
players in Italy, the likes of Sergio Tacchini’s Dallas* and Cerutti 1881’s
velour top were hugely sought after, but even they had to bow to the majesty of
the Fila Terinda, which retailed for a whopping £95 on its 1986 release. Neil
Primett from 80sCasualClassics.co.uk: ‘The
Terinda was the most expensive tracksuit back then and was so aspirational.
I’ve got 12 originals, which I’ve bought off eBay and they all cost between
£400-£1000.’
* The Dallas was worn by John McEnroe in
the 1981 ‘Battle of the Trackies’ Wimbledon final, in which he took on a
Fila-clad Bjorn Borg. What made Tacchni’s tracksuits so desirable was the instant
flare the wearer could have by the facilitation of the zip at the back of
trouser.
Under-fives
The youngest football mobs, with
individuals usually working as ‘scouts’ for the main firm and reporting on the
whereabouts of rival crews. Not actually under five years old.
Very big bags
If adidas gave us the trainers, then tennis
brand Head provided the iconic accessory of
casual – the huge kit bag. These were no ordinary holdalls, the Head bag
offered vast amounts of space for stolen European leisurewear to be crammed
into and later sold in pubs. So popular was the bag that mobs of casuals would
often turn up at the match carrying them, just because they looked so good. The
first manbag.
Wedge
The ultimate casual haircut, the wedge was
actually invented in London in 1974 as a women’s style, but was soon adopted by
the capital’s soul boys*. Cut short at the back, with a long, parted fringe
that covered one eye, it was taken up by Scouse casuals when David Bowie sported
one on the cover of his Low album.
*Flash, mid-70s soul boys are seen by some
as forerunners to casuals in the capital.
Xtra time
After Heysel, the ‘classic’ casual brands
fell out of favour. Instead European preppy labels like C-17, Chipie and Ciao
became popular – usually coupled with a long-on-top short back and sides.
Before the 1990 World Cup in Italy, brands like Duffer of St George and Burro
used soccer as the basis for lots of their garments, including the iconic No
Alla Violenza T-shirt. Alongside Gazza’s tears and
Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, they were responsible
for laying the foundations of the 1990s football boom.
Yachting
While the cool months of the year were
taken care of, clothes-wise, in the summer the only sport that could compete
with tennis for clobber was yachting. Deck shoes by the likes of Sebago were
especially popular, though the nearest they ever got to sea water was wading
through the puddles in the car park outside Stoke City’s Victoria Ground.
Z-list brands
Not everyone could afford/steal the top labels,
which meant that it wasn’t long before cheap imitations came out, often sold in
markets and bought by mums with the words: ‘Look, it’s exactly the same as the
one you wanted, but it’s £20 cheaper. Anyway, I prefer the shark to that
crocodile.’ Brands included, Ennesse, Gallini, Le Shark and St Helens’ finest
Tacchini rip-offs, Walker. The thought of them makes many a casual shudder even
now.
MORE FASHION
Bookmark this post with: