Mod (AKA Modernism) is a subculture that originated in London in the late 1950s, and reached its mainstream peak in the early to mid 1960s.

Origins

The mod subculture began with a few cliques of teenage boys with family connections to the garment trade in London in 1958. These early mods were generally middle class, and were obsessed with new fashions and music styles, such as slim-cut Italian suits, modern jazz and rhythm and blues. Their all-night urban social life was fueled, in part, by amphetamines. It is a popular belief that the mods and their rivals, the rockers, both branched off from the Teddy boys, a 1950s subculture in England. The Teddy boys were influenced by American rock n’ roll, wore Edwardian-style clothing, and got pompadour or quiff hairstyles.

Originally the term mods was used to describe fans of modern jazz music, as opposed to the trads, fans of traditional jazz. After a while, the meaning was expanded beyond the musical tastes, eventually including other fashion and lifestyle elements associated with the original mods, such as continental clothes, scooters and to a lesser degree a taste for pop art, French Nouvelle Vague films and existentialist philosophy.

Mods would gather at all-night clubs such as the Twisted Wheel Club to show off their clothes and dance moves. They would typically use scooters as their mode of transportation, typically either Lambretta or Vespa.

After a law was passed requiring at least one mirror be attached to every motorbike, many mods added 4, 10, or even 32 mirrors to their scooters as a mockery of the new law. This can be seen in the cover for The Who’s album, Quadrophenia, which depicts the main character, Jimmy, on his scooter looking into his four rear-view mirrors.

As the lifestyle developed and was adopted by English teenagers of all economic strata, mods expanded their musical tastes beyond jazz and R&B — to also embrace soul (particularly Motown), Jamaican ska and bluebeat. They also developed a distinct brand of British beat music and R&B, exemplified by bands such as the Small Faces, The Who, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, and Spencer Davis Group. Lesser-known British bands associated with the mod scene include The Action, The Creation, and John’s Children.  Cathy McGowan, who presented the television rock show Ready Steady Go! became known as the "Queen of the Mods" (a title sometimes applied to, among others, the singer Dusty Springfield).

A youth subculture known as rockers (associated with motorcycles and leather biker jackets) sometimes clashed with the mods, leading to battles in seaside resorts such as Brighton, Margate and Hastings in 1964. The mods and rockers conflict led to a moral panic about modern youth in Britain.

Mods were criticized in the movie Blowup as being epicureans and hedonistic youths without morality; in the film, despite having evidence of a murder and of the murderer's identity, the main character cannot be roused out of his stupor to report the crime, or even care.

Decline and new beginnings

The mods were the products of a culture of constant change, and perhaps it was inevitable that the scene would devour itself. By the time Bobby Moore held the World Cup aloft in the summer of 1966, the mod scene was in sharp decline. As psychedelic music and the hippie culture rose, many people drifted away from the mod lifestyle. Hippie culture, with its Bohemian traits, presented a passive outlook on life that was the total opposite of the frenetic energy of the mod ethos. Bands like The Who and The Faces had changed their musical styles and no longer represented themselves as mods.

At the other end of the spectrum, both in philosophy and appearance, the hard mods (AKA gang mods) were rougher than the rest of their comrades. With less emphasis on new fashion trends, and with short cropped hair, they became the first skinheads. They kept the original mod music alive and retained basic elements of the mod look – three-button suits, Fred Perry and Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Levi’s jeans - but mixed them with working class accessories such as braces and Dr. Marten’s boots.

Revival and later influence

The 1979 film Quadrophenia, based on the 1973 album of the same name by The Who, celebrated the mod movement and partly inspired a mod revival in the UK during the late 1970s, which was followed by a revival in North America during the early 1980s, particularly in Southern California. Many of these mod revival bands were influenced by the energy of British punk rock. The revival was led by the band The Jam, and included bands such as Secret Affair, Purple Hearts and The Chords.

The 1990s Britpop scene displayed obvious mod influences, with bands such as Oasis, Blur and Ocean Colour Scene (who have collaborated with Paul Weller). Mods have made up a notable proportion of the northern soul movement, a subculture based on obscure 1960s and 1970s American soul records. The mod subculture has spread around the world, and now mainly exists as an underground culture. Mod culture is an influence on some members of the German electronic music scene and, in the 2000s, some indie rock bands, such as The Ordinary Boys, have been influenced by the mod revival.