Fashion … or fascist? The long tussle over that Fred Perry logo
By Nosheen Iqbal
The polo shirt has been sported over decades by pop stars, football fans, ska-lovers and gay revellers, but now also by the far-right Proud Boys
Perry was the son of a textile factory worker born in Stockport. He first became a world table tennis champion at 19 before going on to win three consecutive Wimbledon titles. Despite his record-breaking success, he was treated with contempt by the elite who ran the sport in Britain. To Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at Westminster University, it is this contrast between Perry’s underdog status and unquestionable personal glamour that has helped define the brand.
“The working-class authenticity of both Fred Perry the man and Fred Perry the brand allows it to resonate with each new generation,” he said. “Its no-nonsense design has enabled it to be reinterpreted by each emerging subculture in a way that gives it additional layered, and sometimes contradictory, meanings. Fred Perry was worn on the terraces at Chelsea but also in the gay bars on Old Compton Street; by skinheads at NF rallies but also by Jamaican rudeboys.”
Groves believes the brand has been able to transcend each decade because of the way it has been reinterpreted by new fashion tribes.
“It’s ironic therefore to see this particular shirt adopted by the Proud Boys,” he said, “given that within gay culture, a black polo shirt with yellow tipping on the collar usually signifies that the wearer is into watersports.”
What Fred Perry would think about all the symbolism at play on his bestselling shirts is another matter.
Carpe DM: 60 years of the Dr Martens boot – fashion's subversive smash hit
By Lauren Cochrane
The humble eight-holed work boot has won over everyone from postal workers to punks, teens to today’s celebrities and influencers. How did it stride to world dominance?
“It’s almost easier to list which subcultures haven’t adopted Dr Martens over the past six decades,” says Andrew Groves, a professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster and the curator of Invisible Men, last year’s exhibition about men’s working wardrobes. “The list of those style tribes that took the DM to their hearts includes punks, skinheads, northern soulers, scooterists, as well as (later on) teenagers into grunge, two-tone, and Britpop.”
During the 70s and early 80s, the 1460s became part of a uniform worn with skinny bleached jeans, braces and, quite often, a bit of a snarl. Images of skinheads – either in Gavin Watson’s classic photography book Skins, or Shane Meadows’ This Is England trilogy – often feature DMs, and they continued to be associated with the subculture, even as, as Meadows documented, it became darker, as the far right infiltrated it.
Although this association is still there, it’s now a whisper – thanks to Groves’ litany of other, less controversial, subcultures that also took up the DM. By the time i-D magazine’s A Decade of i-Deas was published at the end of the 80s, the style magazine had declared them “the fashion accessory of the past five years”. I remember blisters covering the back of my heels for weeks when I got my first pair in the 90s. Groves says he wore them “when I was a mod, a skinhead and a casual … I’ve worn them polished up with Sta-Prest trousers and scuffed-up with jeans. I’ve probably got at least three or four pairs at the moment.”
“The Dr Marten is such an archetypal object that they can be worn in both an understated manner or used to underplay a full-on fashion look,” says Groves. “It’s hard to imagine anything else being worn by your postie and Gigi Hadid, and both looking equally good in it.”