Perry Boys Abroad 2: Never Going Back to Acrylic
April 5, 2009
As a youth I would listen. To the elders of the tribe, the late-teens and twenty-somethings; those with the proper Mancunian accents, those who’d shed platforms for sandals and boat-pumps. Those who disappeared for weeks on end and returned with sparkling tales from the South of France and Italy.
“We never paid for owt in six weeks. Restauarants got ran from, shops were a piss-take!” This common boast succeeded in pulling more clans across the Channel. To wander wide-eyed and light-fingered down Parisian boulevards. To swim in the Med and gawk at Austrian and German tits on show along the Riviera. To discover shops selling fetish items; branded sportswear, chiefly tennis, that eclipsed anything Adidas or Admiral or (most definitely) Umbro had insulted us with on our island to the north.
The Perries back home didn’t bat an eyelid when the Salford crews came back with their booty; they’d been on a Mod trip since the early 70s and recognised most of the designer labels at a glance. But the textures, the consistency of the fabric, had these urchins mesmerised. They were never going back to acrylic and nylon. No way. A lambswool Lacoste cardigan or a Munsingwear golf sweater seemed to flop with an organic life of its own. Assumed magnificent folds and spontaneous arrangements involving collar and cuff. Stripes woven into the whole that delineated style in a way hitherto unseen. But not unknown; anyone from the Manchester area knew a good thing when they saw it and now these, these monstrosities had unleashed a passion inside. An unquashable desire to own the entire “collection”. For collections are what young men, or indeed any men, aim to own. And so it began. Adidas Kick and Bamba, Mamba and Samba were freely available in Blighty. But superior shoes, like Bali and Hawaii, masterpieces in suede, occupied French sports shop windows like proud sentinels, their vibrant colourways lush and seductive.
As 1978 turned to 1979, these creations began to trickle in. The boat-pumps, moccasins and Polyveldts - traditional Perry Boy attire - welcomed them to the tribe. Our thing was expanding its genetic variability; street and sportswear fusing in a way never before dreamed. Well, maybe dreamed, but not like this. This wasn’t Mod, it wasn’t Glam and it barely retained a hint of the Soul that provided much of the momentum via Fred Perry and wedge hairstyles. It was something else and it was Nameless.
The train stations of Germany and Belgium were beginning to function as storage units for ragged gear; shoes and shirts grabbed from sports shops and hurriedly stashed before its procurers did one, off to find more. The Perry Boys abroad were bouncing across the continent, picking their fruits like a wild species hellbent on getting their fill after a drought. But it was about more than shoes and shirts. More than wedge haircuts and straightleg jeans. It was about attitude and slang. Style of mind, not just of trainers. And if we’re honest, early 1979 was still largely mired in the Adidas Kick, Pods and boat-pumps of the previous year. I’m not here to tell you I saw lads wearing Tobacco in Manchester in 1977 - I’m not even sure Adidas were making them at that time. No, I’m here to tell you the truth. Sometimes the truth hurts. It is better to always tell the truth and that way they can’t find you out and make you look a plonker.
I remember my Uncle Geoff - a bloke who did the Euro thing for a few months - wearing his Adidas Bali. When Jogger became popular the following year, I instantly recognised the template; same shoe, different colours, barring the suede tongue of Bali being better than the foam Jogger tongue. “Perry Boys” abroad and at home began to tread freshly on rubber heels. And then Hawaii arrived. And all the while Stan Smith was impinging, perforating the suede wonderwall with its incandescent starkness: White leather, laced down to the edge, almost, like old style “baseball boots”, as we called Converse pumps in Salford. An unlikely contender but looking so right. Similar rubber soles to the suede range, with the added novelty of an absence of real stripes. Just lines of holes. They were top. And then, amid that chaos, when everyone was trying to make sense of it all, came Kio Riders. Kio’s were the earliest form of shoes designed to resemble trainers without possessing any of the physical sophistication or robustness of trainers. It was no coincidence that they appeared at the tail-end of the Stan Smith craze in spring, 1980. Initially white, Kio’s sought to head the Boys off at the pass by becoming available in a variety of colours, including a “delicate shade of lilac,” as my Religious Education teacher, Miss Davies described my own in a (failed) attempt to embarrass me in class. Kio’s were a stepping-stone towards fusion: Street and sports. They were the original K-Swiss or Skechers. The red rectangle in the side-sole contrasted with whatever colour the leather uppers happened to be and projected a message to the world: Someone Knows About Us.
And still it became. In becoming. In the ineffable suchness of evolution.
Perry Boys Abroad
April 4, 2009
The hot summers of the 70s were top notch. From the ‘76 heatwave to the Argentinean World Cup in 1978, a ferocious and obscene desire rocketed through the youth of Britain; to hit the road, go abroad, watch foreign football teams knock it about. Domestic fashion was lurching through the Punk era, with innumerable cults and sidebars bristling off on
tangents: Northern Soul Perries, Disco wallahs, hipsters and post-Glam dinosaurs, all co-
existing in an uneasy peace that was as fragile as it was wrong. Fragile because it was wrong. Live European Cup games were a rare spectacle, but when they were on telly we all watched with intensity and longing; the black pentagons panelling the white football somehow slowed the thing down, allowing for more time and a cushioned response from the footy boot. The commentary came over like a lunar landing. Pitches were either lush or appeared desert-like. Liverpool were one of the few teams to sample that world in the flesh, but a mass movement was already dripping south independent of football. In Manchester groups of demi-Mods and Soul stylists patrolled the parched inner-city like starving hermit-lizards, having adopted jewel-encrusted tortoise shells and arrayed themselves, crablike, across clubland. Each and every “disco” had at least a tiny group of
Perry Boys occupying its further corners. Wearing bizarrely plain but expensive garments
that glistened against the eye like internal stalagtites…hanging from the brain and projecting a knowing light out at those who simply lagged in the fashion stakes. Perries with a one-eyed wink to Bowie, a stultifying, rock-hard owning of Roxy Music’s entire catalogue providing nourishment in the face of the garbage trends around them. They ruled the clubs and their music was an eclectic hybrid borne of Soul but fanned out into multiple personalities of rhythm and modernist brilliance; Bowie’s eye-liner and Ferry’s suits were largely ignored, but virtually all else about those cool cats was consumed and digested avidly. By ‘77, small firms had flocked from the flats of Greengate, the avenues of Crumpsall and the housing estates that lined Harpurhey onto ferries across the filthy Channel to a foreign world. Architecture, language and above all clothing, were all noted and diagnosed as yet another reason Britain was a dump. Add the climate to this sad equation and the incentive to hit the road for a few months was born. And so they went. The Perry Boys abroad…