Knitters of Yore

  Our chap here is displaying style cues of the post-war Beatniks at that point when the style had been so thoroughly integrated into the mainstream that elements of it morphed into Mod style and the menswear revolution that we now know as ‘smart casual’. This opens up the chance for me to discuss one of the favourite subjects of Knitters of Yore: how fashion spreads from the streets and is assimilated into the mainstream. This process was memorably termed by George Melly ‘Revolt into Style’, with the opposite process, from the drawing boards of elite designers to everyday life, probably best termed by Tom Wolfe as ‘From Bauhaus to Our House’ (the latter was about architecture, but seems appropriate in this context). Anyway, I digress. The Beakniks might seem a mild and harmless development now, but they were look upon with a mixture of scorn and horror by large elements of Britain's ever-conservative press when their influence began to be felt in the UK. Check out this review of J...