Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  But I was wrong. I had underestimated the sheer strength and pervasiveness of the English humour rules. Even among those whose subcultural identity is most closely bound up with their tribal uniform, such as Goths, I found an astonishing degree of ironic detachment. Goths, in their macabre black costumes, might look as though they are taking themselves very seriously, but when you get into conversation with them, they are full of typically English self-mockery. In many cases, even their clothes are deliberately ironic. I was chatting at a bus stop to a Goth in full vampire regalia – with chalk-white face, deep-purple lipstick, long black hair and all – when I noticed that he was also wearing a T-shirt with ‘GOTH’ printed in large letters on the front. ‘So, what’s that about?’ I asked, indicating the T-shirt.

  ‘It’s just in case you missed the point,’ he replied, mock-seriously. ‘I mean, I couldn’t have people thinking I was just a boring, mainstream, normal person, right?’ We both looked at his highly conspicuous, unmistakable, fancy-dress costume and burst out laughing. He then confided that he had another T-shirt with ‘SAD OLD GOTH’ on it, and that these were very popular among his Goth friends, who wore them ‘to stop people taking it all too seriously – well, to stop us from taking ourselves too seriously as well, which to be honest we’re a little bit inclined to do if we’re not careful. You’ve got to be able to take the piss out of yourself.’

  Once you learn to decode a subculture’s sartorial dialect, you find that many of the dress-statements are self-mocking in-jokes, often ridiculing the tribe’s own rigid dress codes. Some Goths, for example, poke fun at the whole sombre, morbid, black-only colour rule by wearing bright, girly pink – a colour that is traditionally despised by this subculture. ‘The pink thing is a joke,’ explained a young female Goth with pink hair and pink gloves, ‘because pink is, like, totally against the whole Goth ideology.’ So, Goths with pink hair or sporting items of pink clothing (even ultra-cutesy My Little Pony or Hello Kitty T-shirts) are laughing at themselves, deliberately mocking not just their dress codes but all the tastes and values that define their tribal identity. That seems to me about as ironically detached as you can get.

  I’ve been rather critical of the English so far in this discussion of dress, but this ability to laugh at ourselves is surely a redeeming quality. Where else would you find dedicated members of dress-obsessed youth tribes who can look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘Oh, come off it!’ or ‘Get over yourself!’? I have certainly never come across this degree of self-mockery among comparable groups in any other culture.

  So. Vampires in ironic pink. Another thing to be proud of. I think my last little burst of patriotic pride was over bad puns in tabloid headlines. Hmm. You may be starting to worry about my taste and judgement, but at least there’s a consistent pattern: my rare moments of unqualified admiration for the English all seem to relate to our sense of humour, clearly something I prize above many other perhaps more worthy qualities. How very English of me.

  This sense of humour may perhaps help to explain the otherwise puzzling English mania for fancy-dress parties. Other nations may have masked balls and national or regional festivals involving fancy-dress costumes, but they don’t have fancy-dress parties every weekend, for no apparent reason or on the flimsiest of excuses, the way the English do. English males seem to have a particular penchant for cross-dressing, seizing every opportunity to deck themselves out in corsets, fishnet stockings and high heels. And it is always the most macho, the most blatantly heterosexual of English men (soldiers, rugby players, etc.) who find it most amusing to dress up as tarty women. This strikes me as yet another form of ‘collective eccentricity’: we love to break the rules, providing we can all do it together, in a context of rule-governed cultural remission such as a fancy-dress party or a stag night, so there’s no individual embarrassment.

  CLASS RULES

  It is much harder nowadays to tell a person’s class by his or her dress, but there are still a few fairly reliable indicators. Nothing as obvious as the old distinctions between cloth-caps and pinstripes, but if you look closely, you can identify the unwritten rules and subtle status-signals.

  Youth Rules and Yoof Rules

  Class indicators are most difficult to detect among the young, as young people of all classes tend to follow either tribal street-fashions or mainstream trends (which are in any case often diluted versions of street-fashions). This is annoying for class-conscious parents as well as class-spotting anthropologists. One upper-middle-class mother complained, ‘Jamie and Saskia look just like those yobbos from the council estate. Honestly, what is the point?’ Meaning, presumably, what is the point of taking the trouble to give your children ‘smart’ upper-middle-class names and send them to expensive upper-middle-class schools, when they insist on dressing exactly like Darren and Chantelle from the local comprehensive.

  But a more observant mother might have noticed that Jamie and Saskia do not, in fact, look exactly like Darren and Chantelle. Jamie may have his hair cut very short and even gelled into spikes (or whatever the latest street-fashion shape may be), but Darren will go one step further and have his shaved off almost entirely, leaving just a few millimetres of fuzz. Saskia’s multiple ear-piercings may horrify her parents, and the more audacious Saskias may even have their belly-buttons pierced, or get a small, discreet tattoo, but most Saskias will not, like the Chantelles, sport multiple large tattoos, or rings and studs in their eyebrows, noses and tongues. Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara, had a tongue-stud, but this was shocking enough to make front-page headline news in all the tabloids. The upper class and aristocracy, like those at the bottom end of the social scale, can ignore the unwritten dress codes because they don’t care what the neighbours think. They do not suffer from middle-class class anxiety. If middle-class Saskia gets her tongue pierced, she is in danger of being thought ‘common’: if aristocratic Zara does it, it is daring and eccentric.

  Leaving aside the occasional upper-class exceptions, sartorial differences between middle-class youth and working-class ‘yoof’ are generally a matter of degree. Both Jamie and Darren might wear low-slung baggy jeans (a gangsta-influenced style, of black American origin), but Darren’s will be lower and baggier – four sizes too big for him, rather than just two. And working-class Darrens will start wearing this style at a younger age than middle-class Jamies. The same goes for their sisters: Chantelles tend to wear more extreme versions of the latest tribal costume than Saskias,105 and to start younger. They are also generally allowed to ‘grow up’ earlier and faster than Saskias. If you see a pre-pubescent girl dolled up in sexy teenage fashions and make-up, she is almost certainly not middle class.

  As a rule, middle-class children’s and teenagers’ dress tends to be both more restrained and somewhat more natural-looking than working-class yoof attire. Chantelle and Saskia may both wear the same fashionable style and shape of T-shirt and trousers, but Saskia’s will be matte rather than shiny, with a higher proportion of natural fibres, at least in the daytime. The class indicators are quite subtle. Saskia and Chantelle may shop at the same teenage high-street chains, and often buy the same items, but they combine them and wear them in slightly different ways. They may both have, say, the latest skinny jeans from Topshop, but Chantelle is more likely to wear hers with a ‘blingy’ designer-logo top and teetering high heels, while Saskia’s identical jeans might be worn with a woolly jumper, boots and a big, soft scarf wrapped several times round her neck. For some reason, middle- and upper-class young people are much more inclined to wear scarves than the lower ranks – that big, soft scarf is one of the most reliable class indicators – and generally more willing to wrap up warmly in cold weather. Darren and Chantelle often seem perversely determined to be cold, going out on freezing January nights wearing just a T-shirt and jeans (Darren) or a strappy top and a mini-skirt with bare legs (Chantelle).

  This is not a question of money, and the cost of clothes is not a reliable guide to the class of the wearer. Saskia’s and Jam
ie’s clothes are no more expensive than Chantelle’s and Darren’s (they may even be cheaper, as the former are more likely to hunt for ‘indie’/Boho items in charity shops), and Chantelle and Darren are just as likely to have a number of expensive items of ‘designer’ clothing in their wardrobes. But, again, there are tell-tale differences. When working-class yoof, male or female, wear ‘designer’ clothes, they tend to go for the ones with the big, obvious logos. The reasoning seems to be: what is the point in having a Juicy Couture or Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt if no one can tell? The upper-middles and above regard big designer logos as rather vulgar.

  If in doubt, look at the hair. Hair is a fairly reliable class-indicator. Chantelle’s haircut is likely to look more ‘done’, more contrived, more artificial than Saskia’s – and her style will involve more obvious use of gel, dye and spray. Almost all upper-middle to upper-class schoolgirls have shiny-clean, floppy hair, falling loose so that they can be constantly pushing it back, running their fingers through it, flipping and tossing it, tucking it behind their ears, pulling it into a rough twist or ponytail then letting it fall back again, in a sequence of apparently casual, unconscious gestures. This floppy-hair display is a highly distinctive ritual, rarely seen among working-class females. Many lower-working-class females currently wear their hair pulled up into an extremely tight, high pony-tail, sneeringly known as a ‘Croydon facelift’, ‘council-house facelift’ or ‘chav facelift’. A popular variation on this style involves leaving two very thin sections of hair hanging down over the face.

  The more restrained/natural appearance of middle-class youth is only partly due to the diktats of class-anxious parents. English children and teenagers are no less class-conscious than their elders, and although some middle-class Jamies and Saskias may use ‘common’ items of clothing or jewellery as a form of rebellion, they have their own sartorial snobberies, and their own class anxieties. Their parents may not realise it, but they do not, in fact, wish to be indistinguishable from the ‘council-estate yobbos’. They may even use derogatory names for those whose dress and manner put them in this low-class category, such as ‘townies’, ‘scallies’, ‘oiks’, ‘yobs’, ‘pikeys’ or ‘plebs’ – or, of course, the now ubiquitous ‘chavs’. The working-class children and teenagers, in turn, have absolutely no wish to emulate the ‘posh gits’, ‘yahs’, ‘Sloanes’, ‘hoorays’, etc.

  The more sensitive English middle-class youths are slightly embarrassed about their snobbery, and were somewhat hesitant, in interviews, about admitting to using these terms. Discussions touching on class issues were always punctuated by nervous laughter. An upper-middle-class teenage girl confessed that she had been hankering after a particular rather expensive item of jewellery, until she noticed that it seemed to have become very popular among hairdressers, which, she said, ‘put me off it a bit,’ adding, ‘I know it shouldn’t, that it’s really snobbish of me, but I can’t help it: if they’re all wearing it, I don’t like it so much.’ Her class-anxious mother, with her concerns about appearing ‘common’, would no doubt be pleased at this evidence of her influence.

  Although young English people are more class-conscious than they like to admit, many of them are more worried about being seen as ‘mainstream’ than about the class-labels attached to their clothing. To call someone’s taste in dress, music or anything else ‘mainstream’ is always derogatory, and in some circles a dire insult. Definitions of ‘mainstream’ vary. Taking me through the lists of clubs and other dance-venues in Time Out magazine, young music-lovers offered different opinions as to which clubs were ‘cool’ (a term that is now becoming less cool) and which were ‘mainstream’. In extreme cases, ‘mainstream’ encompassed anything that was not unquestionably ‘underground’: for some young clubbers, any club or venue listed in Time Out was automatically ‘mainstream’ – ‘cool’ events were those advertised only by word of mouth.

  These are serious issues for young English people, but I was pleased to find that there was still an undercurrent of humour, even an element of self-mockery, in discussions of coolth and mainstreamness. Some teenagers even make sartorial jokes about their own mainstream-phobia. In the mid-1990s, for example, when the Spice Girls were the epitome of mainstream, despised by all those with cool, underground pretensions, some counter-culture ‘grungers’ took to wearing Spice Girls T-shirts – a little ironic in-joke, poking fun at themselves, refusing to take the mainstream-avoidance rules too seriously. Such jokes can be successfully carried off only by those already established as ‘cool’, of course: you are effectively saying ‘I’m so cool that I can wear a blatantly mainstream Spice Girls T-shirt without anyone thinking that I might actually like the Spice Girls.’

  Adult Class Rules

  Grown-up sartorial semiotics are marginally less complex than the teenage rules and signals, and the class indicators are somewhat clearer.

  Debrett’s Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners advises us to ‘forget the old British adage that it is ill-bred to be overdressed’. The author claims that this rule dates from a time when ‘it was the accepted norm to dress up for any activity more than gardening’. At this time, he says, ‘overdressing meant being got up in a flashy, overly elaborate or embarrassing way and took no account of the modern invasion of sports-inspired clothes that has enslaved whole swathes of the nation into sweats and trainers’. He has a point, and higher-class people tend not to wear sweats for going out. But flashy, over-elaborate dress is also still a lower-class indicator, while the higher echelons still manage to ‘dress up’ without looking fussy and overdone.

  Female Class Rules

  Too much jewellery (especially gold jewellery, necklaces spelling out one’s name or initials and large hoop earrings), too much make-up, over-coiffed hair, fussy-dressy clothes, shiny tights and uncomfortably tight shoes are all lower-class hallmarks, particularly when worn for relatively casual occasions. Deep, over-baked suntans – whether real or fake – are also regarded as vulgar by the higher social ranks. A ruddy complexion, however, is perfectly acceptable, providing it is the obvious result of much walking, riding, hunting, gardening and other hearty outdoor activity. This rugged, weather-beaten type of tan, confined to the face, neck and forearms, and always clearly an accidental by-product of country life, is often seen among upper-class women. Deliberate tans – those achieved by spit-roasting oneself on a beach or sunbed, or applied with a spray-can – are ‘effortful’ and contrived, and therefore seen as lower class.

  As with furniture and home-decoration, too much twee, laboured matching of clothes or accessories is also a lower-class signal, particularly if the scheme involves a bright colour – say, a navy dress with a red belt, red shoes, a red bag and a red hat (take off two more class points if any of these items are shiny as well as red). This kind of overdressing is often seen at working-class weddings or other special occasions. The same over-careful matching but with a more muted ‘accent’ colour, such as cream, would be lower-middle class; reducing the number of matched accessories to just two or three might raise the whole outfit to middle-middle status – but it would still be an ‘outfit’, still too fussy and Sunday-best, still too obviously dressed-up for the upper-middles.

  For the crucial distinction between lower/middle-middle and upper-middle dress, think Margaret Thatcher (careful, stiff, smart, bright-blue suits; shiny blouses; matching shoes and bags; coiffed helmet of hair) versus Shirley Williams (worn, rumpled, thrown-together – but good quality – tweedy skirts and cardigans; dull, sludgy colours; nothing matching; messy, unstyled hair).106 This is most emphatically not to say that any sort of scruffiness is ‘posh’, or that any attempt at dressing up is automatically lower-class. An upper-middle or upper class woman will not wear Waynetta Slob leggings and a grubby velour sweatshirt to go out to lunch at a smart restaurant – but she will turn up in something fairly simple and understated, without lots of heavy-handed matching and effortful accessorising. Her hair may be casually ‘unstyled’, but it will not be greasy,
or display several inches of dark roots straggling into a brassy-blonde dye.

  Among adult English females, the amount of flesh on display can also be a class indicator. As a rule, the amount of visible cleavage is inversely correlated with position on the social scale – the more cleavage revealed by a garment, the lower the social class of its wearer (a daytime garment, that is: party dresses and ball gowns can be more revealing). For the middle-aged and over, the same rule applies to upper arms. And skimpy, skin-tight clothes clinging to bulges of fat are also lower class. The higher ranks have bulges too, but they hide them under looser or more substantial clothing.

  The class rules on legs are rather less clear-cut, as there are two more factors to complicate the issue: fashion and the quality of the legs in question. Lower-working-class females (and nouveaux-riches of working-class origin) tend to wear short skirts, when they are in fashion and often when they are not, regardless of whether they have good enough legs, while ‘respectable’ upper-working, lower-middle and middle-middle women do not display very much leg, even when both fashion and leg-quality would allow it. Among the higher social ranks, the more youthful and fashionable women may wear shorter hemlines, but only if they have very good legs. The upper-middle and upper classes regard thick legs – and in particular thick ankles – as not only unattractive, but also, worse, working class. The myth that all upper-class females have elegant legs and slim ankles is perpetuated by the fact that those with thick ones usually take care to hide them.