An Oral History Investigation into Fashion Practices in British Motorcycle Youth Culture in the Period 1945 to 1966

This is the first academic study to investigate the dress and consumption practices in British youth motorcycle subcultures in the post-war period through the collection of oral histories from motorcyclists active in the period 1945 to 1966. Interdisciplinary in nature, it incorporates and critiques existing subcultural and post-subcultural theories, and brings together unique interview testimony with visual material and material culture analysis to facilitate a new reading of a previously little studied subculture. Existing academic texts and popular, internal texts are used as sources, including illustrations and photography from the researcher's archive of motorcycle magazines, books and advertising material from the 1910s to 1960s that have not previously been subjected to academic analysis. The thesis documents how semiotic meaning was created by young motorcyclists through the acquisition and modification of motorcycles, garments and accessories in the mid-century period, and the emergence of celebrated subcultural locations and structures in South East England. It documents how participants established subcultural identity and signified affiliation with others through practices of consumption, recording how these components of identity were combined with elements of riding practice to create a new and distinct subcultural entity within wider motorcycle practice. This is achieved by categorising motorcyclists and their motorcycles as hybrid entities according to dress practice, subcultural affiliation, motorcycle modification and riding behaviour. The study concludes with an investigation into the ways components of this British subcultural practice have been perpetuated and reinterpreted, both in online communities and through participation in revivalism events, existing in the latter alongside fashions and uniforms from the 1940s wartime period. The transformation of mid-20th century subcultural dress into benign luxury commodities in revival communities in the early 21st century is documented, as garments simultaneously lost both the functionality they provided to motorcyclists, and the social and cultural tension with which they were associated.