TOWN September 1962 - The holy grail

October 30, 2026

Easily the most sort after and collectable article on mods. It was published back in September 1962 and so the term mod had not even appeared to describe the youth cult - there were murmurs of the term modernsits as we all know. The story goes that the journalist Peter Barnsley overheard the three lads in this article excitably discussing Bilgorri suits in a Soho coffee bar, and voila - I'm just pleased he interrupted this particular clothes obsessed modernists.

Photography is by Don McCullin who has taken some incredibly stylish shots throughout his career, for some reason now he's been labelled the 'war' photographer. His 1958 Observer magazine photo story of The Guvnors' is brilliant and in someways a warm up to war photography in its bombed out building location. Sir Donald McCullin CH CBE just looks nails though- even aged 91, almost as if he could stop a battlefield bullet with his Nikon F camera, which of course he did. However nothing gives more kudos monochrome-1960s-hip-photographer bragging rights than his photos used throughout the film Blow-Up

The article follows three Stamford Hill Hackney boys, namely; Peter Sugar, Michael Simmonds and Mark Feld later as you know became Marc Bolan of T-Rex fame. The writer Peter Barnsley states Sugar as the leader of the tight knit (mock turtle neck) group. Mark Feld at the time of this article was a mere 15 years old and achieved sartorial legend, that the most seasoned mod would hope to achieve to this day. Even here as the junior of the three he earned the most column inches in the article, he had a star quality even at that tender age.

This trio were just a splinter group of an extended gang from Hackney and Bethnal Green that were the very origin of mod. These cats would have included Chris Pegley who features in a NME fanzine blog post from May 2026

All three lads were working class, Marks dad was a lorry driver and his mom ran a stall at Berwick Street market in Soho London, which Mark would sometimes work on too. The other two modernists were hairdressers and their wages were spent on clothes and going out to clubs in East London and Soho. The competitiveness of constantly updating or buying new clothes was the be all and end all, Mark is quoted in the final paragraph of the article as saying

"Whatever you do', he insists, you've really gotta try to be different"

The proportion of their wages being spent on clothing was mind bending, the article covers this and I'm not sure what the Oxford graduate publishers of Town: Clive Labovitch and Micheal Heseltine (later a Conservative Deputy Prime Minister) thought about the likes of these three East London Jewish lads trying to get into their West End clubs, they were clearly better dressed even with customised Woolworths shirts.

My favourite shot in the article is of the three dressed more casually up on the Union Canal, from what I've discovered is the Camden section of the Union Canal, with The Constitution Pub in the background, if anyone can confirm I'd be grateful. This was also the image used for the excellent Stamford Hill Mods exhibition back in 2013, this exhibition has not been bettered yet.