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Were the 1950s teds colourful or not?

Perennial debate in teddy boy circles: are teddy boys supposed to wear colourful drapes or not? No doubt they were more colourful in the 1970s revival than in the 1950s but did the 1950s teds wear colourful drapes or not? Difficult question to answer seeing that just about 99% of photos taken in 1950s Britain were black-and-white. The consensus seems to be that they were not and this can be illustrated by these now classic photos of 1950s teds which longtime ted Steve Cantlow has recently colorised (beware! at 1:04 an early 1980s photo of some revivalist Tedwardians makes an appearance, which really says a lot for how convincingly they revived the style!).

Now I don’t know – in the process of colorisation – whether you can make out a genuine colour from a black-and-white original, but I don’t get the feeling that Steve is in any way far off in these photographs.

 

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