The Observer Music Monthly has dedicated their latest issue to ‘teens’, a category that I technically can no longer apply to myself or can I? According to Miranda Sawyer’s article ‘Everything Changes’:
"Anyhow, young adult, like middle youth and kidulthood, is an attempt to define this blurring of the divide between child and grown-up. Everyone’s a teenager now. Adults are staying younger for longer, and kids are growing up earlier."
If this is true, then these Ten Teen Looks (mostly applicable to Britain only) that Maude Churchill (an 18 year old guest teen editor from Leeds) has put together applies not just to the 13-20 yr old gap that I would call ‘teen years’ but to the people like myself as well who perhaps blindly extend their youth by subscribing to these ‘looks’. So I thought this might be of interest to not just the teens but also that 20’s or even 30’s generation that hold onto their youth to varying degrees of success. Do read the article for some amusing descriptions of each Look. Hopefully if you fall into one of those brackets, you won’t take too much offense at Churchill’s sometimes disdainful tone.
Of course, being the Music Monthly, the looks are accordingly music genre-led which is very much true for the teens that I observed yesterday when I was unknowingly surrounded by them at the O2 Wireless Festival (always nice to feel the weight of your years…). You have…
1) The Punk // 2) The Nu Raver
3) The Hardcore Kid // 4) The Scene Kid
5) Emo Skater // 6) Indie Boho
7) The Scranner // 8) Wannabe Wag
9) The Goth // 10) Skinhead
I can honestly say I never fell into any of those categories which isn’t some kind of triumphant declaration as quite simply, those categories by and large didn’t really exist when I was a teen and of course now, I’m too far gone to be subscribing to any of those. I can say that London seems to be overun with 2), 3), 4) and 6) – well, the places I go to and they probably are the looks I vaguely like from an aesthetic point of view even though I myself, don’t necessarily wear them in the orthodox way. As I have always been a firm believer in diversity of style and expression of style that is intrinsically atuned to you as an individual, categorising a population of teens in this way is a little irritating for me. Yet I have to concede that they hold some truth and sadly as I was walking amongst tribes of nu-ravers and scene kids yeterday at Hyde Park, reality confirmed it all for me. There is however I think a bigger scope in diversity certainly, compared to when I was a teenager which is pretty reassuring.
It’s all very well me commenting as someone not in that teen age bracket anymore, so by all means, teens, shed some light on these Teen Looks. Complete tosh or excruciatingly true?
one style i would say is missing from there is one which i’m constantly seeing in the guildford/godalming area, the preppy/wannabe sloane. Hair backcombed, wear uggs always…
But maybe thats just where i live!
ok just read the article, the wannabe wag – ‘If she lived in London, I’m sure she’d be particularly fond of Sloane Square’, thats not what i was referring to!
This is so true, and sad. They all want to be individual but end up looking the same. So depressing.
im 16 and i live in prague so some of these categories dont apply to my city. i looked at all of my clothes just now and i can honestly say im not in any category. to create my look i go to the shop and choose what i like. im a bit tired of all the nu ravers and emos-they think they’re original and cool but they are just a bunch of lame posers…your style shouldn’t be dictated by nme.
It’s a proven psychological fact that people dress to the norm of the group they identify with (it’s all psychology/biology). I suspect teenagers being more insecure of there identity then older people are more prone to this than most. Ten categories is a lot more diversity than I remember as a teenager. So, its really pretty good. I just wish there was a sophisticated category.
I always feel like I see these types every where I turn but actually, when I think about it, the majority of people I know don’t fall into any of these categories. If one goes into any of the schools in my area (including my own) you will probably only see a handfull of people dressed in any one of these styles.
ps I also think 5 was done pretty badly, that look is way more american not british
Hmm… I think I’ve been through all of these phases since I turned 13. It’s not particularly sad, it’s just about what a person likes. I know I know… blah blah blah, “I want to be different just like everyone else,” blah blah blah… you can’t fault a person for what he or she likes.
I still think “nu-rave” is retarded.
rach: that look is rampant in dublin! abercrombie and fitch, backcombed hair, uggs/dubarry shoes (are they just in ireland?!)/and the new thing is pretty converse trainers
if one more of them comes in and gets me to find them near to ten pairs of converse all in both high and low tops and then doesn’t buy them because they just want to ‘think about it’ i will scream…quietly…lol…
Ugh…formulaic dressing! I can’t stand it, especially nu-rave, it’s just too easy. What I like to see is when people break the formula, add something new that isn’t usually accepted into it. A friend and I were stopped by a woman at the Wireless festival yesterday so that she could take a picture of what we were wearing…I think it was mostly about my friend who was wearing one of those nu-rave slogan t-shirts with short dungarees. She is the only girl I know who looks great in dungarees!
I wish my area (Boston) had nu-ravers and emo and scene kids. *Sighs* The only ones we are left with are wannabe wags or prepsters…
I completely and utterly agree with rach and katielilga. Abercrombie & Fitch is where 99% of my high school population shops at. Depressing.
You seem to be weary of the Nu ravers and scene kids, but they seem so fashionable compared to the kids in the U.S.! In fact, I’d love for the population of nu ravers to increase. The majority of teens here shop at stores like Abercrombie and Hollister. Gagg. Then the next biggest genre is probably the kids who try to be like the preps and buy Abercrombie knock-offs at Walmart. It’s a sad, sad world.
I kinda look at it differently (maybe because I’m not living in the UK) I do feel that on the whole you will fit into one of the categories based on general things, but if you look more closely I do feel that everyone does have it’s particular style and it’s own uniqueness… Because let’s face if everyone were to wear the same thing we’d still look different just because of our personality (well that’s my positive note for today ;))
Over here (in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) most of the chicks will follow typical celebrity trends (Lindsay! Nicole!). tights, shorts with flowy tops and a long necklace etc. Know what I mean? I think I’m pretty eclectic though, I could do WAG Wannabe one day, punk the next, preppy, indie boho…WHATEVER!
I’m sixteen by the way.
Frankly, I live in such a small town compared to the likes of a city like London. Therefore, the majority of these cliques/categories don’t really exist.
We do have a handful of hardcore kids, a plethora of emo skaterz and maybe a few wannabe scenesters. The rest of the teenage population I’m distraught to say, consists of “scranners” or skangers and the WAG-wannabes/the D4 gang.
More often that not, people attempt to categorise me due to what I’m wearing or what band I’m into at the time. Personally, I find that unhealthy yet completely normal at the same time, teens will always reject what they are not familiar with and tragically, cannot comprehend/do not understand and will always endeavour to squash people into these social “boxes” and force them to conform.
Although I’m not particularly proud to admit it, I do bear resemblances to a wide variety of the categories mentioned, I’m probably some kind of 2,4 and 6 hybrid.
Oh how I do ramble.
I don’t think there’s any shame in falling into any of these categories. I’m more interested in how people feel about being boxed in, by these ten looks. On one hand, I think it’s a bit dismissive and as Cillian has pointed out, there are rooms for hybrids, eclecticism and also completely different looks altogether. Yet at the same time, what I’m observing in reality is conformation to the categories which isn’t to say I think it’s a bad thing. It’s just interesting for me to see an evolvolution of teenager styles from when I was growing up to now and I can say there’s a vast improvement in terms of variety and experimentation even if experimentation does turn formulaic and over-saturated.
Thanks for everyone’s intl’ input. In the UK, we have equivalents of Abercrombie/Hollister clones – well at least the spirit of wearing logos on chests anyway…just different logos that’s all.
where i live, (jakarta, indonesia) most of the “cool” or “cool” wannabes girls dress the same way. t-shirts (longer ones preferred) or tunics, skinny jeans or leggings or tights, and cardigans. oh, and quilted bags. ugh i’m so sick seeing these. go to the mall, and prepare to puke. i think london’s better, at least there are 10 categories, and not one.
When I was a teenager back in the 90’s in Portugal, everyone was divided by groups and you could pin point what music they liked by the clothes they were wearing. There were goths, grunge/ surfers, The heavy metal group was very big(I think they are extinct now), the 50’s rock group,I guess the point was looking like James Dean or Marlon Brando but they they looked more like Jason Priestley or Luke Perry of Beverly Hills, and then you had the rock guys, that were the coolest of all, as usual. There was not such thing as the rich kids group because there was nobody had money back then and there were no joks because we didn’t had sports facilities(Thank God).
Looking back think it’s normal and part of being a teenager, we needed a sense of belonging. But anyway even Now we still dress as part of a tribe, even you Susie are part of a very recognizible tribe, the way we dress may not be belong somewhere but it had to do with the image that we want to project of ourselfs, I hate Girls Aloud and wags for example so I try to avoid anything that may give a hint that I may belong to that group.
i think the younger the kid the less diversity, so there were probably about 8 looks in my middle school, 12 or so in my high school, and now there’s a lot of diversity in college, but there’s still a few big groups. that sounds right, that there are less than a dozen groups that 90% of the population looks like, and then there’s a unique 10% that either have their own look or change constantly.
as a 20yr-old American, i have never heard the terms “scranner” or “wag.” but hipsters and scenesters are the biggest group for my age level right now. along with an athletic, sweat-pants, super casual look, usually wearing the logo of our university or their sorority/fraternity. boys in that category never ever take off their baseball caps. i also live in a dorm area that is mostly Asian-Americans, and they all seem to dress very preppy and upscale. personally, i’m usually very boring jeans and tee-shirt, but sometimes i’m an art-student drama-major sort of crazy with over-the-top frills and colors. (i’m actually a Japanese fashion major;;;)
what else… oh! a lot of girls don’t have any style at all and are just dressed real slutty. so i guess dressed-like-a-hooker is another American category, lol. and the boy-side of that is guys that think they’re real tough gangsters. whether they’re black or trying to be black, they dress like they’re in a rap video, even though they’re just goin to class.
oh and hippies! there’s a lot of patchouli-smellin, tie-dye/patchwork-wearin kids with berkinstock sandals (or sometimes barefoot) who might have dreadlocks or facial piercings.
anyway, i’m clogging up your comments page.
but i guess i miss college, cause it’s fun to reminisce over the summer like this, heh.
I was also at the O2 festival and my eyes were practically smarting from the fluro nu rave colours I saw! I seem to remember when I was young wearing rave gear so it is funny for me to see teenagers wearing similar stuff to what I was whenh I was there age! I agree though that, especially when you are young, you dress to identify with your values and norms. I remember thinking that I was going to do grunge forever but soon grew up and feel in love with luxe brands – something I never thought I would do in the early 90’s!
it’s wierd how the categories haven’t really changed. i think i tried on a lot of them and various combinations. punk [but more of a glam punk club kid which i guess is a scene kid too], i had a hip hop thing in there sometimes, raver yes [but in my own way and nu raver is much better], went through some 70s-style rocker phase when i was in tokyo a lot between glam punk and raver phases, and borrowed from goth. indie boho i guess i do a bit now? in that picture he looks like a new romantic.
i love all the styles. but when you borrow from them and mix them together you aren’t really welcome in most of them, it is somewhat suspect, except the one style that does that. for example club kids took from everything. and fashion people take from everything.
Winchester, thanks to the 2 private schools here (alright, I go to one of them) is mainly Sloaney territory. In fact, now that we’re on study leave for GCSEs and in non-uniform the Sloanes have become even more prevalent. In winter, Uggs, skinny jeans, Ralph Lauren jumper and RL polo shirt with collar sticking up; summer, polo shirt with collar, pretty miniskirt and pumps, *or* a pretty top, skinny jeans, pumps and a cardigan slung on. We’re a pretty unfashionable year, really…one of my friends is a total Hardcore Kid/Emo Skater, but she’s the only one. There are a couple of Indie Boho/Scene kids. I try to be indie boho, vintage-y, but I am slightly too shy to go as far as I want, plus I have to make sure it is cycling/walking friendly-even in winter after the trek up to school I end up hot and sweaty…
1.)what the heck is a “scranner”?
2.)Here are some of the “groups” at my California high school: goths, punks, ghetto/hip-hop dressers (may include the chola girls), preps,indie kids, and earthy/nature-y people…
I would agree with the fact London is saturated with nu-ravers and scene kids; for me, at 15, it would seem that many former ‘chavs’ i was once surrounded by have taken on the nu-rave trend and called it their own. This is about, what, 2 years since it started to emerge in London?
I also think another group is ‘the horsey girl’, there are an awful lot of them about. They’re kind of preppy and posh, always wear their hair in ridiculous combedover styles, and can’t stop touching it.
I’m still finding a look thats ‘me’, I think, but without having loads of money to spend on finding clothes that are actually ‘alternative’ I would probably end up like one of these stereotypes. But, I have to say, my friends do not fit into any of these categories as such; one of my friends lives in long socks, velour cloaks and has a bowl cut!
“scranner” would be something like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard right?
It’s actually very true. I come across every single one of these characters every day. It doesn’t really bother me though. I like the majority of these looks anyway. I just wish that people could be a little more experimental and varied in how they dress!
That single wannabe wag individual is the very epitome of 90% of girls 15-30 in Stockholm.
missing 2 categories:
– honki stylez
– the derros
Pretty true – but I can’t say I’ve seen a hardcore teen yet and there aren’t many punks or skinheads around any more, like the article said.
Also, as others mentioned, definitely missing the ‘sloany’ – wearing Jack Wills, Abercrombie & Ralph Lauren with their ‘just got out of bed hair’ and baggy joggers tucked into Uggs. (Yeah, that’s Guildford/Godalming, that or the scranners aka chavs/pikeys.)
Even though you can generally categorise Nu Rave, Indie Boho and Scenesters, I think you can find a lot of variety and creativity within those groupings.
haha its true and sweet in a way. i did a project on music tribes last month and it took a long time! there are too many to document
the whole sloane thing is just terrible! i live in london but have been at boarding school for the past year due to my parents moving abroad and i think the worst thing about it is the lack of variety in the clothes people wear! Abercrombie and Jack Wills are the most popular labels and anyone wearing anything diverging from this in any way gets eyed evilly as they walk past the groups of sloanes. i mean seriously, this look has been around for decades- most of the worst offenders’ mothers dress the same as they do…ugg boots, abercrombie ‘trackie bums’ and tasteful t-shirts and cardies. i, meanwhile, do fluoro and eyeliner. but maybe that’s just me.
the whole sloane thing is just terrible! i live in london but have been at boarding school for the past year due to my parents moving abroad and i think the worst thing about it is the lack of variety in the clothes people wear! Abercrombie and Jack Wills are the most popular labels and anyone wearing anything diverging from this in any way gets eyed evilly as they walk past the groups of sloanes. i mean seriously, this look has been around for decades- most of the worst offenders’ mothers dress the same as they do…ugg boots, abercrombie ‘trackie bums’ and tasteful t-shirts and cardies. i, meanwhile, do fluoro and eyeliner. but maybe that’s just me.
My boyfriend is the dirty nu raver at the top there
what a twat.
haha
🙂
Haha! I remember these been taken (i’m number 1!)
It’s so freaky that while browsing through random websites off google I find a photo of my mate Adele, the Scene kid. lol, creeped me out a tad, have to say.
I think it’s good that youths can find a way to belong. wearing particular clothes will automatically -well- put you into a certain friendship group.
I didn’t even know I was a hardcore kid until that guy was wearing my jacket and skinny jeans. Whatever.
I live in London and 3,4,5,7 and 9 all inhabit it more than anything.
It’s a hideous thing to catorgorise people, but it’s so much easier.
I am 19 and live in Guilford and as a guy often I wear girls denim hotpants with stripey overknee socks. I get loads of comments, some good, some not so but probably cos its different ! do ppl think it is a good idea to have my own style like this ?
lol…..tht skinhead is me…back wen i was still a freshcut…n they had better pics thn tht n all n they used a propa shitty one…….
ahwell any one out there wanna be skin dont watch this is england coz its bolloks…
just ask ur dad n send a reply to me…..
serios ur dad cud tell u more thn that film……..lol….evn if he is a hippy….im sure he can remember the blood loss………lol
HAHA just stumbled on this page after searching for the looks of our youf. I am actually number 2. I’m a 16 year old student from London, and I was made to dress like that, I like to think that my dress sense is a little more sophisticated
How r u? I’ve got a new song on my site
Go play my song and video at: http://www.punkboy.info
and tell me what do u think!
“I’m not particularly happy about any of this. When it’s dark, late at night and perhaps I’m not perfectly sober, there’s no way of knowing whether I’m supposed to avoid these kind of kids before they mug me or give them a shoulder to cry on.”
Hahaha, this is so true! My brother can’t ‘decide’ whether to be a chav or an emo/ scenester so settles for a hardcore kid, which is pretty lame.
In London theres was massive divide between Chavs and Emo’s- They both loathed eachother. Hardcore kid seems to have bridged the gap which is rather amusing.
Most of the people I know pick out styles from most of these, and mix them up so can’t really be categorised into any one of the groups.