From Ken Dodd to Jennifer Ellison, Liverpool has always been a city stylistically apart. Mathew Whitfield ponders...

Liverpool is a stylish city; of that there is no doubt.  There’s something in the very fabric of this place, something quite intangible that constantly makes me think of all the sparkling fashion and downright glamour that has given Liverpool its deserved reputation in the pantheons of post-war popular culture. Lots of us have probably heard the epithet that Bold Street once used to rival London’s New Bond Street in the fashion stakes during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, but it’s definitely the city’s verve and innovation of the past 40 years that have really put it on the style map of the UK.  Something happened in the 1960s in this town, something that you might call an awakening, which made this place what it is today.  The city has its critics but has always possessed an amazing ability, inherent in its people and its sense of place, to defy them all with sheer creativity and a not-inconsiderable degree of bloody mindedness.

The 1960s were at once the beginning and the culmination of Liverpool’s sense of style. The beginning because we all know that The Beatles, mop tops, panda eyes and miniskirts were all popularised and reached a mass audience first in this city, and still, to a large extent, define outside perceptions of its style credentials; the culmination because none of that could have happened without Liverpool’s unique position and tempestuous history. Okay, so The Beatles and the legacy of the Mersey Sound is hardly something we should still be clinging onto after so long, but the reasons why that happened can tell us a lot about why this city continues to innovate.  Liverpool is, and always has been, a city of immigration. Throughout its commercial heyday, peaking around 1900, thousands of people from Ireland, Scotland, China, Europe and the rest of the world made this place their home. Countless others simply passed through on ships trading with the entire globe, making their impact in a myriad of small ways. The result? Liverpool does not feel like any other English city. Manchester is only 35 miles away and it may as well be on the moon, because this is a city whose sense of Englishness does not extend much beyond a commitment to the national team in the Euro 2004. 

The Beatles and their generation all imbibed the atmosphere of a cosmopolitan city that was a gateway to the world; where cultural influences were mixed up and made visible in bustling docks, food, clothing and music from around the globe. John Lennon is a case in point. Here was a man whose father was a seaman of Irish decent, raised by an aunt whose family had originally lived in vibrant, dockside Toxteth and enjoyed all that a dynamic port had to offer.  John had a cousin who was half-Egyptian born to another aunt who had had a brief marriage to a visiting sailor. Brought up by an archetypal Liverpool matriarchy of five sisters, John was a bright grammar school boy with the speech rhythms and wit that so often characterise those with a Liverpudlian background. It was John’s stepfather, a nightclub promoter and local impresario who first introduced him to Rock and Roll. The first vinyl recordings of this new music were finding their way into Liverpool via American sailors passing through the docks long before Elvis and other breakthrough acts became commercially popular across this country. Lennon’s story is, of course, exceptional, and relied on raw talent as much as a childhood in Liverpool, but his experience is far from unique. This city, just by being what it is, has given the world so much simply by allowing the world in.

There are two main readily identifiable Liverpool ‘types’ which surface time and again in the media and which are used as a stick with which to beat this city, contributing to a collective sense of amnesia about the city’s style pedigree.  Let me compare the myths with the reality. 

The Scall

First and foremost amongst cultural commentators, the be-tracksuited Scall is the laziest and most convenient image of a typical scouser.  Based mainly on a number of ill-advised and cringe-worthy Harry Enfield sketches, which in turn took their cue from a handful of Brookside characters, the Scall should preferably have a perm and say ‘calm down’ a lot.  Scalls steal cars and beat each other up.  They wear cheap, flashy jewellery and have no taste.  They are aggressive and intimidating, lack anything in the way of intelligence and always end up involved in violence. I actually saw this Liverpool ‘type’ being trotted out as the basis for a lame gag on a recent edition of ‘Have I Got News For You’ and was seriously depressed.  It’s the bad joke that refuses to go away.

The Scouse Bird

And so to a more recent phenomenon.  The Scouse Bird is characterised by ‘Popbitch’ and other such media outlets as an orange-skinned, yellow-haired fashion victim whose dedication to the sunbed is only matched by her commitment to finding the tightest possible white designer dress.  Famous Scouse Birds include all the members of Atomic Kitten and recent ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ winner Jennifer Ellison.

Due in no small part to these lazy stereotypes, Liverpool is probably has the most recognisable character of any British city.  The problem is that it’s almost always incorrect.  Ask any average person in any average town elsewhere in the country what they think of Liverpool and its inhabitants and, because they’ll probably have seen Brookside, Harry Enfield, Boys from the Blackstuff and any number of such representations in the popular media, they think they know what the place is about.  If only they visited, and if only they understood.  Yes, Liverpool is known because Liverpool is different and proud to be so.  The different always stands out, like the thoughtful boy in school who isn’t any good at games or the vegetarian at a dinner party full of carnivores. 

This is still a city of immigration, with both asylum seekers and students bringing new influences, cultures and ideas to bear on a city that is more than used to welcoming strangers. Something must be going right as Liverpool has one of the highest rates of student retention in the country with a sizable minority of visitors staying much longer than the three-year duration of their degree course. All of these trends have their effects. Who can walk up Bold Street today and fail to notice how stylish it is? This is not the brand of style it used to have 100 years ago, when the most expensive boutiques attracted only the rich with establishment tastes, nor the style that the Sunday supplements and fashion stores of today dictate to be all powerful. This is the style of students, young people and newcomers from around the globe thinking in new ways about how to look and how to engage afresh with culture.  This is not necessarily just the style of charity shops, retro cool and ethnic chic, for Liverpool has already welcomed its first major designer store for many years with the arrival of Vivienne Westwood in Mathew Street last year.  Westwood may be rather establishment these days, what with her retrospective at the V&A, but that hardly puts her in the same league of ubiquity as some of the other brands of consumer luxury that characterise the blandness of so many other towns.  To call her quirky is an understatement – what a welcome addition to Liverpool she is.

Style, of course, is ultimately down to the individual who decides what to wear and how to live their lives on a daily basis. The fact is that Liverpool just happens to have more than its fair share of individuals, all making up an amazingly diverse fashion scene. More new shops and new investment are in the pipeline as the economic cycle begins to pick the city up from the doldrums of the 80s and 90s, but for any retailers or fashion pundits who decide, as Tatler magazine did in 2002, that Liverpool is simply the new place to see and be seen, there arrival must come with a warning.  This is a place with a heart and soul of its own – when it comes to style, Liverpool can’t be fooled and knows exactly what it wants.