BY ALEX ROEST

"The very word Suedehead refers to the grown-out crop i.e. a Skinhead haircut. The attire and the attitude that went with it were not very different from those of his immediate predecessor however; it was rather a variation on a theme. The Suedehead of the early Seventies wasn’t so much a separate entity as a continuation of the smart Skinhead who (in many cases anyway) had always worn his hair slightly longer than the ubiquitous number one of ’69.

One has to remember when the Skinhead was yet to be christened as such; Peanuts (as they were somewhat inaptly called) still wore their hair in a college-boy style. The neatly side-parted hair re-appeared at the tail-end of the movement when what basically still were Skins had their hair in that style, or indeed a grown-out crop which resembles the “French crew” (which is like a crew cut but longer, about two inches all over) of the early Mods. So the whole style had come full circle, because Skinhead was Mod begat in the first place, so that’s where our story begins."