ABSTRACT
Reyd bustled down the Walworth Road towards me. He was set slightly apart in the crowd, a middle-aged man wearing a loose-fit, tailored suit and what I came to recognise as a pork pie hat, a Ben Sherman shirt and Bass Weejun shoes. Reyd wore the subtle signs of Mod culture, a deep affinity for music and style that travelled the distance of Black American jazz and soul from the 1940s and 1950s to the working-class housing estates in 1960s Britain. He reached me outside his shop-front, unlocked the grill, pushed open the glass door and flipped the sign around, establishing through an old-fashioned custom that his shop was ‘open’. We stepped into the front room, a small space just large enough to accommodate the tailor and his customer. We had met a number of times in this small workspace over the course of two years, and each time Reyd had been both generous and measured in his expression. Between our conversations and his engagement with customers he revealed the connections between what he made, what he wore, and what he valued: between his observance of style as a bespoke tailor and Mod enthusiast, and his sense of society as a local, south London person.
