Mods were always the essences of cool. If the style appeal of Fifties Teds and Sixties hippies depends heavily upon nostalgia, the Mods looked hip from the start--that was the point. Mods were all about Ivy League button-down shirts, desert boots, Polo shirts, blues and soul music and scooters. Above all, the movement was always a chic one, linking recent youthful revolt with new levels of style awareness.Terry Rawlings' book perfectly captures the look and soul of Mod. Tracing its roots back to London's Soho of the Forties, he unearths every impulse and expression of the only surviving British youth movement that can be looked back on "without embarrassment." Featuring hundreds of pictures, many gleaned from private collections and never before published, Mod is a large-format, heavily illustrated celebration of all things Mod. Rawlings includes exclusive interviews and audiences with some of the Mod scene's main movers past and present, including Richard Barnes, Johnny Moke, Graham Hughes, Peter Stringfellow, Kenney Jones, Bobby Gillespie and "Mani" Mounfield, Eddie Piller, and Gary Crowley. With chapters on the origins of Mod, its music, scooters, clothes and fashion, and the Mod revivals of the late Seventies and beyond, Mod: A Very British Phenomenon provides a full and vibrant picture of the fads that swept through Britain and became lasting facets of British culture.