As a rule, middle-class children's and teenagers' dress tends to be both more restrained and somewhat more natural-looking than working-class yoof attire. Tracey and Saskia may both wear the same fashionable style and shape of t-shirt and trousers, but Saskia's will be matte rather than shiny, with a higher proportion of natural fibres, at least in the daytime. The class indicators are quite subtle. Saskia and Tracey may shop at the same teenage high-street chains, and often buy the same items, but they combine them and wear them in slightly different ways. They may both have a short denim jacket from TopShop, but Tracey will wear hers with tight, slightly shiny, black lycra/nylon trousers and clumpy, black, high-heeled, platform shoes, while Saskia's identical jacket will be worn with a pair of cords, boots and a big, soft scarf wrapped several times round her neck. For some reason, middle-and upper-class young people are much more inclined to wear scarves than the lower ranks, and generally more willing to wrap up warmly in cold weather. Kevin and Tracey often seem perversely determined to be cold, going out on freezing January nights wearing just a t-shirt under a leather jacket (Kevin) or a mini-skirt with thin, shiny tights (Tracey). Such inadequately dressed yoof are a particularly common sight in the North.
This is not a question of money, and the cost of clothes is not a reliable guide to the class of the wearer. Saskia's and Jamie's clothes are no more expensive than Tracey's and Kevin's, and Tracey and Kevin are just as likely to have a number of expensive items of 'designer' clothing in their wardrobes. But again, there are tell-tale differences. When working-class yoof, male or female, wear 'designer' clothes, they tend to go for the ones with the big, obvious logos. The reasoning seems to be: what is the point in having a Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt if no-one can tell? The upper-middles and above regard big designer logos as rather vulgar.
If in doubt, look at the hair. Hair is a fairly reliable class-indicator. Tracey's haircut is likely to look more 'done', more contrived, more artificial than Saskia's - and her style will involve more obvious use of gel, dye and spray. Almost all upper-middle to upper-class public-schoolgirls have straight, shiny-clean, floppy hair, falling loose so that they can be constantly pushing it back, running their fingers through it, flipping and tossing it, tucking it behind their ears, pulling it into a rough twist or ponytail then letting it fall back again, in a sequence of apparently casual, unconscious gestures. This public-schoolgirl floppy-hair display is a highly distinctive ritual, rarely seen among working-class females.
The more restrained/natural appearance of middle-class youth is only partly due to the diktats of class-anxious parents. English children and teenagers are no less class-conscious than their elders, and although some middle-class Jamies and Saskias may use 'common' items of clothing or jewellery as a form of rebellion, they have their own sartorial snobberies, and their own class anxieties. Their parents may not realise it, but they do not, in fact, wish to be indistinguishable from the 'council-estate yobbos'. They even have code-names for those whose dress and manner put them in this low-class category - such as 'Tracey-Girls', 'Garys', 'Kevins' (often shortened to 'Kevs') or 'Grubs'. The Garys etc., in turn, refer to the 'posh' children as 'Camillas', 'Hooray Henrys' and 'Sloanes', and have absolutely no wish to emulate them. These are all labels applied only to others: young people never describe themselves as Kevs or Camillas.
The more sensitive English middle-class youths are slightly embarrassed about their snobbery, and were somewhat hesitant, in interviews, about admitting to using these terms. Discussions touching on class issues were always punctuated by nervous laughter. An upper-middle-class teenage girl confessed that she had been hankering after a particular rather expensive item of jewellery, until she noticed that it seemed to have become very popular among hairdressers, which, she said, 'put me off it a bit,' adding, 'I know it shouldn't, that it's really snobbish of me, but I can't help it: if they're all wearing it, I don't like it so much'. Her class-anxious mother, with her concerns about appearing 'common', would no doubt be pleased at this evidence of her influence.
Although young English people are more class-conscious than they like to admit, most of them are more worried about being seen as 'mainstream' than about the class-labels attached to their clothing. To call someone's taste in dress, music or anything else 'mainstream' is always derogatory, and in some circles a dire insult. 'Mainstream' is the opposite of 'cool', the current generic term of approval. Definitions of 'mainstream' vary. Taking me through the lists of clubs and other dance-venues in Time Out magazine, young music-lovers offered different opinions as to which clubs were 'cool' and which were 'mainstream'. In extreme cases, 'mainstream' encompassed anything that was not unquestionably 'underground': for some young clubbers, any club or venue listed in Time Out was automatically 'mainstream' - 'cool' events were those advertised only by word of mouth.
These are serious issues for young English people, but I was pleased to find that there was still an undercurrent of humour, even an element of self-mockery, in discussions of coolth and mainstreamness. Some teenagers even make sartorial jokes about their own mainstream-phobia. In the mid-1990s, for example, when the Spice Girls were the epitome of mainstream, despised by all those with cool, underground pretensions, some counter-culture 'grungers' took to wearing Spice-Girls t-shirts - a little ironic in-joke, poking fun at themselves, refusing to take the mainstream-avoidance rules too seriously. Such jokes can only be successfully carried off by those already established as 'cool', of course: you are effectively saying 'I'm so cool that I can wear a blatantly mainstream Spice-Girls t-shirt without anyone thinking that I might actually like the Spice Girls'.
Adult Class Rules
Grown-up sartorial semiotics are marginally less complex than the teenage rules and signals, and the class indicators are somewhat clearer.
The current Debrett's Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners advises us to 'forget the old British adage that it is ill-bred to be overdressed'. The author claims that this rule dates from a time when 'it was the accepted norm to dress up for any activity more than gardening'. At this time, he says, 'overdressing meant being got up in a flashy, overly elaborate or embarrassing way and took no account of the modern invasion of sports-inspired clothes that has enslaved whole swathes of the nation into sweats and trainers.' He has a point, particularly where men are concerned, but among females, flashy, over-elaborate dress is still an unmistakeable lower-class indicator, while the higher echelons still manage to 'dress up' without looking fussy and overdone.
Female Class Rules
Too much jewellery (especially gold jewellery, and necklaces spelling out one's name or initials), too much make-up, over-coiffed hair, fussy-dressy clothes, shiny tights and uncomfortably tight, very high-heeled shoes are all lower-class hallmarks, particularly when worn for relatively casual occasions. Deep, over-baked tans are also regarded as vulgar by the higher social ranks. As with furniture and home-decoration, too much twee, laboured matching of clothes or accessories is also a lower-class signal, particularly if the scheme involves a bright colour - say, a navy dress with red trim, red belt, red shoes, a red bag and a red hat (take off two more class points if any of these items are shiny as well as red). This kind of overdressing is often seen at working-class weddings or other special occasions. The same over-careful matching but with a more muted 'accent' colour, such as cream, would be lower-middle class; reducing the number of matched accessories to just two or three might raise the whole outfit to middle-middle status - but it would still be an 'outfit', still too fussy and Sunday-best, still too obviously dressed-up for the upper-middles.