The photographer//film director Ken Russell lived a very interesting life. In 1955, he decided to document London’s Teddy Girl gangs. His pictures show strong, stylish young women living life by their own rules. Ken Russell says about the Teddy Girls: “they were tough, these kids, they’d been born in the war years and food rationing only ended in about 1954 – a year before I took these pictures. They were proud. They knew their worth. They just wore what they wore.” At the time, these teenage girls were expressing themselves in a way that society saw as completely inappropriate for young women. It took guts as a woman in 1955 to wear pants, let alone run in a gang of other pants-wearing women! Check out Ken’s photos below and allow them to take you back in time! It’s awesome to see the Teddy Girls getting their shine.
