Many of the stalls that used to sell pirated recordings of concerts by alternative bands, unofficial t-shirts, leather jackets with holes, boots without laces..., are now standardized souvenir shops or, above all,
pad thai,
tacos or hamburgers.
Camden Town Market in north London was for decades the epicenter of youth subcultures in Europe.
Mods in the sixties, punks in the seventies, indies and new romantics in the eighties,
grunge, ravers
and
Britpopers
in the nineties.
Today the vestiges of all those movements coexist with the effects of touristification and a fire that devastated the market in 2008 and led to a reconstruction that was undertaken to suit the taste of contemporary consumers.
In Camden you can now eat well, something unthinkable 20 years ago.
And in Camden, Dr. Martens continues to have its offices and flagship store, the footwear brand worn by each and every one of the subcultures that made the neighborhood where they were born from Madness to Amy Winehouse their playground and personal expression for half a century.
While half of the businesses in the area seem like a betrayal of its origins and the other half a desperate and doomed to fail nostalgic attempt to maintain an idiosyncrasy that is no longer lived, only visited and consumed, the space of dr
“The subcultures are not what they used to be, but the idea of rebelling and expressing yourself through clothing is still there, and our boots continue to play an important role in that,” says Darren McKoy, creative director of Dr. Martens, sitting in an armchair in the small museum and concert hall that houses the brand's store.
“Right now, we can be dressed by both celebrities with millions of Instagram followers and young punk bands.
We do not work directly with celebrities, we do not have ambassadors.
The bands, for their part, continue to understand our boots as the springboard that helps them get on stage”, he concludes.
Darren McKoy, creative director of Dr. Martens, pictured at Camden Market, London.Manuel Vázquez
The origin of Dr. Martens boots couldn't be further from the punk aesthetic or the image of Kendall Jenner wearing them while leaving a Starbucks in West Hollywood holding a pint of coffee.
In 1947, after having suffered a skiing accident two years earlier from which he was still suffering after-effects, Dr. Klaus Martens developed in Munich together with his colleague Dr. Herbert Funk a solid and comfortable pneumatic suspension sole.
The idea was to sell it mainly to older women.
Twelve years later, a family of Northamptonshire shoemakers, the Gribbs, licensed the soles and turned them into the basis of a workman's boot.
Eight holes, a yellow stringing and that revolutionary German sole would be the hallmarks of that shoe.
This is how the 1460 model was born, the most emblematic of Dr.
Martens.
“During the early 1960s, these boots were workwear, but as the decade progressed, their blue-collar pedigree sparked interest in other layers of society and jumped into the universe of subcultures, primarily early and multicultural
skinheads,
then popularized by Pete Townsend, guitarist for The Who.
Those are the two moments that mark the later evolution of this shoe”, says Martin Roach, British historian and author of
Dr. Martens: The Story of an Icon
(Dr. Martens: story of an icon).
“For me, there are two great moments in the splendor of boots.
The first takes place during the late 1970s and early 1980s, with punk and all the cultural movements that came right after.
The second,
grunge
in the nineties”, intervenes McKoy.
“There was a uniform among girls back then consisting of light, patterned dresses and solid 1460 boots. Aside from being aesthetically very appealing, it was the time when girls really took ownership of Dr. Martens.
Today half of our products are bought by women”.
2020 marked the 60th anniversary of the 1460 model. The brand celebrated by launching a dozen collaborations with fashion designers, something that Dr. Martens has been emphasizing since Marc Jacobs took these boots to the runway in 1993 to present one of his memorable collections.
grungy.
“It's important for us to collaborate with designers,” says McKoy, “but always staying true to our DNA.
It's also not complicated because, whether it's Marc Jacobs or Supreme, the people we work with have always been fans of boots, they know what they are and they understand them.
Of course, we are not a fashion or luxury firm, and we never will be.
Protester arrested during London mining protests in 1985. Jean Gale (Keystone/Getty Images)
Last year was the best for Dr. Martens sales, and in June 2022 it was announced that it is expected to end this year with a turnover of over 1,000 million euros and an increase in sales of 18% with Over the previous year.
Immediately, the firm's shares rose 19%.
This year the British house has decided to expand its own stores.
In Spain they have opened in Madrid and Valencia.
“Subcultures are not going to die.
They flow and change, but they do not disappear.
It is true that today the tribes are very different and that social networks have caused a morass of aesthetics that is very difficult to define, since everyone takes elements from different sources and mixes them to their liking, almost always resulting in aesthetic proposals that we've never seen before,” Roach intervenes.
McKoy believes that, although at first we might think that this idiosyncrasy would go against the legacy of the firm, always attached to specific aesthetics.
The reality, as the sales figures confirm, is the opposite.
"It's the era of customization and personal expression, and these boots have always been a blank canvas for people to play with, adapt, transform."
One of the latest viral challenges on TikTok involves young people who can't afford the $150+ that cost about $1,460 painting their boot laces yellow to make them look like Dr. Martens.
The first 1460 launched by the brand were sold at two pounds a pair.
Young people dance to the rhythm of northern soul.PYMCA (Dr. Martens)
Early risers walk into the house store in Camden Town.
Almost all of them are tourists and almost all of them are extremely young: they weren't even born when the Buzzcocks wore that pair of Dr. Martens signed by them that are on display in one of the store's windows.
But that doesn't stop them from feeling the same connection to this shoe that all those punks felt, whether it's because their older brothers wore a pair or simply because the brand has a vegan line.
Few firms are relevant for both nostalgia and novelty.
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