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Dedicated Follower of Fashion

"Dedicated Follower of Fashion"
Dedicated Follower of Fashion cover.jpg
Original single cover from 1966
Single by The Kinks
B-side "Sittin' On My Sofa"
Released 25 February 1966 (UK)
27 April 1966 (US)
Format 45 rpm
Recorded 2 February 1966
Genre Rock, pop
Length 03:05
Label Pye 7N 17064 (UK)
Reprise 0471 (US)
Writer(s) Ray Davies
Producer(s) Shel Talmy
The Kinks singles chronology
"Till the End of the Day"
(1965)
"Dedicated Follower of Fashion"
(1966)
"Sunny Afternoon"
(1966)

"Dedicated Follower of Fashion" is a 1966 single by British band The Kinks. It lampoons the contemporary British fashion scene and mod culture in general. Originally released as a single, it has been included on many of the band's later albums.

Musically, it and "A Well Respected Man" marked the beginning of an expansion in the Kinks' inspirations, drawing as much from British music hall traditions as from American rhythm and blues, the inspiration for breakthrough Kinks songs like "You Really Got Me". While it was quite scornful toward them, many of the fashionistas the song mocks would later take its title to heart.

In the mid-1960s fashion in Britain was becoming increasingly daring and outrageous, driven by the youth-oriented culture of Swinging London. Boutiques such as Biba, designers like Mary Quant, and the television personalities like Cathy McGowan who popularised them became celebrated as much as the entertainers who wore their mod clothes.

Fashion trends changed rapidly, and the Carnaby Street shops did a brisk business from those trying to avoid seeming out of step with the latest craze. Ray Davies saw all this and satirised the hypothetical extreme, a superficial dandy whose "clothes are loud but never square / It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best ... He thinks he is a flower to be looked at ... In matters of the cloth he is as fickle as can be."

Ray Davies claimed that the song was inspired by a fight he had with a fashion designer at a party:

I got pissed off with [a fashion designer at a party] always going on about fashion. I was just saying you don't have to be anything; you decide what you want to be and you just walk down the street and if you're good the world will change as you walk past. I just wanted it to be the individual who created his own fashion. ... [It was] a terrible brawl. I kicked him, and I kicked his girlfriend up the arse.


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Wikipedia

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