I’m doing great!! I’m feeling super encouraged by the positive reception of the Skinhead Clobber zine.

I’m from Dublin. Life here’s good, there’s small but vibrant and friendly skinhead and punk scenes, and the city’s a bit dingy but dear to my heart.

Mooching, mainly. I meet up with friends and hang around town, chat to people who work in our favourite shops and stuff. There’s not much to do without spending money these days, so we kick rocks pretty much. I do a lot of art, I have another zine so I write for that too. I listen to music 24/7, and go to as many punk and skinhead shows as I can too!

Well, my dad always used to play Madness on car trips and we went and saw them in Clapham. That was my first time being properly exposed to alternative subculture because there was a huge amount of extremely friendly skinheads. I think it’s always something I was drawn to though, I never fit into the mainstream.

I was just daydreaming in English class, I couldn’t bring myself to write another essay. I’d kind of wanted to make a little skinhead clothing catalogue and I feel like I wanted to organise my thoughts and put my opinions down somewhere, so I started drawing it in class.

Probably a couple hours – it was mainly done in school. It’s only 1 a4 page, and I pretty much did no rewriting or reorganising the layout because it wasn’t meant to be a serious project.

Just did it on 1 a4 piece of paper, and I sketched it all out in pencil. I went over it with a fineliner and then later decided to add some grey marker too. Nothing too fancy, just whatever I brought to school with me haha

I’ve done a good few before! It’s one of my favourite art mediums because it’s basically just writing what you like writing about and then you’ve got a neat little book out of it. I made a little series of zines with the lyrics the song “Know Your Rights” about 3 years ago, and me and my friend Noah make a zine called Shitehawk Fanzine (@shitehawk.fanzine on instagram). It’s focused on the punk scene in Ireland and we’re working on issue 2 right now.

My favourite would probably be the 2-page spread titled “Bootboys + Casuals” because I just love how the layout came out. I love drawing shoes.

When creating it initially, it was more for myself than anything else, I just wanted to chat shite about skinhead fashion. But after posting it online, a few people have said it’s a great fashion guide and they wish they had something like that when they started out being a skinhead. It’s nice that it turned out like that because I want the scene to grow among young people like myself, and hopefully my zine is encouraging that.

Skinhead culture is of course based on good fashion and good music, and it fully originated from the working class and working class unity. I think a true skinhead is a person who fully embraces the idea of racial unity and cultural diversity, and the idea of racist “skinheads” is ludicrous to me. Without West Indian immigrants, the skinhead subculture and look wouldn’t exist. How can someone sit there and listen to ska and reggae, or the specials, and not hear what they’re singing about? So much of the music is about racial unity. Dividing class and race is a very useful tool for the upper class, because while we’re all worrying about identity politics, there’s nothing preventing them from continuing to go to the bank.

I was always alternative – I never felt like I could follow the mainstream, and never really wanted to anyway. I, like most other kids of my generation in Ireland, grew up listening to reggae, ska, and soul. I had a feather cut when I was 15 but I never knew there was any young skins, and I grew it out and joined the punk scene. I’m still part of the punk scene now but when I met and old friend and saw that he’d become a skinhead, I realised there were other people my age interested. So I went back to my feather cut and we started going to ska gigs. The scene has been so welcoming to us.

My braces and my blue jeans. Like Skinhead Girl by Symarip! I love wearing skirts and dresses but jeans are easier to mess about in. Usually with a Harrington, and a tshirt, polo or button down. For gigs I usually wear a skirt and my monkey boots though.

Fred Perry and Ben Sherman like every other skinhead!!! The colour combinations are so nice and the quality is decent. I also love army surplus because it’s durable, fashionable and practical. I’m always wearing some form of camouflage!!

Dark

Boots

I’ve had both, but I’ve a fringe now

Fred Perry

Violence

Stiff Little Fingers
Big Youth
An Slua
Bromure
The Boomtown Rats

I hope to do a few more skinhead zines, but my zine Shitehawk Fanzine is an ongoing one, we’re planning on releasing the second issue sometime in July or August!!

Maybe some skinhead brands!! That was my plan for the next one, but also maybe a skinhead girl fashion one or something about boot care.

I love doing my own zines but I know there’s other skins who do art in the scene so I’d love to collaborate with some of them at some point!

Stay S.H.A.R.P. – sometimes antisocial, but always antifascist! 🙂