As a book lover, I know exactly what you mean Hank.

Yes, it's been said that you work very hard for what you like to wear.  Can't fault you for that, Simon!  It's the mod aesthetic experience - 'stepping up the tailoring' (George Melly in 'Revolt Into Style'?).  I'm just behind the times!

Jdemy may find something of interest here.  A lot of blanks to be filled in, however.

JFM always emphasised 'The Look'.  That was all that really mattered for him.  If M&S, Uniqlo, Weller and the bog attendant at J.Press had come together, collaborated and created the perfect Ivy League shirt, he'd have given it some thought, some consideration.

The early mods were on RSG for the most part. Indeed they can be seen in the vid I posted yesterday.

It's a brief clip of Mickey Tenner and other youngsters in Harringtons, cycling shirts and Levis, dancing the block.

I attended a Mod do for the first time in yonks the other day. It's a very strange little world isn't it?

Paul Weller never had any credibility with us - which, in retrospect, was a pity.  The Jam were rejected, along with a number of other groups, as 'inauthentic' (actually, we would have used a different word.  'Shit' springs to mind).  The irony was, what we accepted turned out to be worse: Lydon, Strummer, all that pseudo-radical bollocks.  Some - a minority - moved in the direction of the Velvet Underground, others toward that Liverpool bullshit, still others toward rockabilly, a few toward Dylan and Van Morrison.  Everything was in the air and when the dust finally settled, Weller meant nothing at all.  As I say, a pity.  Lydon is now a joke, Strummer long dead, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks dead, 
Thank heaven, then, for Chet, Miles, Frank, Blossom and Cole Porter.  To name but a few.

'RSG'.  Very nice.  I'd have liked a bit more of that.  They looked great, didn't they? - in total contrast to the youth of today.  There's a very brief shot of a girl with a hairstyle I just about recall - and which the aforementioned Julie used to sport.  The hair kind of projects forward in curves.  Ravishing look.
Back in 2015 I met a few old 60s Mods who still looked terrific.  One was still full-on Cathy McGowan, another was very Dusty Springfield.  Enjoyed chatting to them. 
Yes, I enjoyed that clip.

I can't comment on modernists from personal experience as that was before my time , however I had an interest in clothes from an early age, I was clocking the ' mods' '63/64 as a 10/11 yr old, aspiring to be like them, (probably like RobbieB & Uncle Ian), my definition of ' Mod' is (usually) white working class kids ( 15-21 yrs old) obsessed with clothes, girls, having a good time etc, black music as it was ' cool' , no politics were involved then, when you saw black kids they carried the look off albeit slightly differently, I still see on old black friend ( Neville), who must now be in his '70's at football, he's still wearing loafers and a b/d, I think he saved my life or at least a beating when I was 15 yrs/old, but that's another story, a couple of guys who were about 3 yrs older than me were the guys I looked up to, they were on RSG, probably in the later shows,('65), some of you may or may not know this ,most of those kids on the early shows were ' recruited' from the Scene Club in Ham Yard, off Longacre, on a visit to Lloyd Johnson's Chris Hardy told me he still held a grudge against Cathy McGowen for not selecting him to go on  RSG ! and that was after more than 50 yrs ! Another thing at that time I don't think the mods referred to theirselves as ' mods', and whilst I have nothing against the Who film I can't imagine the kids in Brighton '64 chanting ' we are the mods' , and probably a lot of those kids in Brighton would have been regarded as ' hard mods', I smile when I see guys in their 30's upwards still trying to sport a Steve Marriott haircut, FGS grow up a bit, I'm too old to know anything about the mod revivals, I'll leave that to others, final part of this largely un-coordinated post is that without mod happening in the '60's and the transition to Ivy Style clothes in the mid/ late '60's there wouldn't be any ivy style in the UK now, The Ivy Shop in Richmond would not have survived on the 'Young Professionals' they were focusing on when they opened, anyway that's what I think .......