I remember at school in the early 60s having suffered getting a 'short back and sides' the haircut for the cool kids was 'the Boston' and the 'crew cut'. Everyone was aware that these were American style. This developed into the 1/2 inch crop. All working class English looks and the antithesis of the long haired hippies. Ironically many of us working class kids started growing our hair in the early 70s as a reaction to younger kids getting a crop.

I may be mistaken, but didn't the original skinheads/peanuts wear their hair at a reasonable length in comparison with that dreadful, post-punk look of around 1978?  I'm sure I've seen photographs of chaps in check shirts, crombies, Levis etc. with hair longer than mine is now (gently receding, ahem). 
The astronaut-Marine Corps-Teamsters-FBI look was something I played around with in around 2008 before relaxing gently into a gentler, TRS-inspired groove.

Pre and post 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch crops the haircut would have been a college boy look. So the hair was a bit longer copying the earlier Mod styles perhaps.Skinhead was originally an insult term which the media picked up on. My mates would have short hair but not shaved heads. I only had one or two 1/2 inch crops before going back to college boy and then going mad and growing my hair long (David Essex style)
My vivid memory on haircuts is probably because I am now bald and I have a No.0 cut

It’s great reading people’s memories of the sixties and early seventies. Too often I think those times are portrayed as kind of flicking instantly from mods’n’rockers to swinging London to football aggro skinhead to flared jeans and clogs without taking in the much more interesting nuances going on in between.

Spendthrift is right.  Denim dungarees, known as 'Bleeders', had a moment of fame in my neck of the woods.  Probably long forgotten.  Then there was the 'Budgie; jacket - worn by top boys at the Sec.Mod. only.  Very lurid socks were popular from around 1971 to 1973: lime green or orange with black hoops.  Don't forget, though, this was a rather gloomy Midlands town with a halfway decent (then) football team.  Clothing was often bought from market stalls - like the snide Crombie.

Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson certainly knows his stuff. I was around him a lot in the early 90’s. He ran an excellent RnB club in Reading on Sunday nights. Tailor made gear all round.
He put a lot of unpaid effort into fanzines, clubs etc. So deserves all the praise he gets for his books.

Until I discovered this forum I would not of associated skinheads with Ivy or any form of smartness.

My youth was in the Eighties and skinheads then were closely associated with punk. The new bread were all about a paramilitary look of MA1 flying jackets, bleach stained jeans that only just went down past their knees and massive doc martins. Their music of choice was Oi.
Far right views were also fashionable amongst them -and just before somebody jumps down my throat and claims that they all weren't like that - I can only go from personal experience. I never met any so called red/anti nazi skins.
Typically badly dressed, semi literate recruiters outside football grounds preaching race hate and anti-miner/union rhetoric who were a million miles away from the customers John Simons describes in his film.

Scorcha was really enlightening. I couldn't see much of a cohesive style though but some of the pictures of the suede head guys with longer hair looked really good.

I should imagine that, compared to today where getting whatever you want is relatively easy, a trip to the Ivy Shop must have been something very special.

Alvey is right, those revivalist skinheads were a bad lot.  Post-punk, there was a period of uncertainty and they were part of it.  Does anyone remember Sham 69?  Their lead singer, Jimmy Pursey, was a lovely, friendly guy but who (for some strange reason) attracted the National Front types.  Then there were the out-and-out horrors - Oi! as Alvey says.  But Two-Tone emerged and the scene became rather more anti-fascist.  I went on a big march in 1978, Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park.  Trouble was expected but, thankfully, failed to materialise.  They were anti-Jewish, anti-Asian, anti-black, generally anti-gay - anti-bloody-everything, in fact.  But, on the whole, as with the Trotskyites, it was largely two men and a dog and they would fall out over anything: somebody ordering the wrong lager or whatever - and certainly too dim to read 'Mein Kampf'. 
I haven't seen an actual skinhead of any description in years.  Nor a teddy boy.  Long may it remain that way.

In fact, just thinking it through, the conflation of Ivy with 'skinhead' is hugely irritating and not even understandable.  The conflation of Ivy with 'Mod' is a good deal more so.  I was never a Mod but even I looked at the Barnes book (and others) with a certain amount of interest.  But I was too young the first time round and far too sceptical the second.  The idea of the 'Modernist' - dark glasses at midnight, Blue Note album tucked under one arm, heading off into the dawn for an espresso - struck me much more forcibly.

‘coming from all over London and the Home Counties, wanting to buy Loafers, Royals, BD's & G9's. My old boss Ian once told me a story that JS ordered two black cabs to go to Heathrow, Ian was in one the other was empty. When they got to the airport Ian filled the empty cab with Brogues & Plain Caps that had come over from the States, and then sent it straight back to London, he then followed it back in the other cab. They'd sold them all in a matter of weeks.’

Yes. Buying shirts and shoes but not Harringtons. It was my understanding that the shoes were made in Northampton though. The sizing was U.K. too.

I remember the Suedehead thing as being fairly shortlived, but it was a good look and could be mistaken for Ivy at a glance. But essentially they were mainly skins who had decided to stop the no 1 haircuts and dress more smartly. As we know, dressing smartly doesn’t make you any more  intelligent or thoughtful.

Yes. Buying shirts and shoes but not Harrington's. It was my understanding that the shoes were made in Northampton though. The sizing was U.K. too.

You're right about shoes being made in Northampton Kingston1an, I'm lead to believe the "Ivy Royals" which Strach, still had were made there. But the one's Ian came back from Heathrow definitely came from the US, the cabbie took them back to the Squire Shop. I'm sure some of them made it to the Ivy Shop.

I think it's wider than that.  The other names have rarely been discussed, especially in recent years.