Peter Ross at large: Steampunk Rockers

'SOME mornings," says Helen Beaumont, a wan and willowy medical student of 22, "you wake up and you just really want to wear a bustle."

Bustles are not in short supply, nor are lace veils, silk bloomers and jewellery made from watch-cogs, at Glasgow By Gaslight, the annual summer soire of the Steampunk Society. It is held in the Grand Ballroom of Sloans, one of the city's oldest pubs.

Steampunk is a subculture whose time has come. Or rather its time has gone. Or rather its time is still to come. Confusing, I know. Essentially, steampunk is an idea of a future based on Victorian technology. Think transatlantic airships, piston-powered prosthetic arms, or personal computers made of gold and bronze. Think Bleak House meets Blake's 7.

"You can really let your mind run wild," says Beaumont, who is wearing a tiny top hat with a crest of pheasant and peacock feathers, and a velvet crop-top held together by safety pins. "You can imagine, 'What would a Victorian time-travelling adventurer look like?' It's a rejection of the undressy look of modern fashion. Personally, I just don't feel that pretty in a pair of leggings."

The word steampunk was coined in 1987 by the American writer KW Jeter, and popularised through such key works as Alan Moore's comic book series The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The movement has, however, been given a tremendous boost by the internet. A festival held each September at a former lunatic asylum in Lincoln attracts over 1,000 steampunks, and coming on 6 August is Steampunk Flashmob Day, which in Glasgow is likely to be marked by the tribe's sudden arrival, in corsets and cravats, at the new Riverside museum.

Glasgow By Gaslight is, however, the grandest event in the Scottish steampunk calendar. Sloans is a good venue for it. The barrel-vaulted ballroom on the top floor has chandeliers, stained glass windows, and gilt thistles in the mouldings. A DJ plays Bela Lugosi's Dead, a song which would cheer those detractors who claim that steampunk is nothing more than "goth in brown".

Walking up the stairs is a middle-aged man in a long leather coat and flight cap with an ammunition belt slung across his chest. He is followed by two younger men, one in a silk scarf and holding a parasol, the other in a top hat and bow-tie. "I only found out what steampunk was about two days ago," says the pilot, who is called Duncan, ordering a round of drinks. "We parked in West Nile Street and got some right funny looks walking here."

Steampunks wear Victorian costume with techy flourishes. Many have on badges and other jewellery made from the innards of antique watches. The totemic accessory is a pair of flying goggles, a trend honoured in the name of the online forum, brassgoggles.co.uk.

Several steampunks here tonight sport this eyewear. One has made hers from a pair of tea-strainers. This DIY aspect is an important part of the movement. It is the "punk" part of steampunk. The whole thing is shamelessly and attractively nerdy. Glasgow By Gaslight is an event at which rouge-cheeked young women say things like "I was brought up on Asimov, Le Guin and Tolkien," before showing you their petticoats.

There is entertainment laid on. A brace of stand-ups, supposedly from the Victorian era, make topical jokes about Jack The Ripper, Sigmund Freud, and the Queen's relationship with John Brown. "How is 1861 for you?" one of the comics asks. "I've got Great Expectations," replies some literary wag in the audience.

A lanky fellow in a dinner suit takes to the floor and begins setting up his act. "Theremin, I think," observes a steampunk known as American Dave. "Excellent!"

American Dave is quite correct. Greig Stewart, a 26-year-old software engineer by day, is a theremin-maestro by night. Moving his hands through the air around the instrument, he performs a selection of themes from popular video games, reaching a crescendo with Tetris played on the laser harp. It is quite the geekiest thing I have ever seen and yet also quite brilliant. He bows and exits the stage to wild applause and not a few whoops.

Downstairs, in the beer garden which was once a noted cockfighting venue, Jonathan Ducarr lays his rayguns on the table, removes a cigarette from a silver case and lights up. Aged 44, he is an architectural draughtsman, though presently on the dole, and the rayguns are for use in a modelling shoot in which he is due to appear. One is made from an old hairdryer, the other from a toy pistol. Both have been modified – or "modded" to use the correct parlance – to look appropriately steampunk.

Ducarr himself is very striking. Burly in a top hat, he is wearing a tailcoat, riding boots, and a prescription monocle he got on the NHS. He has long hair and a waxed moustache, and carries a walking cane topped by a silver dragon. He looks as though he spends every spare moment tying women to railway tracks.

"I've always been slightly different," he says. "I liked Victorian literature and formal clothing, even as a child. Since around the age of 10 I've been a steampunk. Even before there was a term for it. HG Wells, Jules Verne – they had an influence on me from an early age. I wanted a submarine. I wanted an airship. I wanted the rayguns that the Martians used in War Of The Worlds."

Growing up in Manchester, in Moss Side and Hulme, he walked around in a suit and tie. What is it about that way of dressing that appeals? "It's better than a tracksuit," he retorts. "It's better than wearing pyjamas in Asda. It has a cut. It has style. And people treat you with a little bit more respect. I went to a funeral recently. I was the only person, other than the vicar, who wasn't in a tracksuit. And the whole planet's heading that way. The younger generation does not have the style that former generations did. And they don't care."

Ducarr dresses in this way as often as he can, curbing his sartorial excesses for visits to the buroo, an institution which tends to regard with suspicion clients who turn up dressed as if for a showdown with Sherlock Holmes. What sort of reaction, though, does he receive on the streets of Glasgow? "I get the worst alcoholics, druggies and neds coming up and giving me a hug or a handshake. Because I tip my hat to them, they give me the respect."

Helen Beaumont wanders over, breathless. "You missed us doing the can-can!" she scolds. I did. By the time I get back upstairs, a long-haired young man, dressed like a Prussian officer and possibly the worse for schnapps, is whirling round the dancefloor to Fade To Grey by Visage. The song changes to Coin-Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls and suddenly a dozen women in ballgowns are doing jerky, clockwork dance moves.

Perhaps surprisingly, given its emphasis on sci-fi and gadgetry, this subculture is not dominated by men. "It attracts strong-minded women and feminists," says Jane, a 23-year-old steampunk from Paisley. "The appeal is in rewriting history without the negative parts of the Victorian era. It was not a great time to be a woman. But in this movement you can take on a persona and be anything you want to be. You can be an engineer. You can fly an airship. That's quite empowering."

Jane is a seamstress who makes steampunk fashion for her own label, Gaia Noir. She lifts the bustle of her skirt to reveal a vanity case inside a secret compartment. "Incorporating engineering into fashion is quite a steampunk thing to do."

And what does she keep in there? "Currently my purse, but hopefully, later, some gin."

Nina Baker, 57, is a Green Party councillor and has some claim to being the godmother – "Well, Auntie, maybe," she demurs – of Scottish steampunk, having organised the first event, in March 2009.

She has on a corset from which dangle lots of tiny silver tools – hammers, spanners and the like – and a seal bone hanging from a piece of ribbon. "Steampunk admires the things that are good about Britain without being jingoistic," she says. "We are good engineers, we are good at making things, but actually we don't celebrate those people in our society, not like we do footballers."

Does steampunk therefore, perhaps, tap into a feeling of sadness for the passing of Britain, and in this case Glasgow in particular, as a manufacturing powerhouse? "Yes," she says. "There is a kind of nostalgia for a time when we made everything the world bought and when engineering design was very beautiful."

Stuart Dick, a 25-year-old barman from Fintry, trained as a model-maker and is wearing a Foreign Legion-style kepi of his own construction, made from a cereal box and off-cuts from some overlong breeks. He regards steampunk as a reaction against bland, soulless contemporary design – "There's no emotion in an iPod" – and against built-in obsolescence.

"I like the idea of taking things which look bland and mass-produced and turning them into something unusual," says Dick. "I'm working on taking the innards of a computer and rehousing them in a wooden box. The idea is that it'll have a crank handle on the side and that'll be the on-switch. It'll be a work of art if I get it right."

It is the end of the night. The can-can has been danced, the theremin packed away, and a good number of steampunks are steaming. Jonathan Ducarr twiddles his moustache, squints through his monocle, and – with a villainous laugh – hazards a prediction.

"We are expanding slowly," he says, "but one day we will take over the world."