Swinging

Sixties
Fashion in London and beyond 1955-1970
Edited by Christopher Breward, David Gilbert and Jenny Lister
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winging
Sixties
Fashion in London and beyond 1955-1970
Edited by Christopher Breward, David Gilbert and Jenny Lister

V&A Publications
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First published by V&A Publications, 2006 A catalogue record for this book is available from
Victoria and Albert Museum the British Library.
South Kensington
London SW7 2RL All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
Distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,
Inc., New York photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written
permission of the publishers.
© The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, 2006 Every effort has been made to seek permission to
reproduce those images whose copyright does not reside
The moral right of the authors has been asserted. with the V&A, and we are grateful to the individuals and
institutions who have assisted in this task. Any omissions
ISBN-10 1 85177 484 X are entirely unintentional, and the details should be
ISBN-13 9781851774845 addressed to V&A Publications.

Library of Congress Control Number 2005935062 Designed by Park Studio

New V&A photography by Richard Davis
LOBOS Or, 6 543
2010 2009 2008 2007 Front cover Models wearing bib-topped trousers,
top and cap (left) and tunic dress and knee-length shorts
(right), all by Mary Quant. Photograph by John French,
1963 © V&A Images.

Back cover Dispo, paper minidress, 1967 (detail).

See p.53.

wn
Frontispiece Georgie of Group 30 (retailed at Harrods’
Way In), dress. Printed cotton. British, 1967. Given by
Julia Parker. © Museum of London. See p.73.

V&A Publications Page 128 Mr Fish, printed corduroy suit, 1968 (detail).
See p.37.
Victoria and Albert Museum
South Kensington
Printed in Singapore
London SW7 2RL
www.vam.ac.uk
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Contents

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Sr OOUCHON CimastOONE CTIEW «ghee, ej sass bess acadu i siowertar an sce bedeucdeddca due tanvanchashen budiemexsenaeere 8
Kaleidoscope: Fashion in Sixties London Jenny Lister ..................ccccecceeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeteees 22
JBL? COLATSYA)Reeste oe A cael ec UR eae od a eelPo A OMe Toh PROP P EY ATI PEO RES TON eG. fron Cea dn, YS 7 40
‘Brave New London’: Architecture for a swinging city Bronwen Edwards ................... 42
J INTER se
ale BY) Roh mates ee ee ne nn Cane PE SIE, UE ROY ome MEE Tr owen Gate een gC 56
‘I think they’re all mad’: Shopping in Swinging London Sonia Ashmore................... 58
“hie: (everciil@ wren!breve) oa sae ates ern pono one ay ne See DORNER ERIE ada rit denn rhc AAs ad 78
Myths of the Swinging City: The Media in the Sixties Pamela Church Gibson ............. 80
MeyCTP AD BOs fae fei Beas k Uatetl Raa once yantes udu ddmag tesa bgo> nein rtnas sebandaeans Rigi ewer 100
Re FRESIATRSIACA OTA CIVICL Cail OU seach cc coos se taan shaves ctesadds« toteensdupaaasarasereanrastanrarvauacsuscmueeuenirs 102
STAC OTANI ee SI esc FC ocean Ss ae sudan adoaadobaedences roe Da AnsA tins MPM ea fe A 118

‘Goodbye Baby and Amen’: A Postscript for the

Swinging Sixties Christopher Breward ..............:ccescccccecseceerseeeesseseeeteeens Dnee 120
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Acknowledgements

The editors, contributors and publishers

would like to thank the Economic and Social
Research Council and the Arts and Humanities
Research Council for their financial support.
The book and its accompanying exhibition
were completed as part of the ESRC/AHRC
‘Cultures of Consumption’ Programme
(project RES-143-25-0038).

The editors would like to thank the following

at the V&A, in particular Richard Davis for
his excellent photography; and Mary Butler,
Vicki Coulson, Lara Flecker, Lynda Hillyer,
Ken Jackson, Lucy Johnston, Suzanne Lussier,
Susan North, Linda Parry, Sue Prichard,
Carolyn Sargentson, Suzanne Smith, Sonnet
Stanfill, Claire Wilcox, Christopher Wilk,
Monica Woods, and the staff of the National
Art Library and the Archive of Art and Design.

Thanks are also due to the copy-editor,

Catherine Blake, and the designers, Park
Studio; Oriole Cullen and Edwina Ehrman of
the Museum of London; Rosemary Harden of
the Museum of Costume, Bath; Katherine Baird,
Sandra Holtby and Robert Lutton of the London
College of Fashion; Sebastian Wormell of the
Harrods Archive; and Marit Allen, Sylvia Ayton,
Anne Marie Britton, Rachel Cooke, Marion
Foale, Felicity Green, Robert Orbach, Sally
Tuffin, Charlotte Prichard and Emily Prichard.
CESSES AAAS OCS RMEDUUCCCC ESS OS CUO ORO SOS Cee OReet Seb C CeO eeeeeeeeeeeseseseeses eeeeeeeeseseseseeeeeseee ee

Contributors

Christopher Breward is Deputy Head Jenny Lister is a curator of fashion at the V&A
of Research at the V&A Museum and a Museum. Previously, sne woiked as a curator
Professorial Fellow at London College at Kensington Palace and the Museum of
of Fashion, University of the Arts, London. London. She has written and lectured on many
He is co-director, with David Gilbert, of subjects including royal dress in the eighteenth
the ESRC/AHRC ‘Cultures of Consumption’ century and London designers in the 1920s.
Research Project: ‘Shopping Routes: Networks
of Fashion Consumption in London’s West Sonia Ashmore is a design historian and
End 1945-1979’. His recent publications member of the ‘Shopping Routes’ Research
include Fashion (2003) and Fashioning Project. She is a Research Fellow at the London
London (2004). He was also co-curator College of Fashion and has recently completed
of the Museum of London exhibition a new study of Liberty & Co. in the context
‘The London Look’ (2004-5). of oriental trade.

David Giibert is Reader in Human Pamela Church Gibson is Reader in

Geography at Royal Holloway, University Cultural & Historical studies at the London
of London, and a specialist in the history College of Fashion. She has published widely
of twentieth-century London. He is co-director, on film, fashion, fandom, history and heritage
with Christopher Breward, of the ESRC/AHRC and has co-edited three anthologies, including
‘Cultures of Consumption’ Research Project: The Oxtord Guide to Film Studies (1998) and
‘Shopping Routes: Networks of Fashion Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations,
Consumption in London's West End 1945— Analyses (2001).
1979’. His recent publications include Imperial
Cities (with Felix Driver, 2003) and Geographies Bronwen Edwards is a Research Fellow
of British Modernity (with David Matless in the Geography Department at Royal
and Brian Short, 2003). Holloway, University of London. She is a
member of the ‘Shopping Routes’ Research
Project, conducting research on retail
architecture, urban planning and the 1953
Coronation parades. She has previously written
on West End shopping cultures of the 1930s.
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Introduction
CHRISTOPHER BREWARD

of vehicles, from a red Routemaster bus,

through to a Jaguar E-type sportscar, a
t is the scene. This spring, as never Mini Cooper and a Rolls Royce. A range
modern times, London is of characters inhabits this lively landscape
switched on. Ancient elegance and —an aristocratic couple in black tie play
new opulence are all tangled up in roulette, a photographer aims his camera
ur of op and pop. The from the entrance of a discotheque, a pop
singer in a ‘Who’ T-shirt with Union Jack
‘British Made’ badge and sunglasses
serenades from the front, and even Prime
Minister Wilson in trademark Gannex raincoat,
pipe in mouth, waves a flag in the background.
On 15 April 1966 the American weekly But at the centre of it all are the fashion-
yews Magazine Time published a special conscious young who were the real focus
edition celebrating ‘London: The Swinging of journalistic curiosity. With their striking
City’. Perhaps more than any other artefact Op-art minidresses, dandified suits and
from the mid-1960s it exoressed all that childlike poses these creatures are the key
was distinctive about the culture of the British subjects of the caricaturist’s brush.
capital. The cover illustration designed by
aptured what would In many ways Time's ‘Swinging City’ issue
héd signitiers of an era. set one of the most enduring templates for
inst a Union Jack backdrop, the city’s subsequent understandings of the ‘Swinging
catea by BigLv Ben and Sixties’, at least as an archetype. Fashion
a@ suburban bingo hall — a celebration of innovation and pleasurable consumption
the unique and the ordinary. Between them, were at its heart, but it also incorporated
the neon of a cinema sign advertises the a set of relationships between the values
atest Michael Caine film Alfie: Recently re- of old and new Britain, and between London
designed road signage directs a selection and the rest of the world. Its material qualities,
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manifested through clothing, photography, film and simultaneously sealed its fate. From
and music, set up deliberate contrasts between the distant vantage point of New York,
tradition and modernity, and its general tone its observations could claim the objectivity
was bright and brash. Time seemed to record of the impartial witness, but at the same
a new irreverent spirit in British social attitudes time they suffered from the inevitable problem
that ushered in a meritocratic sensibility and of translation and the distortion that second-
ignored the prejudices of a hidebound hand experience often brings. The magazine
establishment. In turn reactionary critics such was not alone in focusing on London as the
as Christopher Booker argued that this youthful cradle of a new outlook expressed through
world was too dominated by the attitudes of dress, shopping and popular culture. The
the ‘neophiliacs’ — those in love with newness Daily Telegraph colour supplement had run
itself, who paid scant attention to the realities a feature on ‘London: The Most Exciting City’
of life beyond their solipsistic metropolitan a year before, focusing on its attractive young
concerns.” He considered the whole swinging women with their supposedly relaxed attitude
scene to be a self-congratulatory mirage — to sexual morality and self-presentation.*
and it could be argued that the Time article A year later in January 1967 the revolutionary
was part of the same myth-making process. Italian designer and critic Ettore Sottsass
The political right was not alone in holding produced a spread of images in the
this opinion. At the close of the decade even architectural magazine Domus that captured
John Lennon famously claimed that ‘the whole the kaleidoscopic effect of the signs and
bullshit bourgeois scene is exactly the same, window displays associated with the new
except that there are a lot of middle-class kids London boutiques. Whether the visions they
with long hair walking around London in trendy offered were a reflection of real changes
clothes... nothing happened except that we or part of the myth-making process is perhaps
all dressed up.’? less important than their pervasiveness, not
just in journalism, but also in films, novels,
By announcing the existence of ‘The Swinging paintings, songs and poems that all presented
City’, Time both named a cultural phenomenon versions of the same swinging theme. However,

Previous pages [Ettore

Sottsass, ‘Memoires di
panna montata’, Domus
magazine. January 1967,
pp.30-1.

Opposite Mary Quant,

pinafore dress. Natural
hessian with silk trim. British,
designed 1965 (remade
1973). Given by Mary
Quant. V&A: T.110-1976.

12 = Swinging Sixties
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running through this was a powerful sense with a hessian dress produced by the
that the design, retailing and wearing of quintessential Swinging London designer
fashionable dress played a pivotal role Mary Quant in 1965 (see p.13). With its short
in grounding such dreams in everyday skirt and deceptively simple line, utilizing an
experience.> extended belt to form a halter-neck fastening
with a large buckle worn high on the chest
In the surviving clothes of the time, we have over a polo-neck sweater, the ensemble points
physical evidence of the ways in which the to the multi-faceted version of fashionable
Swinging Sixties were experienced on the femininity promoted by Quant and her
body and in space. Looking at actual garments generation. It was clearly easy to wear and
takes us beyond the iconic imagery of Time, maintain, well adapted to the increased pace
and can contradict the shifting surfaces of of modern city living. But stylistically it moved
photographs and films, the questionable beyond comfort and practicality to suggest
objectivity of contemporary writing or the hazy bohemian revolt (in its emphatic use of black),
and nostalgic recollections of personal memory. graphic sophistication (in its play with textures,
Sometimes they also confirm these very things. interesting shapes and bold accessorization)
But in all cases they challenge the historian and schoolgirl innocence (the dress, whose
or the casual observer to engage with the form tends to narrow the hips, was worn with
period through a consideration of what it felt a schoolboy cap in matching linen material).
like to change appearances with the times, It tells us much more about the lifestyles and
to enjoy an unprecedented freedom of aspirations of the King’s Road habitués than
movement and the strange sensations of new Time's stereotypes.
textures, to appropriate the ‘look’. In their very
materiality such items constitute a complex As Jenny Lister’s chapter makes clear, Quant
version of the Swinging Sixties that is in some was not the only designer with the creative and
ways as convincing a record of the times as entrepreneurial abilities to shape a radicalized
the visual clichés of the Time cover. We could, fashion culture. With her peers, who included
for example, juxtapose Dickinson’s impression John Bates, Foale and Tuffin and later Ossie

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Cosino Blaise’s Club Guys and DolisT.

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Above ‘The Scene’, map,

Time magazine. 15 April
1966, p.41a. Time
Magazine © 2005 Time Inc.
Reprinted by permission.

14 = Swinging Sixties
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Clark, she succeeded in overturning the that had been growing for almost two
repressive attitudes formerly associated with centuries.” Indeed there are as many
English dressing by presenting a variety of connections between Quant’s work and
competing looks. But this was neither achieved the work of a preceding generation of
overnight, nor in a vacuum. It is often a shock designers (who collectively formed the
to recall that Quant’s first boutique was opened Incorporated Society of London Fashion
in 1955, eleven years before Time announced Designers, or Inc. Soc.) as there are differences.
London’s swinging status to the world.* The new For example, the pioneering experimentation
clothes culture associated with London in the with fastenings and economical use of
1960s built on the foundations of the previous construction elements that characterized Inc.
decade and even earlier.’ In several respects Soc.’s output for the wartime Utility scheme
its qualities reprised the tenets set down by pre-empted Quant’s use of similar motifs
the Pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1957 by several years.'° And many ‘swinging’
(as guidelines for the recently established designers were as interested in the repertoire
Independent Group). It was, like the painting of traditional British fabrics and tailoring
scene that preceded it, ‘popular, transient, techniques as they were in the potential of
expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, current materials such as plastic and paper.
witty, sexy, gimmicky and glamorous’.® And it The old always informed the new."!
is no coincidence that both the new art and
fashion scenes were reliant on the support An examination of the retail scene in the 1960s
of institutions such as the Royal College of does permit a less cautious interpretation than
Art, whose enlightened attitude to training that applied to the clothing itself — one that
and education first took hold in the late 1950s. recognizes the decade’s claim to be innovative
As far as garment design and manufacture and challenging.'? As Sonia Ashmore’s study
are concerned, it can also be argued that the suggests, from Bazaar to Biba, the striking
innovations of Quant and her followers would window displays and interiors of London's
not have been possible without the existing boutiques altered the atmosphere of shopping
infrastructure and skills of a London rag trade districts in significant ways and undoubtedly

Introduction 15
informed new attitudes towards the buying it is instructive to recall how many young
and wearing of clothes amongst the younger ‘honourables’ were the proprietors or backers
generation. But, once again, these changes of cutting-edge boutiques, trattorias and
need to be viewed as part of a longer galleries. Time’s map makes these complex
continuum. Much recent work on urban space class relationships plain for all to see."
and identity has put forward a reading of
the modern city as a place of networks, flows In her chapter on urban change, Bronwen
and connections, where social, aesthetic and Edwards reminds us of the degree to which
cultural meanings are constantly in flux — and the retai! landscape that constituted Swinging
Swinging London in all its mythic complexity London was just one element in a process
can only be understood this way.'? A good of post-war metropolitan transformation.
starting point is the map of ‘The Scene’ that Although it was encouraged by urban planners
Time supplied in its special issue (see p. 14). and government bureaucrats, it was put
Here the old heart of Empire with its palaces, into place by architects, designers, property
parks and ceremonial routes is overlaid with a speculators, shop owners and the population
new geography of shopping outlets, restaurants of London itself. It was a process that altered
and discotheques. The King’s Road and the the face of the city in as radical a manner
area around Carnaby Street provide alternative as the Blitz, and the magnitude of its effects
centres of gravity to the traditional markers demands that the fashions of the 1960s,
of political and social power in Westminster rather than simply being celebrated for their
and Belgravia. Yet, interspersed between Hung quirky and nostalgic appeal, should also
On You and Foale & Tuffin are the survivors be viewed as part of a broader mechanism
of an older ‘aristocratic’ leisure culture, such for social and material renewal.
as Christie’s and Crockford’s, rejuvenated for
new times. It is clear that for Swinging London The shifting fortunes of Carnaby Street are
to succeed a certain degree of acquiescence a perfect illustration of this theme and can
was necessary from the landed classes. For all be read on several levels. In many ways, this
the talk of a supposedly meritocratic new order, small thoroughfare stands as a symbol of the

1G = Swinging Sixties
Above Henry Grant,
Carnaby Street Scene,
c.1968 © Museum of
London.

Introduction 17
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fashion-led changes that affected the whole Now pedestrianized and full of souvenir
of London in the period. In the 1950s it was emporia selling to tourists, its glory days
the central shopping area of an artisanal were over. The cutting-edge outlets had re-
backwater, shadowing Regent Street but established themselves elsewhere, and with
bearing little relation to the elite and fashion- fashion production starting to move off-shore
focused character of its glamorous neighbour. the close relationship between local garment
Some low-grade garment manufacturing took manufacturing and retail that characterized
place in the upper storeys of buildings, in the Britain's swinging heyday had started to
permeable domestic settings that functioned break down. Yet, as Sonia Ashmore argues,
as ovt-sourcing workshops for the local rag the boutiques of Carnaby Street provided an
trade. But in essence Carnaby Street offered enduring series of prototypes that represented
its shoppers the stationer, baker, confectioner, both the best and the worst of 1960s
tobacconist, ironmonger and hairdresser that entrepreneurship, and their contributions were
would have featured in any down-at-heel urban certainly nothing if not attention-grabbing.
high street from the 1880s onwards. Vince was
the only nearby clothing store, offering outré While it lasted Carnaby Street formed an
styles to a cliquey clientele of chorus boys and important conduit for several processes
minor sports celebrities associated with the that moved beyond the realms of fashion,
demi-monde of the West End’s still criminalized capturing the general sense of rapid social
gay scene.’” By 1965 the number of garment and material change that has come to colour
workers in the upper floors of the street had our understanding of the period. Its history
doubled, while the floors below were now taken as a focus for modes of subcultural dressing
up by the menswear boutiques of John Stephen that challenged class and sexual stereotypes
and others. These incomers, building on the places it at the centre of debates around social
reputation established by Vince, transformed emancipation and identity politics.'7 The
the district, almost obliterating older practices new fashion businesses that transformed its
and traces.'* Only five or six years later, atmosphere echoed shifting practices in the
Carnaby Street had changed its nature again. British rag trade. As a magnet for tourists,

Opposite |on Grey and

his wife, owners of Gear in
Cormoby Sireet, dressed as
& Pearly King and Queen,
collecting for Oxfam, 1966
(detail). Courtesy of
Philip Townsend.

Introduction 19
 its Union Jack festooned fagades presented culture worked in different ways in different
a new face of Britishness to the world in the places in the city. Adopting the format of a
context of a period marked by its post-imperial storyboard for an imaginary film, the writer
attitudes. This promotional endeavour was presented five different ‘scenes’: an aristocratic
aided by the proximity of so many new evening — with the son of a peer, starting at
advertising agencies, publishing houses and Jack Aspinall’s Clermont Club, an exclusive
media headquarters whose output, as Pamela casino situated in an eighteenth-century
Church Gibson states, did so much to direct town house in Berkeley Square, and ending
the idea of Swinging London into the popular in Annabel’s nightclub nearby. A Saturday
imagination. Its transformation from a late afternoon’s shopping — in Chelsea and the
nineteenth-century slum to a pedestrianized Portobello Road, taking in the Guy’s and Doll’s
‘destination’ marks it out as a typical example coffee bar in the King’s Road in the company
of modern town planning. And beyond all of pop singer Mick Jagger, television presenter
of this, Carnaby Street functioned on a more Cathy McGowan and a teenager in a black
mundane basis as a route frequented by the and yellow PVC miniskirt. A Chelsea lunch
old as well as the young, by office workers as party — in Le Réve Restaurant with actors
well as tourists, and by the ordinary shopper Terence Stamp and Michael Caine, model
as well as the ‘dedicated follower of fashion’. Jean Shrimpton, hairdresser Vidal Sassoon,
photographer David Bailey and tailor Doug
Carnaby Street was not the only focus for Haywood. And an early evening cocktail
the fashionable young in 1960s London and party — at Robert Fraser’s Mayfair art gallery,
its story is repeated across the city and further attended by ‘panda-eyed’ socialite Jane
afield: in Mayfair, Chelsea and Kensington, Ormsby Gore in a red Edwardian jacket and
and, as David Gilbert’s chapter on the ruffled lace blouse, designer Pauline Fordham
Swinging Sixties phenomenon beyond the in a silver coat and starlet Sue Kingsford in a
capital shows, in Paris, New York and Liverpool, pink trouser suit that revealed her naked waist.
and even in Nottingham. In its leading article, The final scene focused on a very star-struck
Time was keen to show the way that swinging dinner with Marlon Brando, Roddy McDowell,

20 = Swinging Sixties
Terry Southern, Francoise Sagan, Barbra In recognition of such tensions, this book,
Streisand, Margot Fonteyn and Warren Beatty written 40 years on from the original events,
in the Kensington home of Leslie Caron. draws on the collections of the V&A to reflect
After an excellent meal ‘of chicken, claret on some of the claims made about the
and Chablis’, the international jet-setters Swinging Sixties at the time, without wholly
‘danced till dawn’. debunking them. Benefiting from recent
scholarship in social history and consumption
These scenarios, like the cover illustration studies while also looking to surviving objects
that went with them, self-consciously tick for complementary evidence, it unpacks the
all of the Swinging Sixties boxes with their myths, but it also re-emphasizes the importance
mix of the elite and the popular, the of the period, giving retrospective credence
establishment and the avant-garde and to Time's final assertion:
their obsession with celebrity, with fabulous
clothes, ephemeral and diverse settings The London that has emerged is swinging,
and with the conspicuous pursuit of pleasure but in a far more profound sense than
for its own sake. The tone of Time may the colortul and ebullient pop culture by
well have been satirical, but the world itself would suggest. London has shed much
it described offered a range of new self- of its smugness, much of the arrogance
fashioning possibilities that were in essence that often went with the stamp of privilege,
liberating. And, although much of the much of its false pride — the kind that long
associated imagery was a constant replay kept it shabby and shopworn in physical
of metropolitan myths with little direct material fact and spirit. It is a refreshing change,
relevance for the lives of much of the British and making the scene is the Londoner’s
population, there is no doubting that its content way of celebrating it.'®
marked a tangible mood that was exciting
and challenging; one that certainly continues
to fascinate subsequent generations with
its shiny surfaces and fresh attitudes.

Introduction 21
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Kaleidoscope
FASHION IN SIXTIES LONDON
JENNY LISTER

Right Mary Quant, dress.

Wool jersey. British, 1967.
Given by Mary Quant.
V&A: T.353-1974.

Opposite London
designers by the Thames.
1963 © Norman Parkinson
Ltd/Fiona Cowan.

Instantly recognizable, the definitive image the Paris fashion houses, but they had built
of 1960s fashion is encapsulated in a jersey up a faithful following by catering to the typical
minidress designed by Mary Quant. Quant’s British upper-middle class taste for high quality,
youthful clothes have come to represent practical tailored suits and pretty, feminine
the look of the generation born after World gowns for the formal occasions of the London
War Il, who grew up in an environment of Season.’ The fashionable silhouette was based
increasing affluence and freedom. But fashion on a well-groomed, corseted figure, completed
in the 1960s was infinitely more complicated: with carefully chosen accessories. Barbara
a kaleidoscope of influences from the past Hulanicki found that ‘the shops in England...
and the future, as well as from other cultures, were full of matronly clothes — either direct
informed the work of the designers who copies of Paris models or deeply influenced
responded to the explosion in the market by the Paris collections’.°
for exciting new clothes. Mary Quant herself
recognized that her offbeat designs were Smart ready-made suits and dresses were
simply part of a wider social change; her made by firms such as Jaeger, Susan Small
clothes just ‘happened to fit in exactly with and Polly Peck, for women who could not afford
the teenage trend, with pop records and a made-to-measure wardrobe. The young
espresso bars and jazz clubs’. ! Vogue-reading debutante, newly launched
into adult society, would require a tweed suit,
Quant was one of many entrepreneurs who an office dress, a cocktail dress and country
identified with the frustration of young adults separates. A crisp printed-cotton Horrockses
unable to find the unfussy, casual clothes they dress was a popular summer basic, combining
wanted in the shops in the late 1950s. At this quality and practicality with cheerful, feminine
point fashion for women was led by the tiny fabric designs. In a 1960 Queen fashion
minority who could afford to be dressed in feature ‘Beat the Beatniks — eligible clothes
Paris. As Sonia Ashmore suggests, London for debs’, Norman Parkinson photographed
couturiers — such as Norman Hartnell and pin-neat suits and shirt-waisters on aloof
Hardy Amies — struggled to compete with models, ‘beating the beatniks at their own

22 Swinging Sixties
PEAS TON SO IOC OEONMOC OOOO OO OOOO OO CAG pied ee ee
CO ODOC OS SOO OS OOO OOO 010 OOO COO OR OCOCO 00 OO OO COU OUI OO CIOUOU OOOO ODO UOO OOOO OU CIUDODOCOOOOOO OOOO OOOO ACCCCARICAG

game of how to be avant-garde’. But French films, city gent tailoring and sportswear.
the days of the deb were numbered: in the They adopted existing garments and combined
background, blurred party-goers with loose them in a new way. But the Mods, constantly
hair, baggy jumpers and knee-boots wear customizing and making up their own designs,
the new uniform of youth rebellion. were also responsible for crazes and ever faster
changing fashions. As Mary Quant pointed
Clothes for professional men in the 1950s out: ‘It is the Mods... who gave the dress trade
were deeply conservative, and only varied the impetus to break through the fast-moving,
in quality of cloth and small details such as breathtaking, up-rooting revolution in which
number of buttons and pockets. The wealthy we have played a part.’
international elite went to Savile Row tailors
for bespoke suits, while cheaper made-to- John Stephen was the first to take advantage
measure suits were available from high-street of the potential for interesting, morale-boosting
chains, such as Burtons, and department stores. clothes for men. Stephen had worked at
Casual clothes imported from the US were Vince, the forerunner to the Carnaby Street
slow to be accepted. However, the teenage phenomenon, selling comparatively outrageous
market exemplified by the style of the Teddy clothes to ‘theatrical’ customers, and in 1957
Boy had broken new ground, and it was more Stephen set up his own shop, His Clothes, in
acceptable for men to be concerned with their a one-room boutique in Beak Street. One
appearance and dress for effect.° By 1958, a customer, Richard Barnes, recalled that:
new Italian style came in, with short jackets and
narrow trousers, a look that was appropriated In most men’s outtitters at that time
by a small group of teenage dandies who came you'd see lines of jackets or trousers
to be known as ‘modernists’ because of their or something and they’d all look the
taste for modern jazz.° same. Some were black, some were
dark black, others were jet black and
Mods took inspiration from many sources if you wanted to be a little extrovert
— American teenage fashions, R&B music, you could risk a black one with, wait

Opposite Horrockses,
dress and jacket. Printed
cotton. British, c.1957.
Worn and given by Mrs
Elizabeth Payze. V&A:
T.639&A-1996.

Right Norman
Parkinson, ‘Beat the
Beatniks’, Queen, 2
February 1960. ‘Black
and grey pin-striped
cardigan wool suit.
By Estrava, 14 gns, at
Jay's. Black satin pill
box hat with a black
and brown grosgrain
ribbon, by Chez Elle,
£4 19s.11d. at Liberty.
Striped suede handbag,
9 gns. at Bazaar.’

Kaleidoscope 29
 eee cere eee eee eeeeeeseeseeeeeeseeeeeeoee

for it, a grey speckle running from more privileged backgrounds spent
through it. But in His Clothes not money on clothes. When Mary Quant opened
only were there fantastic daring Bazaar in 1955 the King’s Road was lined
colours, but there were loads of with shops supplying the needs of the local
different styles and fabrics.® residents, a mixed society including wealthy
aristocrats, young professionals, artists and
John Stephen offered the latest essentials actors. One of them was Alexander Plunket
— denim shirts, T-shirts, moccasin shoes, Greene, who was at Goldsmith’s College of
reefer jackets — made reasonably well and Art, studying illustration, at the same time
fairly priced. His stock changed constantly, as Mary Quant was training as an art teacher.
and continued to move men’s fashion in new Despite their different social backgrounds,
directions, towards eclecticism and historic Plunket Greene and Quant found they had
revivals. John Stephen’s success attracted much in common, including an unconventional
many imitators, including Lord John, a shop taste in clothes and a taste for the exciting,
that opened in Carnaby Street in 1963. Lord anti-establishment lifestyle of the Chelsea set.
John was owned by brothers Warren and David Together with Archie McNair, they formed a
Gold, who had begun their venture into men’s highly creative partnership and set up their first
wear while running a stall in Petticoat Lane boutique selling ‘...a bouillabaisse of clothes
market. Their heavy blue woollen trenchcoat and accessories... sweaters, scarves, shifts,
of 1968, topstitched in white, reflects the swing hats, jewellery, and peculiar odds and ends’.'°
back towards a wider, 1940s outline, but was
made of coarse fabric, and ‘not exactly built Initially Bazaar sold clothes sourced from
to last a lifetime’.’ London wholesalers and art school students,
but after a ‘mad’ pair of Quant’s house-
While middle-class and working-class pyjamas was featured in Harper’s Bazaar,
teenagers were discovering Soho as a source and bought by an American manufacturer,
for the latest fashions, the Royal Borough she decided to make up her own ideas for
of Kensington and Chelsea was where those the shop. Her designs used traditional fabrics,

Above Bazaar label,

from pinafore dress.
V8A: T.219-1995.

Right Lord John, coat.

Wool. British, c.1968.
Given by Mr David Shilling.
V&A: T.758&A-1983.

Opposite Bazaar (Mary

Quant), pinafore dress.
Wool. British, 1961. Worn
and given by Jasmine
Grassie. V&A: T.219-1995.

26 = Swinging Sixties
OEP AAL
nn nee = Ale ee 60.0088 OOS. 6 806 0'S'S 6.0)0160.0 6 0100 6.0 60 00 00 0000002 en2 60006000000 0006 06600006680 leeeseeletsenleene

including pin-striped suitings and grey flannel, to work with rich supple fabrics, especially
in subversive ways, and some of her simple jersey, crepe and leather, in dark, subtle
dropped-waist dresses anticipated the ‘sack’ colours, and, steering clear of the continuing
launched in the Paris collections. These early shift towards nostalgia and romance, she
dresses were instant successes and appealed became known for her austere, graceful
to high-society types and working women. classics throughout her distinguished career.
The dramatic V neck of her 1961 pinafore
dress is accentuated with applied black braid, A crucial influence on the development of
reminiscent of a 1930s swimming costume; it London designers was the diploma course
was accessorized with the dark stockings, polo in fashion design at the Royal College of Art.
necks and simple black shoes typically worn This was set up in order to supply the post-war
by art-school students and beatniks. Throughout clothing industry with trained designers, and
her career, Quant continued to play with government grants enabled students from
conventions, reworking children’s clothes, men’s all backgrounds to continue their education.
underwear and sportswear into witty designs. Designers including Peter Shepherd, Gina
Fratini and Gerald McCann graduated from
Bazaar was a springboard for many other the Royal College in the 1950s. Janey Ironside
influential designers, including Caroline headed the course from 1956. She assembled
Charles and Kiki Byrne, who left to set up an impressive list of external tutors, including
her own boutique on the King’s Road, Glass the highly influential Liberty print designer
and Black. Bazaar also showcased the work Bernard Nevill, and developed close
of leading young designers, among them partnerships with manufacturing firms to give
Jean Muir. Muir enjoyed great success as students a range of experiences in industry."!
the designer for the label Jane and Jane, After the new generation of designers had
and began manufacturing under her own proved that there was a huge international
name in 1966. Her purple suede mini of market for British design, it became essential
that year exemplifies her individual sense for wholesale fashion houses to hire art-
of the mood of the moment; she continued school graduates to update their image.

Opposite Jean Muir,

dress. Suede. British,
1965-6. Given by
Mrs J. Carter. V&A:
T.250-1978.

Kaleidoscope 29
 e®
eoeeecece COSHH HEHEHE HSHHSH OTE HEH HHEEHSHHEHSOOEHEOEE cece ececeeeeeeeeseeeesesseesesesoeeeosesere?

After graduating from the RCA Gerald McCann they became flattering, sexy garments.!”
worked for the London couturier Harry B. Slim trouser suits with loose tunic tops
Popper. In 1963 he established a wholesale became popular in Liberty printed silks.
business that became a major supplier to the Practical and stylish alternatives were provided
21 Shop at Woollands department store in by Foale and Tuffin in tough cowboy style
Knightsbridge, and exported a large quantity corduroy and streamlined linen.
of designs to the US. McCann’s tailored coats
and suits were popular with fashion editors Other designers breaking through in the
and customers alike. The chocolate-brown early 1960s included John Bates, who initially
wool skirt suit combined wearability and up- found it difficult to get his collections accepted
to-the-minute styling without being outlandish, by influential department-store buyers because
with its ‘bassett hound’ collar, chunky ring- he had not been one of the well-known group
pull zip and very short pleated skirt. trained at the RCA. Bates had been part of
Mary Quant’s early adventures in retailing,
Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin were part of collaborating with her to create Bazaar’s
a talented group of students (which included window displays. After an apprenticeship with
Sylvia Ayton and James Wedge) taking their the London couture house Gerard Pipard, Bates
first degree at Walthamstow School of Art. set up his label Jean Varon in 1960. His bikini
The two friends were empowered by their dress with revealing mesh panel, which won
RCA training, and particularly by a lecture Dress of the Year in 1965, has been seen as
on pricing garments given by Mary Quant a key stage in the evolution of raised hemlines.
and Alexander Plunket Greene. Instead John Bates was at the forefront of the new
of taking the normal route and finding experimentation with revolutionary materials
employment with a manufacturer, they decided such as PVC, and he gained widespread
to set up on their own in 1961. Foale and recognition as the Mod designer through his
Tuffin were amongst the first to experiment creation of Diana Rigg’s costumes for the TV
with cutting trousers for women, reducing series The Avengers. These were characterized
the numbers of pleats and darts so that by a sophisticated interpretation of the

Left Gerald McCann,

jacket and skirt. Wool
barathea. British, 1968.
Worn and given by
Miss Marion Giordan.
V&A: T.25&A-1979.

30 = Swinging Sixties
OCC CCCI OOGIUICOIOOUIOOIOIOIOOIOIOIOOIOOIOIGIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOICIOIOOICICIOICICIOIC ICICI ICICI ICICI ICICI HH arr

minimalist space-age look inspired by Paris The prices charged by many boutiques
designers Cardin and Courréges.'? put the clothes made by London’s swinging
designers well beyond the pocket of the
By 1966, when the Swinging London average shopper. A Mary Quant Ginger
media frenzy was at its height, an ever- Group jersey dress cost 8% guineas in 1967,
increasing turnover of new styles available which was about a week’s wages for a young
in the shops presented a dazzling array shop assistant at the time.'® In 1964 Barbara
of identities. A Vogue feature entitled ‘Six Hulanicki and her husband John Fitz Simon
characters in search of 66’ set out the options, discovered a huge demand for contemporary
ranging from the Modern Medieval Waif, design at rock-bottom prices. They opened
to Sally Bowles (1966 glitter version), Russian the first Biba boutique in Abingdon Road,
Heroine, Ton-up Girl (in a black leather biker Kensington, deliberately distancing themselves
suit), the girl from The East Goes West, and from both King’s Road and Carnaby Street.
Moon Girl in elasticized silver lamé.'4 But Biba’s customers included impoverished
the softer, retrospective styles were becoming students as well as pop stars and wealthy
the dominant aesthetic. Academic Sheila bohemian aristocrats; dresses might cost just
Rowbotham, writing about working in £3 each (but were so cheaply made that the
London in her 20s, recalled how she ‘revelled seams sometimes needed restitching once they
in the fast-moving fashion of boutiques like had been worn a couple of times). Early best-
Biba or Bazaar. The sharp zigzags of Op sellers were simple printed cotton smocks with
Art were being quickly superseded by the contrasting collars and cuffs, skinny T-shirts with
flowing lines inspired by Aubrey Beardsley uncomfortably tight sleeves, and canvas knee-
and the vampish boas of the early silent high boots. From the start Hulanicki looked
movies. Young designers dived into the to the past for inspiration when designing
past like raiders searching for lost wrecks for her customers, making short shift dresses
of spoil and their time-travelling motifs out of simple Victorian-style printed cottons.
overlaid the early-sixties quest for an The Biba suit of 1970 combines a traditional
obscured bedrock of truth.’!® textile with a resolutely contemporary silhouette;

Right Jean Shrimpton.

‘Schéhérazade ‘65’,
Vogue, January 1965.
‘Skimp dress, bikini top
and short short skirt
netted together in navy.
Terracotta and orange
on navy cotton by
Wallach. By John Bates
for Jean Varon, 6 gns.,
Woollands.’ Duffy/
Vogue © The Condé
Nast Publications Ltd.

Kaleidoscope ol
 OS SNS GOS eeeeeeereereeseeeeeeee
SS SSESSNRO NOM SESERE SON SINS OSS 0S
ERK RC RAR RK CO RNARSSERNENGUOSSORSSEES

a florid print of cabbage roses, reminiscent crepe and satin, and using his wife Celia
of furnishing fabrics, is used for a sharply Birtwell’s fabric designs, created a uniquely
tailored jacket paired with flared trousers. sexy and glamorous look for the late 1960s.
His long, structured coats inspired by late
Hulanicki’s designs tapped into women’s eighteenth-century redingotes were equally
desires for romantic, decadent clothes, delectable. The cotton velvet coat of 1970
stimulated by the growing craze for vintage is a striking example of the use of a strong
dresses. Her exotic taste had been formed Birtwell floral print combined with a flattering
by her childhood in Palestine, under the strong tailored cut.'®
influence of her formidable Aunt Sophie,
who dressed in haute couture. Biba cast Some of the most striking signs of the conflict
a spell on the thousands of shoppers who between looking to the future and a new mood
passed through the doors. On a Saturday of nostalgia were seen in men’s wear. Pierre
afternoon the changing rooms overtlowed Cardin was for many the ultimate designer
onto the streets, with women trying on ‘the for men, rather than any of the London
slithery gowns in glowing satins, hats with designers. He was a true progressive, designing
black veils, shoes stacked for sirens’.'’ for the ‘modern international man who travels
and wants functional, lightweight and elegant
Ossie Clark was another major force behind clothes’.'® His ‘Cosmos’ collection of 1966/7
the rejection of short, structured clothes in was too extreme to enter the mainstream,
favour of the return to a more sensual form but elements of the look such as turtle-neck
of femininity. He showed early promise while sweaters, and zipped tunics in bonded jersey,
studying at the Royal College of Art and with were taken up and worn with more accessible
the backing of Alice Pollock, the influential styles. A range of alternative role models for
designer and proprietor of Quorum, he the fashionable male emerged, from Regency
became the favoured designer of many dandies to San Francisco hippies. However,
celebrities including Bianca Jagger. Clark thanks to a few enlightened individuals working
excelled at cutting dresses from chiffon, in the Savile Row tradition, London retained

Previous pages
‘Young Idea strides ahead’,
Vogue, March 1966,
pp. 130-1. Corduroy suit, by
Foale & Tuffin, hat by James
Wedge. Ronald Traeger/
Vogue © The Condé Nast
Publications Ltd.

Far left Ossie Clark

and Celia Birtwell, coat.
Printed cotton velvet. British,
1970. Given by Rose Jones.
V&A: T.98-2001.

Left Barbara Hulanicki

(Biba), suit. Printed cotton.
British, 1970. Given by
Miss Petra Siniaswski.
V&A: T.265-A-1984.

Opposite Pierre Cardin,

‘Cosmos’ outfit. Wool jersey.
French, 1967. Given by
M. Pierre Cardin (Cecil
Beaton Collection).
V&A: 703-1974.

34 Swinging Sixties
Et kbibeyu yy
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 easel
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Opposite Rupert Lycett Green

(Blades), suit. Silk. British, 1968.
Worn and given by Mr Rupert
Lycett Green. V&A: T.702-
C1974.

Above Mr Fish, suit. Printed

corduroy. British (American
textile), 1968. Worn and given by
Mr David Mlinaric. V&A: T.310-
A-1979.

Kaleidoscope 37
 010010 01010:6 010 01018 010/00 .010)81018 0.0 ©
0.0.0.6 0.0.0'0.0'010 100:010:610 60.0.6 0,00 0.0'016:8 0 010:616:6 00.010

its position as the centre of elegant masculine Thea Porter's exclusive Soho boutique illustrates
fashions. the complete transition in women’s wear from
the Paris-inspired, highly structured couture
The first company to break through the ‘stuffed gowns of 10 years earlier. The late 1960s
shirt barrier in good tailoring’”°
was Blades, dress is a fusion of influences from history
which was opened in 1963 by gentlemen- and Eastern cultures — its raised waist evokes
amateurs Rupert Lycett Green and Charley the early nineteenth-century empire line, but
Hornby. With the help of their expert cutters, it is cut from a selection of exotic textiles.
the company attracted a diverse range of
customers, including the Beatles. Lycett Green’s The work of Mary Quant and her successors
own unconventional yet subtle style is illustrated made a fundamental contribution to the
by the Blades suit of 1968, with its slim cut and enduring image of London as an international
neat Nehru collar, made in a lustrous cream centre of creativity in music, art and fashion.
silk woven with a design of chrysanthemums. Building on the long-standing traditions of
From 1962 Turnbull and Asser, of Jermyn Street, the London rag trade, the 1960s entrepreneurs
became known for their flamboyantly patterned have had a lasting impact on contemporary
shirts and ties created by Michael Fish. He design. Their highly original approach to the
opened his own Mr Fish boutique in 1966 in technical and promotional aspects of fashion,
Mayfair, and provided his well-heeled customers their ability to react quickly and without
with a distinctive reconciliation of bohemian condescension to youthful consumer trends,
flair with close attention to quality and detail. and the invaluable training they received from
The double-breasted suit was custom-made for London’s art schools, have all left their mark.
interior designer David Mlinaric out of a printed Following a lull in the 1970s, London is once
corduroy furnishing fabric purchased in the US. again regarded internationally as the leading
source of innovative and adventurous fashion
Experimentation with cut and fabric was — and for many of the same reasons that
not only taking place in classic men’s wear secured its reputation during those heady
tailoring. The flowing kaftan-like gown from days of the Swinging Sixties.

Left Caroline Smith,

illustration for Queen,
June 1965.

Opposite Thea Porter,

dress. Silk chiffon and
brocade. British, c.1970.
V&A: T.900-2000.

CordinedinitiS

38 Swinging Sixties
Edd
ZA 1G0 OF OFe
MT FNS

°Siseo-
 Mary Quant
_ Mary Quant’s first creations followed The mass market appeal and commercial
- London's couture traditions, and her first potential of Quant’s designs was recognized
iob after leaving college was with the Mayfair by the American chain store J.C. Penney in
milliner Erik. But even in the early years, 1962, when she secured a lucrative deal to
_ her garments were ‘frankly audacious — design ranges for their vast empire of shops
and worn by the audacious’. She was credited across the USA. A year later her clothes
with many revolutionary developments, which became available to a wider public around
included the miniskirt, tights dyed in bright, Britain when she set up her diffusion label
solid colours, and the use of plastics and PVC Ginger Group, which was available at in-
(polyvinyl chloride). Her first designs using store boutiques at 160 department stores.
PVC were beset by production difficulties, In a further development of branding Quant
and it took two years’ experimentation with designed minimal underwear, with her
manufacturing processes to bond the seams ‘Youthlines’ range, using new modern fibres
of garments successfully. The eventual result such as Lycra to accompany her unstructured,
was the ‘Wet Collection’ of 1963. informal clothes. ‘Youthlines’ was produced
from 1965 and this was followed by a Mary
Mary Quant designed and presented a Quant brand of make-up in new, bright
complete corporate identity, made instantly colours presented in paint boxes.
recognizable through the use of the daisy
__ logo. This was circulated alongside countless Quant’s products were intended to be
reproductions of the designer’s own image, worn by the emancipated woman: ‘|
with her distinctive Vidal Sassoon hairstyle. want free-flowing, feminine lines that
compliment a woman’s shape, with no
attempt at distortion. | want relaxed clothes,
suited to the actions of normal life.’ Quant
received many awards acknowledging her
contribution to the British fashion industry,
including an OBE. In 1973 her achievements
were marked by a retrospective exhibition at
the London Museum. The energy and bravery
of her company’s approach to business was a
catalyst for change and spearheaded the
invasion of the international market by
London fashion designers. The fashion
journalist Ernestine Carter equated her
work with that of Chanel, Quant’s personal
heroine: ‘It is given to a fortunate few to
be born at the right time, in the right place,
with the right talents. In recent fashion there
are three: Chanel, Dior, and Mary Quant.’
 Opposite left Mary
Quant, design. Pencil
and fibre tip on paper.
British, 1967. V&A:
E.520-1975.

Opposite right Mary

Quant, bodystocking
and pantie girdle,
synthetic jersey and
nylon. British, late
1960s. Given by Mrs
M. Wilson MacDonald.
V&A: T.442-1988 and
T.443-1988.

Below Mary Quant,

ankle boots. Injection
moulded plastic, lined
with cotton jersey.
British, c.1965. Given
_by Susannah Lob.
V&A: T.59-2-1992.

Right Model Jackie

Bowyer in ‘Christopher
Robin’ raincoat by Mary
Quant, October 1963.
© Getty Images.
COSC EH SHEESH SHEERS SHEHHSHHEHEOCHEHHSEESEHES

Brave New London

ARCHITECTURE FOR A SWINGING CITY
BRONWEN EDWARDS

Opposite Hans Unger,

Brave New London,
poster for the London
Underground. 1960.
V&A: E.271-1961.

In 1962 the Sunday Times Magazine austerity of the early post-war years, when it
proclaimed that ‘London's new buildings was coloured ‘the greyness of twilight’.? This
are constantly in the news.’! The arrival of greyness was to be found in the city’s dirty,
monumental concrete and glass towers on drab walls, in the rubble of bombsites, and
the scene was sometimes bitterly contested, even in the fabrics of fashionable metropolitan
but more often was hailed as a fitting symbol dress, all captured in the restrained hues of
of a ‘Brave New London’. This architectural the photographs in architectural and fashion
landscape provided a familiar backdrop magazines. Now, at last, came a period of
for ‘Swinging London’ films and fashion renewed ambition. Visions for London not
photographs. But these buildings also only speculated about the nebulous ‘character’
suggested a harder-edged, more permanent of the city, but also on its future physical form:
version of the new city than the Swinging its buildings and street patterns. The schemes
London of painted-ply shop fronts, quickly varied enormously in scope: some merely
stitched minidresses and heady, drug-fuelled proposed the construction of individual
nights. The new buildings were so newsworthy buildings; others involved razing whole swathes
precisely because of the many broader issues of Central London to the ground and beginning
at stake: how should commercial consumption, again. These urban visions chimed with the
civic grandeur and an efficient transport system broader cultures of Swinging London, providing
in Central London be combined? And how a suitably modern setting for its new citizens.
far should London’s history be integrated into Crucially, they reordered the city, shifting its
its present and future? This was a moment geographical, cultural and generational focus
when London’s future identity — in sartorial, in line with the new spirit of the times. The
architectural and social terms — appeared Guardian identified ‘a new London... built
to hang in the balance. for those who were not yet born at the time
of the blitz. A London where Carnaby Street
The city had emerged from the devastating takes precedence over Downing Street, where
effects of World War Il, and the crippling pin stripe and bowlers give way to bell bottoms

42 Swinging Sixties
ee eeeeceeeeseececcececcccece COCO H HOSE EEE LL OeCeCE LOO Oe LOL ECOC CEL O EEOC CEO CLO C CC® Ceeeeeeeeeseeoeeesceooeseeeeseses

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2RAWE NEW LONDON

Look up at the bold and uncompromising buildings of today. At no time since 1666
has London had such a fresh and sudden skyline.
A London Transport leaflet Brave Nezw London identifies some of the more notable new buildings,
and shows how to get there. Free from the Travel Enquiry Offices at Piccadilly Circus and
St. James’s Park Underground stations, the City Information Centre, St. Paul’s Churchyard, or
from the Public Relations Officer, London Transport, 55 Broadway, Westminster, S,W.1.
262|985u]32700 Curwen Press
COSHH HHO EE EH EEE SESE HELE EEO EEO EE LES ELE OE EOE OOS

and polyvinyl chloride.’ But the plans also the historic street pattern with a modern,
moved beyond the dominant myth of Swinging planned metropolis.
London, pointing to a range of alternative
visions, in which the emblematic fashionable Office blocks sprang up all over the West
consumption of Carnaby Street or the King’s End, most famously Centre Point at the
Road was variously celebrated, contested or junction of Tottenham Court Road and
concealed. The relationship between designer Oxford Street. Westminster City Council,
dress and modernist tower was more national government and big landowners
complicated than it might first appear. such as the Crown Estate spent the 1960s
producing even more radical schemes for
One challenge was that the sites for re- key sites, notably Piccadilly Circus, Oxford
development frequently abutted or overlapped Street, Regent Street and Covent Garden.
with pre-existing sites of fashionable These plans foundered or, in the case of
consumption. By the 1960s, the heart of Covent Garden, were dramatically modified,
the West End was a well-established national for a number of reasons: lack of money,
and international shopping hub, still vibrant community opposition, political infighting,
and successful, managing to withstand the and eventually, the fiscal crisis of the early
increasing competition from provincial and 1970s. This coincided with a change in
suburban centres. The area had been built broader public attitudes towards historic
up gradually over centuries. Its principal townscapes associated with the rise of the
arteries were Oxford Street, Regent Street architectural conservation movement. However,
and Piccadilly, with smaller streets such as in the 1960s, it was genuinely believed
Bond Street and Savile Row weaving behind that Central London might be re-drawn
and in between them. While retailers and as a rational, planned urban landscape,
consumers were relatively content with the complete with grid-plan, pedestrian plazas
status quo, developers were preparing to and monolithic tower blocks. The West End
transform the scale of the West End’s buildings, had been subject to changes before: the
and state planners were scheming to replace building and rebuilding of Regent Street,

Opposite Digby
Morton, dress.
Wool. British, ¢.1955.
Given by Miss Agnes
Kinnersley. V&A:
T.340-1980.

Right ‘Oxford Street

Motorway’, from
Ministry of Transport,
Traffic in Towns (HMSO,
1963), p.143.

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’ TTT |
ye At 3
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Brave New London 45

 0100/0; 0101010 0101010 0 010 Wieiaie 810100 Sele Sete Shee soe eeeecce
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for example.4 However, these proposals were only yards away. Rather, they attempted
potentially on a much more dramatic scale. to replace the tangle of congested streets
that gave the area its character, disrupting
Planner Colin Buchanan’s Traffic in Towns the crucially important relationship between
report of 1963 proposed the vertical road, pavement and shop window on which
segregation of traffic in the West End. Under West End shopping had long depended.
the plans ‘the West End would be mainly
a shopping and entertainment area, and Those planning the rebuilding of the West
a two-level structure with pedestrians on End had other priorities in mind. This was
the first floor and buses and other vehicles particularly noticeable in their schemes for
on roads beneath them would be built over Piccadilly Circus, which became the focus
the whole area.’° Oxford Street was to be for one of the most notorious planning
replaced by an urban motorway, giving the battles of the post-war years. The Circus
car clear priority over the shopper. Similar had long been central to the iconography
ideas informed a series of proposals for of London, recognizable the world over. Yet
Piccadilly Circus between the late 1950s the fundamental reason for the controversy
and early 1970s. These culminated in was not a desire to protect the physical fabric
Westminster Council’s proposal of 1971, of this much-loved landmark, but rather that
An Aid to Pedestrian Movement. Here the developers, landowners, architects, planners
West End was to be criss-crossed by an and the various campaign groups had deeply
elevated transit system of yellow pods. The conflicting visions for its future. It was at once
curve of Regent Street was preserved, but a centre of shopping, a hub of nation and
the street was to become a pedestrianized, Empire, a key metropolitan traffic node, and
covered mall, built on a deck above the road, a nucleus of London’s post-war office boom.
and flanked by brutalist, concrete structures Official plans sought to strip the commercial
containing shops and offices. None of these glitz from Piccadilly Circus, redesigning it as
plans seemed to take much account of the new a more ‘chaste’ and civic space, a new kind
shopping cultures thriving in Carnaby Street, of forum for a modern nation.

—
a ail

Above Working Party Right John Farleigh,

on the Introduction of a Piccadilly Circus, poster for
New Mode of Transport the London Underground.
in Central London, ‘Regent 1960. V&A: E.681-1987. Piecadily Clreus, the national rendezvous, and now the centre of a nation-wide
Street’, An Aid to Pedestrian controversy over re-development. Amid the traffic, stands the sentimentally
misnamed Eros. Read about his true identity
Movement (Westminster in London ‘Transport’s Visitor's
London, price 5/- at the ‘Travel Enquiry Office, in the Underground Tieket Tall
City Council, 1971). almost directly beneath him, at St. James’s Park Station,
or at the City Information
Centre, near St. Paul's Cathedral,

Underground or any bus to Piccadilly Circus >

46 Swinging Sixties
 eeeeeeeeereeeeesecoeccece POLOLOOOILIIIOOOO OOOO GN GG O000000 0000000000000 DOC BOOD OOOO DN DOOOOOONSHOHO bor eeeeseces

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Above ‘A Couple
Window Shopping in
King’s Road, Chelsea.’
1966. © Getty Images.
 0/00/0000 0.010) O\C0 0.01019 2 0.08
$:0:6.0 160101601506: 0101060 6.6.0.0 101010 6.61010 6:06 6.9.0:0:0:9

The other key impetus for changing London the development plans have come to be
came from the property developer. The seen as wrong-headed or naive; yet both
West End was a centre of post-war office betrayed a genuine belief in the desirability
construction, occasioned by the effects of the ‘newness’ of urban fabric, which
of bomb damage and over a decade of echoed the incessant Swinging London
neglect. While few of the local authority refrain of ‘new, mod, modern’. Architectural
planning ideas were realized, office blocks commentator Edward Carter expressed a
transformed the cityscape. The Sunday Times common sentiment in The Future of London:
Magazine commented, ‘Towers, domes and ‘All over the world people are trying to live
spires, once the focal points of the skyline, twentieth-century lives in ancient cities almost
now peer through the sheer glass walls of totally unsuitable for present needs; and yet
office buildings designed for light, air, efficiency these cities, scruffy, squalid, congested, badly
and profit.’ The architect Richard Seifert’s equipped, and in many parts so ugly, are
speculatively built Centre Point of 1964 the focal centres of civilization.’” In a London
towered over Oxford Street, symbolizing this Underground poster of 1960 (see p.43), visitors
new force in the city. The property developers were drawn to a ‘Brave New London’: ‘Look
were a different kind of entrepreneur from up at the bold and uncompromising buildings
the likes of John Stephen and Mary Quant. of today. At no time since 1666 has London
Their interest lay in the huge incomes had such a fresh and sudden skyline.’ These
generated by prominently sited office towers, buildings provided an architectural aesthetic
rather than in the fashionable consumption of unequivocal modernity, matching the clean
taking place on the ground floors of the West lines of 1960s clothes such as Quant’s ‘Peachy’
End's buildings. Of even less concern were dress of 1960. The ‘shock’ produced by the
the precarious and meagre turnovers of the new designs — the scandalously short skirts,
small boutique sites in minor streets. the glaring colours, the prominent zips that
invited unzipping — was similar to the reaction
Many of the tall commercial buildings of provoked by ‘brutalist’ concrete architecture.
the 1960s are now viewed as ugly, and

Opposite Mary Quant,

pinafore dress, ‘Peachy.’
Wool. British, 1960. Worn
and given by Mrs Margaret
Stewart. V&A: T.27-1997.

4S = Swinging Sixties
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The designers of architecture and clothes also the ground and start again betrayed a new
shared a preoccupation with new materials, concept of the fleeting city, at odds with the
or at least in the ‘appearance’ of newness: value placed on its historical fabric and
concrete and plastics, nylon and PVC. PVC-clad character. This kind of planning was highly
women were conspicuous in the mythologizing of significant, representing ‘a deliberate act of
Swinging London from Time to The Neophiliacs. erasure, an act of forgetting, not so dissimilar
Quant, one of the first to pioneer the use of the in spirit to the mood and ambience of the
material with her ‘Wet Collection’, described “Swinging Sixties” elsewhere in London.’!°
herself as being ‘bewitched’ by ‘this super shiny It fitted with the succession of boutique shop
man-made stuff and its shrieking colours, its fronts in the King’s Road and Carnaby Street,
vivid cobalt, scarlet and yellow, its gleaming which dazzled for short periods before being
liquorice black, white and ginger’.® The fabric replaced with something newer, shinier,
soon became symbolic of Swinging London, its brighter. It also resonated with the new-
very shininess mirroring the expanses of glass wave ideas of architectural groups such as
in the new architecture and the shop windows. Archigram, who emphasized the epbhemerality
and flexibility of the urban landscape — in
The newness of Swinging London was also a sense, its consumability.
articulated through the speed of modern urban
life and its need for constant renewal. The swift Archigram architect Peter Cook believed
fashion changes matched the shifting shape disposability was highly appropriate for
of the West End. This theme was picked up contemporary architecture, explaining:
in Time: ‘Even the physical city seems to shift ‘my wife wears clothes which will be an
and change under the impetus of the new embarrassment in two years. Hospitals have
activity. Throughout London, wreckers and paper sheets. Soon it won’t be so shocking
city planners are at work. Once a horizontal to throw away a building we have been
city with a skyline dominated by Mary Poppins’ using.’'' Contemporary furniture designers
chimney pots, London is now shot through with were experimenting with inflatable and paper
skyscrapers...’? The willingness of architects, furniture.'? Nothing, it seemed, need last for
planners and developers to raze the city to long. The Archigram group had a manira

Opposite Stephen
Willats, PVC dress.
British, 1965. V&A:
T.19-1991.

Right Archigram
exhibition panel
featuring Ron Heron's
Instant City designs.
1969. V&A: Circ.472-
|QY2

In 1969 thegroup
for onentertainments facilityin"Monte Corlo. The
ond the blue ponels illustrate
joject from the competition

the redponels),Same
0 chesale
on the yellow pone!)

Brave New London bY|

@eeeeseseseeeeceseseeeeereveseseeeoee POC COCE TES HOHSOE HEHEHE S OHHH EHHHHEHHEHOOOEEEEE

of ‘instantaneousness, open-mindedness and buyer for Woollands’ 21 Shop was quick to stock
invention’.!° Their projects included the ‘Plug- them: ‘I just can’t see how they can go wrong...
In City’ of 1964, which would ‘continually build They look absolutely marvellous on, and for 25s,
and rebuild itself, tear itself down, change its a girl can wear one half a dozen times instead
direction or go off in little spurs’.'* There was of paying 12gns for a dress she might wear only
also the itinerant sci-fi ‘Walking City’ of 1964, the same number of times. The colours are very
followed by the inflatable ‘Blow-Out City’ of good, and in singing plain tones they will be just
1965. These ideas culminated in Ron Heron’s right for the summer.’!° The Drapers’ Record also
designs of 1969 for an ‘Instant City’, featuring reported on the new ‘throw-away’ paper dresses
brightly coloured disposable urban structures by Dispo, on sale from £1 2s 9d at the Jump
which could be parachuted into any landscape, Ahead boutique in Pimlico Road. New designs
replete with technicolour advertisements were being brought out every month to replace
and happy consumers. the old, obsolete models.

The world of fashion had always embraced As the 1960s wore on, the obsession with
ephemerality, but it was particularly evident all things ‘new’ was gradually supplanted
in the trends of the 1960s. Brightly coloured, by a more nostalgic trend. The fixation of
easily laddered nylon tights were sold in great companies such as Biba with historical designs
quantities to be worn with the ever-shorter from late Victorian Art Nouveau to 1930s
miniskirt. Their association with youth and Hollywood glamour was just one expression
permissiveness was sealed in a notorious scene of this shift. Planners were also beginning to
in Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up, in which take more account of London’s existing cultures
they were worn and removed by actresses and architectural fabric. As Covent Garden
Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills. Other new designs emerged as a site for the planners’ schemes,
were pushing disposability to its very limits. architectural commentator Kenneth Browne
In the same year, Ossie Clark launched his set out a rather different agenda for the West
‘throwaway’ paper shift dresses, with prints End in a series of articles for the Architectural
designed by Celia Birtwell (see p.88). The Review, in which such terms as ‘distinctive

Opposite Dispo,
paper dresses. 1967.
V&A: T.176-1986
and T.181-1986.

22 Swinging Sixties
Sy
DIDO OOOO OOOO SOs OOOO OOOO COO OO OOOO COO CIO OICIOC OOOO OUIOIOIOOIOUCIOOCIOIOIOOIOIOICIOIOICIOIOIOICICICICICIOICI IEICICIIIT II

character’, ‘townscape’, ‘continuity’, even history, and demanding a new approach

‘conservation’ set the tone. ‘What future to planning its future shape.
has Covent Garden? The prospect is not
encouraging. London, “the unique city”... In the 1960s architects and planners had
is being straightened out, having its to find some way of accommodating the
eccentricities corrected, its character aspects of Swinging London that they found
impoverished, not only by piecemeal most problematic: its essential fluidity, flexibility
development but also by the doctrine of and resistance to being ‘planned’. The
the clean sweep (politely called comprehensive pedestrianization of Carnaby Street in the
development).’'® He advocated recasting early 1970s, with its brightly coloured plastic
Covent Garden as a ‘Latin Quarter for flooring, marked its permanent exclusion
London’, ‘the place where all paths cross... from the ‘Scene’, and showed the difficulty
a natural melting pot for people and ideas of marrying planned development to the
... a place where anything can happen... spontaneity of youthful consumer culture. After
This give-and-take has to be reflected in all, the most fashionable events of the decade
the architecture; free thought cannot blossom took place in the tangle of backstreets, and
in a gridiron.’'” In his vision for the area, in the hastily redecorated interiors of Victorian
urbane, fashionable consumers were depicted shop buildings. The 1960s planners had
against a backdrop of the historic market, imagined a Brave New London whose concrete
filled with cafés, studios and little shops. monumentality and grid-like street plans would
Implicit in this new approach was a desire soon seem to be the dreary, pleasure-devoid
to incorporate London’s existing character, territory of old-guard modernists. By the end
including the flourishing consumption cultures of the decade a revitalized interest emerged in
of the 1960s into new models. Soon many the possible creative connections between the
key buildings in the West End would be listed, newest, most fashionable shopping cultures
signalling a renewed respect for London's and the historic fabric of the city.

Opposite 4 Latin
Quarter for London.’
Architectural Review.
March 1964, p.198.

Right Barbara
Hulanicki (Biba),
dress. Acrylic jersey.
British, c.1969. Given
by Karina Garrick.
V&A: T.203-1991.

Brave New London BY)

———<—<—

A New London
As he sped along the curving M4 culture, significantly including architecture
motorway from London Airport below in her list: ‘fashion... reflects what is really
the unfamiliar howl of jet airliners, there in the air. It reflects what people are reading
would have been soaring new glass and thinking and listening to, and
and concrete blocks breaking the skyline, architecture, painting, attitudes to success
the tallest of which, the GPO tower, and to society.’
had only just been opened... Next,
perhaps, he would have been struck Architecture was more than a stage for
by the change in appearance of the the performance of Swinging London.
young... Nothing would have surprised Architectural plans and development
him more than the exhibitionistic violence schemes articulated yearnings to build
with which these new fashions grabbed a ‘Brave New London’, which would function
the attention — the contrasts, the jangling as a new heart for the metropolis and an
colours, the hard glossiness of PVC, emblem of Britishness, bolstering the nation’s
the show of thigh... position in the new world order. Yet this was
an enterprise that risked the very character
_ Christopher Booker’s critique of Swinging of the city, a historic character which fed into
London, The Neophiliacs, cast architecture the dynamic consumer cultures of the West
_ and fashion as key components of the urban End. As Peter Ackroyd has commented: ‘It
scene. As he tracked a 1950s time traveller is the eternal aspiration, or perhaps delusion,
encountering the city in 1965, fashions were that somehow the city can be forced to
_ set alongside monumental modernism as change its nature by getting rid of all the
markers of change. This passage echoed elements by which it had previously thrived.’
the fashion photography of Vogue and
Queen, in which London’s new architecture
provided a backdrop for the garments of a Below ‘The Height of
new generation of designers. Mary Quant Fashion’, Vogue. August
1963, pp.26-7. Silano/
drew attention to the connectedness of 1960s Vogue © The Condé
fashion and other aspects of contemporary Nast Publications Ltd.

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all mad’
SHOPPING IN SWINGING LONDON
SONIA ASHMORE

Opposite Charles Creed,

suit. Wool. British, 1954.
Given by Charles Creed.
V&A: T.62-1966.

In Time’s mythical Swinging London, a tribe word ‘shop’; ‘I hate boutiques’, she wrote in
of ‘guys and dollies’ swarmed from Portobello the Foreword.
market to the King’s Road boutiques every
Saturday in a passeggiata of display and In the post-war period the London fashion
mutual admiration.’ While the reality was retail trade followed stratified pre-war models,
more layered, the clothes shops that they were with distinct shopping zones and streets, from
pictured visiting were key sites in the making populist Oxford Street, to Bond Street and
and diffusion of a 1960s look. They were Knightsbridge, with their aura of money and
closely identified with a newly recognizable class distinction. Elite fashion was led by Paris
and supposedly classless youth culture. These couture or its London counterparts. It aspired
shops, every bit as much as the clothes and to quiet good taste, seasonal clothes made
the music of the period, are etched deeply to last and value for money. Fashion shops
into the memories of the generation who ranged from the couture salons of Mayfair
were young adults in the 1960s. to department stores that were often formal,
even daunting, with uniformly dressed sales
According to Get Dressed: A Useful Guide assistants set on dressing young people like
to London’s Boutiques by 1966 there were their parents, who generally accompanied
at least 80 such shops in Central London them. Chain stores aimed for a ‘nice and
alone. In Jonathan Aitken’s estimation there neat’ version of respectability.4 In between
were perhaps more than 2,000 in Greater were the ‘madam’ shops, gown and mantle
London as a whole.” In the spirit of the times, shops, costumiers, ladies’ or gentlemen’s
even the contemporary evidence was hazy. outfitters, and innumerable small drapers
Get Dressed defined the boutique, a word of that also sold hosiery, underwear and
eighteenth-century French origin, as ‘a small separates. After wartime shortages and post-
informal shop, probably run by the proprietors, war austerity, almost anything would sell.
selling mostly exclusive fashionable clothes
and accessories’.? The book was endorsed The 1950s version of the boutique was a
by Mary Quant, who preferred to use the rarefied place with an air of Parisian chic.

a8 Swinging Sixties
POO Q GOOG OOOO OG DOO OOO OC OO COO OOO COCO UCICIOCIIICICOCTICOCUCIIOIOOOIORICOIOO COICO CHCICCO OOOO OAC rte ernrrn rar

Vogue noted that several London houses wider clothing trade had to acknowledge the
‘have now opened these entrancing little pattern of fashion set by teenagers;® to most
shops in their salons’,° and reported regularly of them, the ‘Season’ meant nothing. Even
on the latest amusing independent shops Vogue had spotted the ‘teenage thing’, a
in Mayfair, Belgravia or Knightsbridge. look with ‘urban and working class’ origins.’
Department stores such as Peter Jones As the New Statesman commented, this trend
and Bourne and Hollingsworth also opened reflected ‘full employment and a relatively
‘boutiques’, and chains of small, boutique- high level of income among adolescents’!
like shops expanded, aiming at an affluent which allowed them to challenge the values
middle-class market. The first boutiques of their elders. These ‘baby boom’ teenagers
were places ‘where you went to buy things may have been invented by and for capitalism;
that you could not get anywhere else’, but but they were happy not to dress like their
were exclusive and expensive. ‘They completely parents and to be guided by new magazines
failed to connect with the demands of new, written for their own age group. By 1966
younger customers ... what was needed was the magazine Honey had its own branded
a combination of madam shop — good on boutiques in nearly 50 stores. Advertisements
sizing, the boutique — for unusual items were increasingly aimed at smart young girls
and accessories, and the couturier — for with money to spend. The introduction of
new designs.’° credit cards made spending easier, and in
1966, Barclaycard was advertised as ‘all
In 1950, British Vogue’s ideal woman was a girl needs when she goes out shopping’.
dressed by London designers, lived in the
country, drove a car, went shopping, lunched As Jenny Lister suggests, the impetus for
out, sat on committees, dropped in for drinks, changes in clothing and shopping styles
went to Ascot, gave parties, and holidayed also came from a new generation of designer
abroad.’ Even Vogue’s ‘Young Idea’ section, entrepreneurs. These included Mary Quant,
launched in the mid-1950s, showed ‘Clothes who with Alexander Plunket Greene and their
for the Season’. Yet by the late 1950s, social business partner Archie McNair, opened Bazaar
and demographic changes meant that the on the King’s Road in 1955, John Stephen

Opposite Ginger Group

(Mary Quant), dress. Wool
mix jersey. British, c.1967.
Given by Mrs Lina Salmon.
SSN SS
V&A: T.86-1982.

Right Ginger Group label

=]
= MARY QUANT’S
from dress, 1966. V&A: <
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T.89-1982. 1o]
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‘| think they’re all mad’ 61

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and his imitators on Carnaby Street, the Shop because ‘buyers were not always on
young designers emerging from British art the same wavelength, so it was essential to
schools, and Barbara Hulanicki, creator go straight to the customer’.'* John Stephen
of Biba. The combination of design energy started making and selling men’s clothes
and retail opportunities meant that by the late in an upstairs room in Beak Street in 1957,
1960s, the women’s magazine Nova could moving into Carnaby Street after a fire.
state, ‘what Paris couturiers say has nothing
to do with the way you and | are going look Both Quant and Stephen had a talent for
this winter. How you will be dressing depends publicity. Bazaar had a party atmosphere;
mainly on the influence... of our own its windows were dressed outrageously to
designers.’'' These were Barbara Hulanicki, attract attention on a street where, as Quant
Foale and Tuffin, Jean Muir, Ossie Clark and remembered, people ‘were not necessarily
Alice Pollock, all of whom ran their own shops. shoppers... we had to make a sharp, shocking
statement at the beginning to be noticed
Bazaar, the prototypical new-wave women’s at all’.'4 The most famous display had
boutique, at first bought in clothes and a mannequin leading a giant lobster on
accessories, but soon became a showcase a gold chain. Quant, with her trademark
for Quant’s own designs, originally made Sassoon haircut, evolved into a human
with adapted commercial paper patterns logo for her global business. Stephen was
and fabric bought in Harrods.!? Production photographed with the symbols of his success
of garments was at first on a small scale, strategically in shot. The Rolls Royce, the
in Quant’s Chelsea bedsit. This pattern was sharp suits, and above all Carnaby Street
not uncommon, and manufacturing also took itself, created the image of a new kind of
place above the shop, as in Ossie Clark’s retail tycoon. He gave innumerable interviews,
workroom above Quorum, in Chelsea. Sylvia had columns in the popular press, featured
Ayton and Zandra Rhodes began their business as a ‘pin-up’ in teenage magazines such
in Ayton’s flat in 1966. Ayton later commented as Boyfriend and was promoted as the
that they started the Fulham Road Clothes ‘King of Carnaby Street’.'*

Left John Stephen.

Advertisement using
Carnaby Street sign, 1968.
City of Gestminster V&A: AAD JS 1998/5/7.

CARNABY §T Opposite ‘Window

dressing at Bazaar, 138a
King’s Road’. 1959.
© Getty Images.

Shop where
you see the
ohn Stephen
Symbol of Quality

62 Swinging Sixties
 — \\
~~

~
Despite the frequent emphasis on the ‘dolly John Stephen was not a trained designer,
bird’ as the archetypal new fashion consumer,'® but came into fashion through retail. He
young men were key patrons of innovative observed his customers closely, noticing girls
retailing, led by Stephen, who recognized trying on boys’ clothes and introducing the
the sharp sartorial ambitions of the Mods. modifications they wanted. A brilliant marketer,
Borrowing from Vince, the men’s shop run Stephen even sold ‘mini-kilts’ to men in his
by physique photographer Bill Green, Stephen ‘Highland Shop’, bottle of whisky included.
took what were essentially homosexual dress ‘| think they’re all mad,’ he admitted, ‘1
codes into the fashion mainstream ‘as a wouldn't have the guts.’'® He preferred subtle
modern and optimistic trend, unbounded tailored clothes, unlike Quant who wore her
by sexual orientation’.'” The effect was both own flamboyant designs. Yet both Stephen
liberating and successful. Until 1965, when and Quant promoted modernity, while
Stephen opened Trecamp, his first women’s designers such as Ossie Clark and Barbara
shop, the Carnaby Street boutiques were Hulanicki embraced period revival.
squarely targeted at the male consumer: The
Man’‘s Shop, Adam, His Clothes, Male West The fashion boutiques that rapidly followed
One and Paul’s. Trecamp disrupted this strict Quant and Stephen ignored Paris, had little
gendering of the street. Its changing rooms to do with couture, and sold clothes that were
were dominated by enormous photographs often shocking to an older generation for their
of half-naked ‘musclemen’ that might easily brevity of scale and skimpiness of manufacture.
have been perceived as homoerotic images. They tended to be small, intimate spaces, often
Even heterosexual men were encouraged to with a strong interior and exterior design style.
take a narcissistic interest in fashionable The clothes were profligate with styles and
body styles by similar sexualized displays. fabrics, and easily accessible on open rails.
Through such provocative strategies, Stephen The job of shop assistant brought with it a
had established Carnaby Street as a source new sense of glamour; the staff dressed much
of modish, youthful and ‘unisex’ fashion — like the customers, rejected subservience, and
a true ‘street’ style. sometimes service too. They were characterized

Opposite John Stephen,

suit. Worsted wool. British,
c.1970. Given by John
Stephen. V&A: T.214-
D-1997.

Right Bus Stop boutique,

Kensington. 1970.
© Getty Images.

| think they’re all mad 65

 060'0' 68 C800 0:0S F000 COS SO 2220 2:0 2 £8 25°
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by spontaneity, a sense of fun, informality like a ‘grand club’, where suits cost upwards
and sometimes by amateurishness, and lack of £70.'? A new elite of pop musicians and their
of capital or business knowledge. entourages was crucial to the success of certain
boutiques. Top Gear and Countdown were
By the early 1960s, the boutique effect had two tiny shops opened by fashion model Pat
spread from the King’s Road and Carnaby Booth and milliner James Wedge at 135a—-137
Street to Kensington, where Bus Stop and Biba King’s Road in 1964. They attracted a celebrity
were located. Lee Bender opened Bus Stop in clientele and sold clothes by young designers,
a former Cullen’s grocery store on Kensington proving to be an important source of patronage
Church Street; painted bright red and gold, to Ossie Clark, amongst others. Other shops,
it was the first of 12 Bus Stops. Close by, including Just Looking and Biba, were more
Hulanicki opened the second Biba shop in populist and much less expensive. At Biba,
the old Home and Colonial stores; the shop Hulanicki sold to a mass market, initially by
had a nostalgic feel and many of the original mail order. Her dresses cost just £2—3. Many
fittings were retained. The boutique effect also girls were spending more than twice that a
reached Hampstead and Blackheath, home week on clothes, half their new wage packets.”°
to new celebrities such as Jean Shrimpton Before metamorphosing into supermodel and
and Terence Stamp, where Jeff Banks opened archetypal ‘dolly girl’ Twiggy, the teenage Lesley
Clobber in 1964. Despite the new myth of Hornby would dash from her Saturday job at
classlessness, there was a hierarchy to these a hairdressers’ salon in Queensway to Biba,
shops that was partly about money and partly then a tiny shop in Kensington, where even
about that nebulous quality ‘cool’, crucial to as an unknown Neasden schoolgirl, ‘you
the mystique of shops such as Granny Takes could afford to buy something every week’
a Trip, which sold almost anything but fashion. in your lunch hour.?!
Shops such as Annacat were run by and for
debutantes. Socially well-connected shops Twiggy’s strategy reflected the geography of the
such as Michael Rainey’s Hung On You in new boutiques, which incorporated streets and
Chelsea catered to the male dandy and back alleys of the city not previously associated
wealthy bohemian. Blades, in Mayfair, was with fashion, except through its manufacture in

Far left Annacat, dress.

Printed cotton. British, 1970.
Given by Mrs David Bruce.
V&A: T.6&A-1974.

Left Top Gear boutique,

King’s Road. 1966.
© Getty Images.

66 Swinging Sixties
 COSHH SESE SESE LE EEE ESE EOE EE HE EEE SELES EEE EEE EEE EEES

Above Mirandi (retailed

at Hung On You), jerkin.
Suede. British, 1968-9.
Worn and given by Mr David
Mlinaric. V&A: T.313-1987.
 CHOSE HESEHHEHHHEHEHEHESHEHHEHHHETEHEHESHEHEEHEEHSHHHEHOHHHEHHHEHESHHHHHHHOHHEHHEHEEHHHEHHEHEHEEE eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeee

meth
SSeS

Above Barbara Hulanicki

(Biba), jacket. Synthetic with
gold lamé. British, 1968-70.
V&A: T.82-1991,

65 Swinging Sixties
POOP OSH CO OO HES OHEEEEEEEOOEEEEHHEHOO OEE EEOEEEH OOOOH OOOO OSHS OS HOO OOOO OHHH OHEOHOOOOOCOOOOOOO OEE EEOOCOCOSS

cramped tailors’ premises behind the grand directly, there is no conventional advertising...
retail thoroughfares of Oxford and Regent How does it succeed?” It had ‘small, closely
streets. Just as Bazaar had a galvanizing effect controlled production lines’ allowing frequent
on the economic geography of the King’s innovation; Stephen made up to 60 per cent
Road, so Stephen’s initiatives transformed mark-up and took cash only. His little empire
the dingy hinterland of the West End. There was also part of a wider expansion of men’s
was a sense of excitement, discovery and tailoring that brought the idea of Savile Row
ownership about these new spaces. Granny to the working-class boy, but styled with Italian
Takes a Trip, opened in 1965, was ‘round chic and dandified touches. The area attracted
the bend’ of the King’s Road at World’s End, ‘ex-Savile Row men... who... make suits for
quite a walk from the main beat and scruffier, Polanski, Stamp, Curtis, Caine and other
although curiously exclusive. There were also heroes of our time. If they don’t make your
clear class differences between the King’s Road suits man, you just don’t rate,’ as the New
and Carnaby Street. Quant’s customers were Statesman commented.”
well heeled — her ‘set’ was not working-class.
Thus the King’s Road was not for real Mods. The establishment succumbed in other ways.
Carnaby Street took on the cheap glamour In one sense the kitsch Carnaby Street stood
of its Soho environs, not the social cachet of in opposition to the reform of more mainstream
Chelsea. And there were markets: Portobello retailing along slick modernist lines. Austin
in then rough Notting Hill; undercover Reed’s Cue, Woollands’ 21 Shop and
Kensington, safe from the elements, and Simpson's Trend, all aimed at an affluent
Chelsea Antique Market for superb old clothes. market, were examples of this purer boutique
aesthetic. By 1966, however, even avowedly
The success of Carnaby Street fascinated modernist Design magazine was celebrating
the press because it broke retailing norms. the design style that had emerged from the
As the Investors Chronicle remarked: ‘It’s boutique movement as a truly popular one,
hard to find, you can’t park, all the shops but presenting if in a modernist format. In
depend on the same market, compete their feature Kate and Ken Baynes recognized

Shops and grephice

Left Rose Bradford for

Quorum, dress. Synthetic
mix with lurex. British,
c.1968. Given by Louise
Barber. V&A: T.463-1988

Above ‘Design features

boutiques’, Design, August
1966, pp.22-3.

| think they're all mad 69

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Carnaby Street as the ‘birth, however 1969, two out of three Quant shops had closed
illegitimate, of a really thoroughgoing and the King’s Road site sold. In 1966 Irvine
design movement’, claiming that, ‘one day, Sellars owned a chain of boutiques and was
“Carnaby Street” could rank with “Bauhaus” exporting to the US, but within a decade his
as a descriptive phrase of a design style and chain of 200 shops was in receivership. By the
a design legend.’4 Yet only two years later the mid-1970s, many boutiques had transmuted
magazine noted that ‘Carnaby Street and all into the ‘jeans shops’ that flooded Oxford Street.
it stood for is no longer a spearhead of design
innovation.’2° At the very moment when Time Boutiques were frequently short-lived; the
attempted to define London as ‘swinging’, the trade press carried a litany of disaster:
boutique’s creative heyday was already over. ‘_..put savings into boutique with disastrous
results’, ‘overbought through inexperience’,
By 1966, one boutique generation had ‘drew too much money from his boutique’,
grown up. Vanessa Denza, whose buying ‘failure due to inexperience.’”° Extravagant
had helped define the innovative, youthful lifestyles and drug habits ensured the ruin of
style of Woollands’ 21 Shop and launched others. Palisades, with its jukeboxes and fruit
several young designers, opened a shop in machines, lasted two years; its owner, Pauline
Sloane Street with Madeline Frye, selling clothes Fordham, one of the ‘swinging’ Londoners
to career girls and young married women over featured in Time, who had started with Foale
25, not swinging single dollies. Mary Quant and Tuffin, two of Time’s ‘top happeners’,
had become an international mass-market blamed the intrusion of department stores.
brand in the United States, and boutique chains
occupied the King’s Road; John Stephen owned By the mid-1960s, the antithetical values of
22 boutiques and had also expanded to the the boutique had been fully appropriated by
US. Carnaby Street was less about tailoring the mainstream retail trade. In 1959, Austin
than souvenirs embellished with Union Jacks, Reed had presciently rejuvenated its image
a trend started by John Paul of the Portobello by commissioning young RCA graduate Robyn
Road shop | was Lord Kitchener’s Valet. By Denny to paint a huge ‘pop’ mural for the

Left Countdown, dress.

Printed cotton and mixed
fibres. British, 1970.
Given by Jill Ritblat.
V&A: T.728-2000.

70 Swinging Sixties
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Above | was Lord

Kitchener’s Valet,
Portobello Road. 1966.
© Getty Images.
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Regent Street shop, a stone’s throw from of the swinging sixties and of one’s own
Carnaby Street. Other upmarket clothing youth departed.’”8 Pontings, a once popular
retailers such as Jaeger and Simpson had department store in Kensington High Street
followed with departments aimed at ‘younger’ sold off remaindered boutique wear before
customers. In 1966 Selfridges owner Charles being closed down entirely by House of
Clore brought the boutique style into the Fraser in 1971.
department store by investing a million pounds
in Miss Selfridge, a huge, shiny ‘boutique’. In the early 1950s, Carnaby Street had
Although its vast scale was the antithesis of been ‘an almost sleazy little street of one-
the original boutiques, it was aimed specifically room workshops or unplumbed apartments,
at young women under 25 whom it saw as whose broken windows hung with threadbare
captive future customers. Harrods’ Way In lace curtains... There was a population of
opened the following year featuring an internal women In carpet slippers, their dressmaking
‘street’ of ‘boutiques’ selling fashionable pins bordering the straps of their working
clothes to well-off young men and women. aprons, and craftsmen-tailors whose stock-in-
It covered 20,000 square feet, and its new trade was alterations.’”? By 1966, ‘boutiquers’
cash registers were each able to take the such as Warren Gold with his aspirationally
unprecedented sum of £999.99 in a day. named Lord John chain, had followed Stephen
Independent Top Shops were opening by the like miners to a goldrush, and were collectively
early 1970s, gradually replacing the parent making £5 million a year. Rents had multiplied
Peter Robinson fashion stores. But by mid- tenfold. The capital value of the area had been
decade, even Way In ‘became yesterday's transformed. Tourists flocked there. As the
news’, according to its former chief cashier. Glasgow Herald reported: ‘The zest has gone
The paintwork of its ‘Quink Blue gloom’,?” from Carnaby Street... the loss of vision in
‘became chipped and dirty... many of the the street means that male fashion Is at
original concessions long gone... the chrome the moment without a leader... become
and white [refit] which replaced the blue respectable... Big Business, the Establishment
seemed to spell the end of an era, the finish of the outfitting world, has moved in. Every

es |
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Opposite Juliet Glynn
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DRESSES:
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Ne SHILLINGS Ba V&A: E.868-1968.

Left ‘Pontings: boutique

clearance sale’, Evening
"TROUSERS News, 7 July 1968.
Etc.,Ete. © Museum of London.

Ee
Slight ly Soiled
eee a
Above Oxford Street gets
up-to-date: an advertisement
“9 igs
for Peter Robinson’s Top Shop
6 Falouts
CSPECIAL ENTRANCE inl WRiaHTS LANE)
featuring Twiggy dressed in
new synthetic fibres. Vogue,
KENSINGTON HIGH STREET November 1966, pp.72-3.

‘| think they’re all mad

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store now has its male boutique offering The 1973 Biba also performed ‘the valuable
twopence-coloured reproductions of Carnaby service of raising fundamental questions about
Street styles without the novelty, the gaiety or what a department store should be’, in terms
the zaniness that typify the originals.’°° In the of public space and spectacle.*? Eventually
early 1970s, in a sign of the changing times, killed by conflict between creative ambition
Stephen’s company passed into the world of and corporate ownership (Dorothy Perkins
commodity trading. The street renounced its and British Land), Biba was, temporarily, a
fashion credibility as it became a marketable place of pilgrimage; glamorous and camp
entity, pedestrianized in 1972, with coloured enough for rock stars, yet cheap enough for
plastic tiles added the following year. By 1983 a 15-year-old schoolboy from Somerset to
the Crown Estate had bought up and then buy ‘gold sparkly Wellington boots’ to wear
sold the entire west side. It had become a at home on the farm.°°
depressing cipher for Swinging London.
The alternative values of the ‘Sixties generation’
Yet, at the very moment when the boutique were not limited to clothing styles, which, by
appeared to be dying, and stores had ‘nearly the end of the decade had embraced other-
worn themselves out dividing up their acreage worldly exoticism. Conflicting attitudes to post-
into imitation boutiques’,?' Barbara Hulanicki war affluence were epitomized by the bomb
expanded her own style of boutique into an planted in the previous Biba store by the anti-
entire redundant department store. Derry capitalist ‘Angry Brigade’ in May 1971.°4 The
and Toms on Kensington High Street was Brigade’s ‘Communiqué 8’ was a crude if
one of Victorian Kensington’s temples of passionate critique of the new consumerism,
consumption whose splendid but neglected paraphrasing the counter-cultural lyrics of
Art Deco modernization was appreciated Bob Dylan. ‘If you are not busy being born
and exploited by Hulanicki. Beautifully you are busy buying... Life is so boring there
detailed design was applied to every aspect is nothing to do except spend all our wages
of merchandise, furnishings, marketing and on the latest shirt or skirt. Brothers, sisters,
packaging, playfully celebrating nostalgia. what are your real desires?’°° For some the

Left Biba, Kensington

Church Street. ¢.1966.
Courtesy of Philip Townsend.

74 Swinging Sixties
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Above Twiggy
photographed by Justin de
Villeneuve in Biba’s Rainbow
Room Restaurant in the
former Derry and Toms
department store, c.1973.
V&A: AAD 1996/6. Justin de
Villeneuve/Vogue © The
Condé Nast Publications Ltd.
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desire was clearly to carry on consuming; of Swinging London. Innovative, informal

customers escaping from the bomb were and often ephemeral, boutiques attracted
picking up as much merchandise as they and informed a new generation of fashion
could hide under their clothing. consumers and a considerable tourist trade.
They challenged the orthodoxies of shop
Boutiques, like any shop, were inherently organization and design. Fun, eclecticism
ephemeral and changing. By the early 1970s, and novelty prevailed over functionalism,
even the couture industry had opened ergonomics and quality. Music became an
freestanding boutiques, led by Yves Saint integral part of the experience of fashion
Laurent with Rive Gauche in 1966. From the consumption and clothes shopping returned
remnants of Swinging London, the next ‘angry’ to its pre-war incarnation as an activity
generation shocked its predecessors with associated with entertainment and spectacle.
ripped clothing and body piercing. They were Yet the innovative styles of garment, shop
encouraged by the new Chelsea entrepreneurs, design and graphics pioneered by the
Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, boutiques of the mid-1960s were inevitably
who in 1971 established themselves on the copied by larger stores, and small independent
spot to which Hung On You had moved in its shops were developed into chains and
hippy phase, and Tommy Roberts’ Mr Freedom brands. While this stifled their spontaneity
had sold brightly coloured pop clothes, just and formalized their design style it also
on that cusp where the King’s Road went encouraged a more creative approach to
into wilder territory. the design of other shops, and introduced
a greater responsiveness to the consumers
The fashion boutique was an essential part of fashion.
of the iconography and the physical landscape

Opposite Bootique, a
prefabricated boot-shaped
interior eased into the Vidal
Sassoon hairdressing salon
in Old Bond Street. Design,
1 February 1971, p.59.

| think they're all mad Lo|Ls

 The Boutique Lock
Boutiques used appearance as advertisement the outside, had theatrical suede curtains,
and self-definition. Many of them broke hessian walls, aubergine paint and bronze
with conventions of professional design, fittings. Nearly all the shops had jazz or
adopting the magpie tendencies of Pop pop music playing. This was a novelty and
Art. Sometimes this amounted to little more depended on the assistants putting records
than crude populism. John Stephen's shops, on turntables. Communal fitting rooms
for all their novelty value, were not high- became the norm — even at Harrods’ Way
design statements; they were generally In, where they reminded some of French
crowded, with clothes on open rails, the public urinals because the walls did not
street facades disguised with garish theatrical reach the ground. At the end of the 1960s,
effects. Some used topless models in their Biba was to take design to new extremes
shop windows, exploiting the new culture of ‘retro’ refinement.
of permissiveness. Quant also insisted
on vulgarity over good taste, although As boutiques became big business, their
Bazaar’s idea of bad taste was rather more construction and styling became ever more
sophisticated than Carnaby Street’s. Bazaar elaborate and brand-conscious. ‘House
had set the pace by inserting a modern style’ became the catchword. From a do-
plate-glass window into a Georgian terrace. it-yourself activity, the design of everything
Great effort was spent on its promotional from clothes to carrier bags became a
displays, which were consistently witty and professional task performed by in-house
wild. Other retailers attached temporary design teams and outside consultants,
facades. The exterior of the Beatles’ Apple which packaged these local enterprises
boutique on Baker Street caused controversy as national and global brands.
with its 40-foot ‘psychedelic’ exterior mural.
In 1968, Granny Takes a Trip took the prize Below Biba labels, from
the store in the Derry
for shock value with one of its frequent and Toms building. John
face-lifts: a vintage Dodge car apparently McConnell designed the
bursting through the shop’s facade. Elements original logo; Whitmore-
of Pop and Op art, Victorian and fairground Thomas set the house style
for the new store. V&A:
lettering and revivals of Art Nouveau and AAD-1996/6/53.
Art Deco were used by many shops to create
a strong, irreverent display style.

While some retailers made do with an

effective if ad-hoc mix of junk-shop furniture,
which developed into the stylish eclecticism
of Clobber or Biba, others preferred a more
coherent contemporary image. Some went
for new versions of modernism. Countdown
on the King’s Road had a silver metal interior.
Foale and Tuffin’s shop, off Carnaby Street,
was all white with lots of sliding mirrors floor
to ceiling, wth clothes hung on scaffolding
construction and lit by 500 red, white and
blue light bulbs. Others were drawn to fantasy
themes. The exterior of Palisades, Ganton
Street, was painted in fairground style by
artist Derek Boshier; inside, all was clashing
colours, pinball tables, flashing lights and
a working jukebox. Barok, a men’s shop
on the Earls Court Road had gold walls, Op
art and a water fountain. Gerald McCann’s
design for the John Michael shop on the
King’s Road, while sharply modernist on
 Left Royal College
of Art fashion design
graduates Marion Foale
and Sally Tuffin (both
seated, Tuffin left, Foale
right) opened their shop
off Carnaby Street in 1962
because the rent was
cheap. Vogue, April 1965,
p.14. Michael Wickham/
Vogue © The Condé
Nast Publications Ltd.

Below left Hung On

You, 1966. Michael
Rainey’s shop catered
to hip, well-off young
men. In the late 1960s
it moved from Cale Street,
Chelsea to 430 King’s
Road, subsequently home
to Mr Freedom and then
the Vivienne Westwood
and Malcolm McLaren
shops. © Getty Images.

Below right Two

illustrations for Biba
by Kasia Charko.
V&A: AAD-1996/6/4.

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Myths of the
Swinging City
THE MEDIA IN THE SIXTIES
PAMELA CHURCH GIBSON

Opposite Twiggy (Lesley

Hornby) with her mother
Helen Hornby, 1965.
Photograph by Terry O'Neill.

The 1960s was perhaps the first decade created of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ were also transformed
in the media. It was ‘invented’, chronicled and by, and reconstructed in, this uniquely
examined whilst it was unfolding, rather than influential decade.
labelled and analysed with the benefit of
hindsight. The only other decade to excite Over the course of 10 years, new magazines
so much contemporary discussion was the appeared that had different readers in mind,
so-called ‘Roaring Twenties’. Both decades and looked quite unlike anything that had
saw radical, irreversible social changes and preceded them. The revamped Vogue and
a liberalizing of attitudes. Both were particularly the new-look Queen, radically altered by its
notable for the new behaviour of women, many new editor Jocelyn Stevens to suit the changed
of whom no longer contemplated a future climate, were still catering for an older, middle-
defined through marriage and domesticity. class market. Stevens had purchased the
And in both decades, startling new modes magazine in 1957 and employed as layout
of dress reflected these desires and freedoms. artist and assistant editor Mark Boxer, recently
However, the comparatively underdeveloped sent down from Cambridge for blasphemy
media of the 1920s could only chronicle the after a highly controversial poem appeared
antics of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and depict in the student magazine, Granta, during his
the new fashions of the flappers. The media editorship. Boxer and Stevens transformed
did not yet have the capacity to shape their the appearance and content of the staid
careers or to widen their sphere of influence. magazine into something more modish and
But 40 years on, the media were powerful cutting-edge. As a result, Boxer was tempted
enough to promote the activities of those away by a huge salary offer to supervise the
involved in the ‘Swinging London’ they had new Sunday Times colour supplement. All these
christened, radically increasing the reach changes, however, had nothing much to offer
and significance of these cultural changes. teenage girls, particularly working-class girls,
Most importantly, they now possessed the who were now the main target for magazine
capacity for self-reflexivity and change — publishers as well as high-street retailers.
the media that showcased the phenomenon Honey, which first appeared in 1960, had

80 Swinging Sixties
 ii
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a circulation of 200,000 by 1966. It was not or otherwise. To keep abreast of current

merely a showcase for fashion — instead, the fashion, Cathy purchases a ‘fun fur’ from
editorial staff concerned themselves with the a stallholder in Portobello Road. Sadly,
realities of life for young people outside the it disintegrates in the rain — the skins are
charmed circle configured in the metropolitan stuck together with Copydex. This is mildly
media. They ran articles on leaving home, distressing — but far more problematic is her
flat-sharing, premarital sex, living with a man two-year campaign to preserve her virginity,
out of wedlock and, when the contraceptive constantly under siege from older boyfriend,
pill became widely available in the mid-1960s, TV producer David. This saga runs in tandem
they discussed its pros and cons. Work figured with that of plump flatmate Sue’s unhappy
too. Careers were profiled and scrutinized, sexual liaison with her married boss, to whom
along with office politics. Honey also lent its she succumbs and whom, she hopes, might
name to a series of out-of-London shops- leave his wife.
within-shops so that their readers could find
the clothes they wanted to suit their new However, the most innovative and commercially
ideas of independence. successful elements of the winning formula
that set Petticoat apart were its colourful fashion
Honey appeared monthly, but a new weekly pages and features. There was comprehensive
magazine, Petticoat, was even more successful. coverage of the new music scene, while its star
Launched in 1966 and specifically aimed profiles and interviews, whether with musicians
at younger girls, it featured cheap, desirable or film actors, always featured those who were
clothes and inexpensive, widely available young and of the moment. It was summed
accessories. Its strapline announced that the up by its distinctive lowercase logo, a visual
magazine was ‘for the young and fancy-free’, indication of the contents — the dot of the ‘i’
and a column, ‘Cathy’s Crowd’, recorded the was shaped like a daisy, while the cross of
diary of a young girl up from the provinces the ‘t’s was replaced by flat bows, like those
and sharing a flat in London. The flatmates on the front of a ‘dolly’ dress or adorning
support each other through every crisis, serious a pair of the new square-toed shoes.

Opposite Patti Boyd

in Mary Quant (Ginger
Group) crépe ‘Alice’ dress
with frilled collar and cuffs,
pictured with the Rolling
Stones. John French,
April 1964.

Myths of the Swinging City 83

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Petticoat was launched and funded on a and use of illegal drugs, it came out staunchly
shoestring and faded as the 1960s died, in their defence. William Rees-Mogg, the editor,
finally folding in 1975. Its editorial staff wrote an eloquent first leader, which sought
had a more lasting effect on London’s for ‘Mr. Jagger’ the same justice that would
fashion culture. Janet Street-Porter became be ‘thought proper for any purely anonymous
an innovator in youth television during the young man’ and gave it by way of a title an
1980s, Eve Pollard went on to edit the Sunday epigram from Alexander Pope: ‘Who Breaks
Express, and Lynne Franks dominated London’s a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?’.' Of course, the
fashion public relations industry for many more traditional and timorous papers — the
years (before being immortalized as Edina Daily Express and the Daily Mail — fed the
in the television series Absolutely Fabulous). fears of their ‘Middle England’ readership
and constantly bemoaned the seeming collapse
Broadsheet newspapers also changed their of civilization. But they always put the more
approach and format as well as modifying sensational examples of this ‘collapse’ on their
their content. The liberal Observer cast an front pages, as did all the dailies, whether
optimistic eye over the changing scene, and right-wing or left-leaning. Each of the new
Katherine Whitehorn, its fashion editor, was excesses — whether it be the annual battles
swift to identify and champion new designers. between Mods and Rockers at Margate, the
The Times, in its pre-Murdoch days, was still extraordinary phenomenon of what was
the bastion of the establishment. It looked christened ‘Beatlemania’, or the rise and rise
in 1960 much as it had done in the Victorian of the miniskirt — was carefully chronicled.
era. However, on 3 May 1966 the paper
finally shifted the main news stories to the Changes in newspaper format were often
front pages, replacing the announcement radical and experimental in themselves.
of ‘births, marriages and deaths’. Far more The first Sunday Times colour supplement
astonishing, however, was the political stance appeared on 4 February 1962 and had,
The Times adopted in 1968. In its coverage on its cover, repeated Polaroid-style shots
of the Rolling Stones’ trial for the possession of a new, young model, photographed by

Opposite Jean Shrimpton

at Tower Bridge. 1961.
An early photograph in
which Shrimpton, dishevelled
and slightly bruised, is
intended to look ‘just-out-
of-bed’. Photograph by
David Bailey.

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her boyfriend, a Cockney photographer who reasons for presenting models as relaxed,
was making a mark on the fashion scene. The untidy, even as sexually available and with,
model was Jean Shrimpton, the photographer perhaps, that ‘morning-after’ look: ‘We try
David Bailey. Where John French had made and make the model look like a bird we'd
her look elegant and mature, Bailey chose in want to go out with.’® The journalist who
this shoot to emphasize her youth and to show was interviewing him — for The Sunday Times
her with very little make-up. Shrimpton’s hair supplement, which devoted a special issue
was tousled and the dark circles beneath her to ‘Taste’ — went on to explain to readers
eyes clearly visible, not painted out as they outside the world of fashion that ‘very often,
had been in earlier pictures. This shoot was the model and the bird are the same girl’.®
a career-defining moment for both of them, In the past, fashion photographers — with
and established their partnership as central the exception of Antony Armstrong-Jones,
to the changing fashion industry.” who married Princess Margaret — had been
anonymous figures. However, these three —
Bailey was one of the self-styled ‘Terrible particularly Bailey — became as well known
Three’, who came to prominence early in as the ‘birds’ they chose to photograph. A
the 1960s. His companions were Brian Duffy popular rhyme of the period suggested that
and Terence Donovan, and they chose this ‘David Bailey makes love daily’. Each new
nickname in order to emphasize their irreverent girlfriend he chose found herself profiled
attitude, their cheeky behaviour in the and depicted outside the safe confines of
sacrosanct world of high fashion and their the fashion magazines.
consistent refusal to conceal their sexual
interest in the models.? Previously, fashion Models, too, were changing — not only in
photographers had been well-heeled, well- appearance but also in their ability to influence
bred young men, often rather camp in style. Jean Shrimpton was the first model to
demeanour. As Donovan observed, ‘they become a fashion leader in her own right.
were tall, thin and homosexual — we’re short, The famous photograph of her at Melbourne
fat and heterosexual.’4 He also clarified their Racecourse in December 1965, watching

Opposite Stiffened
net picture hat worn by
Jean Shrimpton. Tatler,
3 April 1963. Photograph
by John French.

Myths of the Swinging City 87

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the Australian Gold Cup in a dress that ended paper knickers in 1966, which were seen as
three or four inches above her knees, was a somehow symptomatic of an increase in sexual
defining moment in the much-contested history promiscuity. Nudity, too, was newsworthy.
of the miniskirt. Whoever may have ‘invented’ The topless dresses and swimsuits designed
it, it was this shot of Shrimpton, wearing a skirt by American Rudi Gernreich in the summer
that was shorter than any seen before, that of 1964 went straight to the front pages,
made it fashionable — and the fact that the preceding the introduction of topless models
picture appeared in broadsheet newspapers in the tabloid press by five years.
was a new departure.
Fashion was not only creating waves but
Other ‘fashion moments’ also made the had itself also become one of the ways in
broadsheets. The early coverage of Courréges’s which it seemed possible to break down class
‘Space Age’ collection of Spring/Summer barriers. Many key players on the ‘scene’,
1964 was the first to feature bare knees and like the ‘Terrible Three’, were from working-
a flash of thigh — encouraging comment and class backgrounds. While Shrimpton was the
pictures in the news sections of many papers. daughter of a Berkshire farmer and thus solidly
In the summer of 1966, Cathy McGowan, middle-class, 16-year-old Lesley Hornby, from
television presenter, was refused entrance to suburban Neasden, worked as an apprentice in
the Dorchester wearing a saucer-hole trouser- a hairdressing salon and lived with her parents
suit, while the miniskirt had now reached such in a council flat before her reincarnation as
heights that an attendant had to be posted ‘Twiggy’. Her much older boyfriend and mentor
at the entrance to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot was an ex-barrow boy and boxer, Nigel Davies.
to bar those whose skirts threatened a breach Interestingly, while he christened her ‘Twiggy’
of protocol. Fabrics new to everyday fashion he reinvented himself as Justin de Villeneuve’,
- particularly if they had sexual connotations, proving that the breaking down of class
as had leather and PVC — were featured on boundaries might be an illusion that worked
the news pages. So, too, was the invention in both directions. He transformed her image
and widespread marketing of throwaway by taking her to top hairdresser Leonard, who

Far left Celia Birtwell

and Ossie Clark, dress.
Paper (bonded fibre). British,
1967. Given by Zika Ascher.
V&A: T.261-1988.

Left Jane Asher in a

paper dress printed by
Celia Birtwell. Nova,
September 1966.

Opposite Courréges
stunned the Paris couture
audiences in 1964 with
short skirts and flat white
boots. Photograph by John
French, 1965.

88 Swinging Sixties
e TO OOS SOHO TOSCO OHO SOOOOEE EH OOEEEEEEOOOCCEOOOEEEOOOOE EHO OOOOH CE SOOO OOOO OOOO ECE E OCC EOE EER OOOOOOELOCCEO®S

cut her long hair into the famous crop, and truant. Twiggy and the other models were
by teaching her to paint lashes underneath joined, in the pages of Vogue, by more key
her eyes, like those on a Victorian doll he had figures from the London media landscape.
once owned.’ He persuaded Deirdre McSharry Throughout the 1960s, Vogue ran a new
of the Daily Express to see her and she instantly column, ‘People Are Talking About...’ which
ran a feature, headlined ‘Is this the Face of covered new plays, films, and personalities,
662’ In those days, the fashion pages of the so that a flick through the magazine would
dailies had far more influence than they do show not only the latest clothes but also the
now, and her career took off. Twiggy, seen latest faces on the ‘scene’. These included
everywhere in the media, was promoted in rock stars, actors, boutique owners and
Europe, the United States and Japan and television stars such as Peter Cook. In those
young female fans across the developed world — days ‘slender and very good-looking’, Cook
cut their hair and painted on underlashes in was the most fashion-conscious of all those
imitation. Her androgynous body, childlike involved in the new wave of ‘satire’, which
face and ingenuous manner perfectly suited began on stage with Beyond the Fringe,
the mood of the mid-1960s. moved to television with That Was The Week
That Was and into print with Private Eye.’
The new models were used, at first, in the
existing magazines, which adapted their The 1960s surely witnessed the ‘coming of
style to suit the changed mood and fresh, age’ of the modern cult of celebrity. It was,
young look. Twiggy, in particular, was often atter all, this decade that prompted Andy
photographed in movement — leaping across Warhol to state that in future everyone would
a room, for example — to emphasize her youth. | be famous for 15 minutes. The 1960s saw,
One shot portrays her perching ona cupboard too, the emergence of the new phenomenon
in a manner that could be reminiscent of Alice of the celebrity couple.'? Paul McCartney’s
in Wonderland, while in another she is riding first girlfriend after the Beatles became famous
a scooter, with wide grin and bare knees, was actress Jane Asher. Model Patti Boyd would
making her look like a schoolgirl playing later marry George Harrison and then elope

Opposite Twiggy
photographed by Ronald
Traeger, July 1967.

Above Twiggy in slip

dress by Foale and
Tuffin. Vogue, 1 October
1967. Photograph by
Sir Cecil Beaton.

Right Long dresses by

Mary Quant. Photograph
by John French, 1964.

Myths of the Swinging City 91

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with Eric Clapton, inspiring the latter to write Somehow, the commercial possibilities of
‘Layla’, still his best-known song. Boyd became the show were thoroughly mined without
a favourite model of designer Ossie Clark, it losing its all-important credibility with its
who adored her ‘razor-sharp ankles’."’ young audience. McGowan was not the only
figure designers and boutique owners sought
On the December 1966 cover of Peiticoat, to dress on-screen. There was a new crop
Cathy McGowan, presenter of weekly pop of young, fashion-conscious British singers
music programme Ready Steady Go, first such as Lulu, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield,
transmitted in 1963, handed out the New Marianne Faithfull and the famously barefooted
Year honours. This show was not only one Sandie Shaw. Shaw looked like a model and
of the most successful independent television married Jeff Banks, designer and owner of
programmes of the 1960s, it was also very the new boutique Clobber. The BBC had
important as a promoter of particular fashion enjoyed respectable viewing figures for its
trends. If McGowan wore a particular dress on ‘youth programmes’ in the previous decade,
Friday evening, when the show was transmitted, notably 6.5 Special, but Ready Steady Go
then it was a belief held by many working in swept aside all competition. The BBC fought
the fashion industry that the same dress — or back in 1964 with the launch of Top of the
its look-alikes — could sell out in shops across Pops. This programme succeeded because
the UK on the following afternoon. And for it copied the format of Ready Steady
many young men this weekly programme, Go, whose producers had pioneered the
with its catchphrase ‘The Weekend Starts transmission of a live show, with performers
Here’, was also a vital source of information. ‘singing’ (miming as their record was played),
Clothes-conscious boys had no fashion while a studio audience — carefully selected
magazines of their own, although the small from the hundreds who queued in advance
ads in the weekly music papers enabled — danced. These programmes also showed
them to purchase the right boots, jacket or those who lived outside the big cities with
shirt should they live outside London and their new clubs what the latest dances were,
be unable to reach Carnaby Street. and how to do them.

Left Minidress worn at the

Eurovision Song Contest by
Sandie Shaw, 1967. V&A
Theatre Museum: S.983-—
1982.

Opposite ‘London Look for

a London Girl’. Susannah
York and Warren Beatty
photographed to promote
the film Kaleidoscope for
Vogue, June 1966, p.147.
York wears Foale and Tuffin,
Beatty's suit is by Anthony
Sinclair. David Montgomery/
Vegue © The Condé Nast
Publications Ltd.

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Although cinema might have lost its leading shallow, the readers gullible. Kaleidoscope
role as a fashion influence, it could still provide (1966), a rather feeble film, starred Susannah
stars who interested the media. The northern York as a boutique owner and fashion designer.
actors of the British New Wave such as Albert Once again, the scene-setting clothes were
Finney and Tom Courtenay were joined by provided by Foale and Tuffin.
Cockney boys Caine and Stamp, while Julie
Christie seemed to be the very incarnation The most interesting cinematic depiction
of the King’s Road girl. When she made her of 1960s London was perhaps Antonioni’s
mark in Billy Liar (1963) she became ‘Honeygirl Blow-Up (1966). David Hemmings played
of the Month’ while Petticoat enthused endlessly a fashion photographer overtly modelled
about her spontaneity and friendly manner. on David Bailey, while models Verushka
The films themselves, however, did their best and Peggy Moffitt appeared as themselves. '4
to undermine any illusions about ‘Swinging Hemmings scorns the fashion shoots that
London’. Rita Tushingham in The Knack (1963) have made him rich, but his adventures outside
played a provincial girl who comes to London the industry leave him even more disillusioned
in search of the ‘scene’ she has read about and frustrated. Lastly, the film Performance,
— a copy of Honey is in shot as her train nears made in 1969 and released in 1970, which
London — and she is swiftly disillusioned.!? starred Jagger as a reclusive, washed-up,
The heroine of Georgy Girl (1966) is a plain, drug-dependent rock star, was interpreted
dowdily dressed music teacher (Lynn Redgrave). by many critics as an epitaph for the decade.
It is the flinty-hearted semi-villainess, played by It also showed quite graphically the nastier
Charlotte Rampling, who is the epitome of the side of the 1960s flirtation with the glamour
metropolitan ‘dolly’, dressed for the part by of the criminal underworld, which had briefly
Foale and Tuffin. Christie, meanwhile, the most made of the psychotic Kray brothers two very
enduring icon of 1960s British film, was cast unlikely pin-up boys.'°
as the spoilt, deceitful fashion model in Darling
(1964).'3 This film showed the industry and its If feature films showed the fashionable
magazines in a negative light — the players metropolis as a deceptive mirage, where

Opposite Jean Shrimpton

and Terence Stamp, 1964.
Photograph by Terry O'Neill.

Myths of the Swinging City 95

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sybaritic excess was invariably punished, capitals, prime dictator of style and taste. But
television’s most famous drama Cathy the Time issue that christened and celebrated
Come Home (1966 ) showed London in this moment formed a high-water mark. It
even grimmer terms. Its harrowing ending, came just over halfway through the decade
where the homeless young heroine screams —and the London it described was already
helplessly as her children are taken into care, beginning to lose its potency. The following
led to the formation of the charities Crisis and year would see the invention of a new media
Shelter. Television, however, was equally happy tag, the ‘Summer of Love’, which began with
to screen fashionable fantasy. The Avengers, flowers and ended with fighting in the streets.
which ran from 1962 to 1969, was successful From 1967 onwards, the West Coast of
as tongue-in-cheek drama and as fashion America provided the new bands, the new
statement. Its heroines, Honor Blackman looks — and the new politics. San Francisco
and Diana Rigg, wore catsuits of black leather, became the epicentre of youth culture and
long flat-heeled jackboots and short, pointed India the subject of a new interest in mysticism.
dominatrix boots, plus a range of minidresses For others radical activism was now more
and outfits designed by John Bates. The screen important than anything else, certainly more
garments were linked to high-street retailing, important than ‘trivial’ issues of style. In May
while the hero of the series, actor Patrick 1968, students and trade unionists combined
Macnee, recorded the popular duet ‘Kinky forces and brought Paris to a standstill that
Boots’ with Blackman in 1963.'® Macnee’s lasted several weeks. This was followed by
character, John Steed, combined the bowler student occupations and demonstrations
hat and furled umbrella of the city gent with across Europe and the United States.
narrow jackets and trousers created for
the series by Pierre Cardin. The media found all of this confusing at first
— but soon came up with lazy labels such
The 1960s was the first and perhaps the only as ‘flower power’, as if all the things that
decade where London was for a short time happened in the last years of this decade
perceived by many as chief amongst fashion could be explained away with journalistic

96 = Swinging Sixties
PBI ID BOA ORION IIS TOOT OOO CIO COO OHO CO ICICI ICCC ICC OOOO II TICIOICICIOIIOOICICICICCICOOACC IEC rrr itr

facility. In reality, the late 1960s was infinitely ‘liberation’ found a new focus, but the attitude
more complex.'” By 1966, the civil rights of such titles to fashionable consumer culture
movement in the US had given birth to a was generally ambivalent at best.
new militancy, and the longstanding awareness
of the threat of nuclear war was replaced by Within mainstream journalism, there were
real anger about the escalation of the Vietnam different responses to social change. The
War. Meanwhile a bohemian subculture of most significant was the new women’s monthly,
many years standing began to take on the Nova, which appeared in 1965 and moved
size — and, significantly, the contradictions swiftly into new terrain. Provocative articles
— of a mass counterculture.'® And as the examined racial discrimination, sexual
decade changed tack, so once again there politics and dysfunctional families as the
were changes to the London media’s mode decade drew to its troubled close. Its art
of operation and relationship to fashion direction and layout, too, were unlike that
culture. Following the American lead, there of any other magazine, and its fashion editor,
was a rash of ‘alternative’ publications and Molly Parkin, together with stylist Caroline
the underground press flourished. lts products Baker, regularly devised clever, humorous
can perhaps be separated into two strands. and sometimes thought-provoking fashion
The first comprised subversive and strangely spreads. But Nova did not last for long;
apolitical papers, such as the International the 1970s brought the slick Cosmopolitan,
Times (1966) with its masthead featuring edited (in the US) by the Manhattan maven, Helen
Theda Bara, ‘It-Girl’ of the 1920s, and Oz Gurley Brown, to a country now bewildered
(1967), comic-book in format and sexually by economic collapse, growing unemployment
controversial in content. The other strand was and widespread discontent.'”
explicitly political, usually Marxist, and included
papers such as Black Dwarf (1968) and Red In the decades that followed, the media that
Mole (1969). These would be followed in the had created and valorized the 1960s now
early 1970s by the feminist Spare Rib (1971) trivialized it by constantly harking back to,
and Gay News (1972). Now demands for and reinventing, the mythology of Swinging

Right Men in Vogue,

November 1965,
featuring actor
James Fox.

Myths of the Swinging City 97

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Fortnightly 3s 6d

Above ‘Swingeing
London’, Queen, 22 June
1966. Jocelyn Stevens’
trademark irreverence is
displayed two months after
Time magazine's article.

98 = Swinging Sixties
SSSHSSSHHSEHHSSHHHSHEHHHHSHSHEHHEHEHHHSHSHEHSHHSHHHHHSHHHHHHHHHHSHHHHHEHEHOHEHHHEHHEHHHEHHSEHSHEHEHHEHEHHEHHEHHHHEHEHHEEEHEHEHEHEEEHETETEEEEEE

London. But the media also helped to of post-war funk which gave birth to the
foster a competing myth — that of the “Permissive Society”... [and] in turn generated
‘Permissive Society’ which, it was claimed, today’s violent society.’?'! This new, negative
was responsible for every social ill, from mythology now competes with romanticized
over-liberal parenting to vandalized bus notions of ‘liberation’ and the perception
shelters and violent video games. Margaret of the era as an endless party. No one
Thatcher, of course, was perhaps the most would deny that these 10 years produced
famous exponent of this argument, declaring the decriminalization of homosexuality and
in 1982 that we ‘are reaping what was sown saw significant moves towards sexual equality
in the sixties. The fashionable theories and and the outlawing of racial discrimination,
permissive claptrap set the scene for a society yet both mythologies tend to ignore these
in which the old virtues of discipline and self- facts. They both seek to play down the
restraint were denigrated.’?° Norman Tebbit, political awareness generated by the period,
as Conservative Party chairman, took up this surely a more significant legacy than short
idea with enthusiasm in an abrasive speech skirts, sexual licence and the widespread
made in 1985, which attacked ‘the era popularity of recreational drugs.

Myths of the Swinging City 99

 Cover Appeal
| Magazine covers act as a commentary on Under the leadership of fashion editor
the irreversible changes that affected British Molly Parkin, Nova was even more innovative
society in the 1960s. Established magazines in both style and content. One spread
such as Vogue had to adapt in order to showed Jane Asher, actress and Beatle
survive. New, younger models replaced the girlfriend, in a paper dress printed by Celia
elegant women who had stared out from Birtwell, who worked with and was married
its covers in the 1950s. David Bailey, Terence to designer Ossie Clark (see p.88). Where
Donovan and Brian Duffy joined John French other young designers looked forward, Clark
and Cecil Beaton as photographers of choice. and Birtwell looked back — to a more romantic
The clothes shown were young in spirit, often era or to old-fashioned glamour. Where
the creations of the new designers increasingly other dresses skimmed the body, Clark's
featured inside the magazine. The models’ clothes emphasized the curves beneath. It
make-up was a high-fashion version of that was typical of Nova to promote fashions that
| seen on many young metropolitan girls: pale challenged dominant trends. As art director
and interesting, in contrast to the mask-like Harri Peccinotti commented, their fashion
red lipstick, coiffed hair and plucked eyebrows pages ‘were almost an insult to fashion
of former Vogue cover stars. Each new at times’. Other Nova covers and spreads
phenomenon was reflected here — whether showed the darker mood of the late 1960s,
Twiggy-inspired underlashes or psychedelic encapsulated so effectively in the photography
face painting. Vogue’s competitor Queen of contributors such as Sarah Moon. No
took this approach further in targeting a women’s magazines before had covered
more diverse audience and showcasing this ground, or adopted such arresting
contemporary style. The Queen cover for visual strategies.
July 1966 used the distinctive American model
Peggy Moffitt, whose elaborate eye make- Petticoat was targeted firmly at younget
up was an art form in itself. She had already girls, and had a clear idea of their interests
found fame modelling Rudi Gernreich’s and purchasing power. Its original strapline,
sensational topless swimsuits of 1964. ‘for the young and fancy free’ was changed
in 1967 to ‘The New Young Woman.’ Even
Petticoat readers could not remain entirely
‘fancy free’ as the cultural climate around
them changed. In December 1966, Cathy
McGowan, the presenter of Ready Steady
Go, is depicted advising Harold Wilson
aboui the real ‘New Year Honours’. To have
put the Prime Minister on the cover of a teen
magazine was another first — and to do so
tongue-in-cheek gives some clue as to the
guiding anti-establishment spirit behind the
title. Contemporary staffers Janet Street-
Porter and Lynne Franks had little respect
for traditional authority — and paradoxically,
this guaranteed for both women the trappings
of conventional success in their future careers.

Left ‘| have taken the pill’.

Nova, September 1968.
 So. ie
ONE SHILLING “A” Jor the young and fancy free

Above Peggy Moffitt

20 July

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Out of London
DAVID GILBERT

On 7 February 1964, at 1.35pm local time, it was to define precisely what that London
the Beatles landed at Kennedy Airport to look consisted of. The collarless suits with
begin their first tour of the USA. Ten thousand piped detailing that had at first seemed so
screaming fans were waiting for the group. ugly to New Hampshire ninth-graders had
These teenagers had been attracted by much been run up by the London show-business
more than just the music of the Beatles. tailor Dougie Millings in Old Compton Street.?
Beatlemania was as much about a new look These were, however, unashamed copies of
(and a new kind of sex appeal) as it was about the new ‘cylinder’ line suits introduced by
a new sound. It is hard now to appreciate Pierre Cardin in his first Paris menswear
the shock-value of the early clean-cut Beatles collection of 1960. Cardin was to pioneer a
who landed at JFK. One American Beatles new fashion order of designer labelling, giving
fan remembered: ‘walking down the street ready-to-wear clothes not just a distinctive
with two of my friends and discussing them. cut and line, but also endowing them with
We all said how ugly they looked in their the mark of a designer’s signature.° But even
photographs, especially with no collars on Cardin struggled to retain identification with
their jackets ... Then slowly we changed what was to become known to millions simply
our minds ... At the beginning | loved Paul as the ‘Beatle jacket’ — and regarded as a
most of all. He was so beautiful.”! London rather than a Paris fashion. By the
time they arrived in America the Beatles
The Beatles’ arrival in the United States marked had moved onto another new style, involving
the start of the so-called ‘British invasion’ of another fashion borrowing by Dougie Millings.
popular music and fashion styles. By the time The Beatles’ follow-up look reinstated suit
of Time's ‘Swinging London’ edition in 1966, collars, but in velvet.4 These suits belonged
something that was identifiable as a British to an Italian idiom that had been naturalized
or particularly as a London look was already as popular fashion in London from the mid-
well known internationally. However, the 1950s onwards, in the shops of Cecil Gee,
example of the Beatles shows how difficult John Michael and Millings himself. In the
 eeeeeeresreseeccesecocseeceoecceos
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Above The Beatles pose in

new suits with an American
flag in a Paris photo studio
prior to their first visit to the
United States in January
1964. © EMPICS/AP
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Above P ierre Card in

collarless su its from the
d
cyl inder-look’ of 1960
These were to become the
model for Doug ieM illings /
Beatle suits © Keystone.
OOOO O.CONO CORIO IOI 0080 OOO CIO OIC SOCEO.O'O OOOO COO OOOO OIC CCU UOOICICOOICIOICICICIOCIDIOIOIAIO
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Mod-culture of early 1960s Britain, the the whole geometry of fashion changed.
designation of cut, line or detail as ‘Italian’ This transformation arose from economic,
or ‘French’, ‘Roman’ or ‘Parisian’ was vital social and cultural changes that were
in a grammar of style that marked out the widespread in North America, Western
fashion sophisticates and true group insiders. Europe and Australasia. Increasing consumer
However, when popularized and exported affluence, particularly among teenagers
to America by the Beatles (never a Mod and young adults, changing relations between
group proper), these fashions signified the generations, and new attitudes towards
simply ‘London’, just as the term ‘Mod’ lost popular culture, leisure and the body,
its particular meaning crossing the North together with innovations in materials and
Atlantic, becoming a catch-all for all that manufacturing techniques, formed the basis
was ‘modern’ about English popular culture.° for a revolution in the way that the fashion
system worked. But while these changes were
London's new position in the geography diffused across the Western World, changes
of world fashion centres worked through in fashion became closely associated with
this mixture of innovation, borrowing and certain key sites, particularly London, and
popularization. Time suggested a kind of then slightly later, America’s West Coast. In
fashion cycle of cities in which it was now these places the connections between fashion
London’s turn after ‘thrusting New York’ in and the emerging music influence were very
the ‘shell-shocked 1940s’, and the ‘easy Rome strong, and they were marked by popular
of La Dolce Vita’. However, London did not style cultures that both influenced and drew
become the single central point where fashions upon the work of local designers.
originated and were then broadcast to a
waiting world. Although the 1960s was a Other major fashion centres had to respond
period of near-terminal crisis for the Paris to the times. In Paris a new generation of
couture system, London did not replace it designers stretched the couture system to
as the centre of fashion’s world order, nor breaking-point. It is hard to judge how much
indeed did any other fashion capital. Instead this was influenced directly by what was going
 REECE UODERESORURG SOON EN GEN RS eee See
REPEC SSRREERRREDREARDAASEROASHSSERERSLUECROSCHORERSE

on across the Channel. For example, both Cardin, Courréges, Emanuel Ungaro and Paco
Cardin and Mary Quant claimed to have Rabanne experimented with futuristic ‘space-
‘invented’ the miniskirt in the late 1950s. age’ looks in the mid-1960s that featured new
What is more important, however, is that shapes and used new technologies. Cardin’s
the experiments that exposed new areas ‘Cosmos’ outfits of the period were inspired by
of the female body in daywear provoked the first space-walks, and used vinyl, plastics
a reaction and found a market in two very and large zips, alongside more traditional
different fashion cities. In the early 1960s, fabrics. The headgear of vizored caps or felt
Cardin, André Courréges and Yves Saint helmets was the most striking feature of the
Laurent broke away from the traditions of Cosmos collections, but they perhaps had more
restraint associated with the main couture lasting significance in the promotion of unisex
houses. Although Paul Poiret and Elsa fashions.’ The combination of body-fitting
Schiaparelli had caused outrage with their sweater, under a tunic or fitted pinafore dress,
avant-garde experiments in couture fashion with dark tights or straight trousers, created
earlier in the century, this new generation a distinctive shape that was widely copied
of designers drew upon art and particularly and adapted — although in Britain the popular
popular culture in ways that were un- appeal of the Cosmos look was probably
precedented in Paris. In 1965, Saint Laurent’s limited by the unofficial adoption of Cardin
Autumn/Winter collection quoted from the as the house style for the TV puppet series
work of the Dutch De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian, Thunderbirds. Paco Rabanne drew upon his
using the artist’s trademark grids of thick training in architecture and his experience
black lines and blocks of colour on a simple in jewellery design to push fashion technology
short tubular shift. While still operating still further. Rabanne created sculptural dresses
in the elite circles of Parisian fashion, the made from plastic disks and metal chains
Mondrian collection transformed abstract that often required pliers rather than needle
modernism into an open acknowledgement and thread in their construction. This radical
of the emergence of pop sensibilities and experimentation with materials was an
new codes of feminine beauty and display.° increasingly widespread feature of elite fashion
design in the mid-1960s. In the United States,

Left Pierre Cardin, ‘Cosmos’ Above and opposite

outfit. Wool jersey. French, Paco Rabanne, dress. Plastic
1967. Given by M. Pierre and metal. French, 1967.
Cardin. V&A: T.75-F-1974. Worn and given by Baroness
Helen Bachofen von Echt.
V&A: T.165-1983.

106 Swinging Sixt

DODD ODORS IORI TSEC SOOO CHA NI MOM MMAR UH SR a a a ee ee

Rudi Gernreich used transparent vinyl panels cultivating a ‘Frenglish’ style characterized
in his dresses, while Diana Drew created an by mohair suits, Harris tweeds or blazers.’
outfit incorporating small electric lights (the line While the minet style often consisted of English
only partly spoilt by the battery box). Leonard classics refracted through the influence of
Joseph's dress designed in 1965 for the New American Preppie or lvy League style (what
York Forward Look boutique is another good became known as the ‘Kennedy look’ in
example of such elite experimentation. This France), the emergent shopping environment
glittering gold cellophane and sequinned was a much more direct emulation of the
shift was worn on the New York party scene London scene, with boutiques with anglicized
by Princess Lee Radziwill, the international names, such as Mayfair, Twenty, Harrison,
socialite, famous mainly for being the younger and most bluntly Carnaby Street. (The Parisians’
sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. expertise in English style, however, was rather
more advanced than their geographical
The influence of London fashion on these wider knowledge, as one off-shoot of the Renoma
developments worked in a number of ways. boutique ended up with the name Cardiff.'”)
First, the model of London as an alternative This influence was also felt in 1960s New
urban fashion culture was an important part York, where the London scene provided the
of the pressure on the established system. model for new boutiques. Paraphernalia, the
In the early 1960s, fashion culture in Paris most influential of the new New York boutiques,
was becoming more like that in London, and opened on Madison Avenue in 1965. The
there was often explicit reference to English founder Paul Young, instrumental in bringing
developments. For example, in men’s wear, Mary Quant’s clothes to a mass market in the
the ‘minet’ look, pioneered by the tailor US, saw his boutique as an overt challenge
and manufacturer Simon Cressy at his store to the fixation with Paris that characterized the
Renoma in the 16th arrondisement, drew work of many New York designers. It was no
heavily on English-style narrow-shouldered, coincidence that Paraphernalia’s first collection
tight-fitting suits. The rue de la Pompe in the was a ‘London look’ of shift dresses over
16th became a kind of Parisian Carnaby Street, checked sweaters and tights.’'

Opposite Leonard Joseph

for Forward Look, dress.
Gold paper and sequins.
American, 1965. Given by
Princess Slanislaus Radziwill.
V&A: T.297-1974.

109
——————— LULU

THON NTS S VIO L OO S eeeeresreeereeeeeeeeeeesese

eee REKRRARRASCEKCEAREACKASKSENSSASESSSESSSSSSSSESSSSUUSSSSRUSDSNUNA

lf the development of London-style boutiques looks, facilitated by the more liberal laws
with new marketing practices and consumption on style copyright in the US.'? As the Broadway
cultures disturbed the established order within musical Sweet Charity put it, what many
Paris, other aspects of the new London fashion American women wanted was a ‘copy of a
scene helped to undermine the position of copy of a copy of Dior’. As the designs were
Paris in fashion’s world order. Although British copied and recopied, making their way down
designers became more prominent, and the the social hierarchy, the patina of Parisian
British fashion industry enjoyed a boom in design became thinner and thinner, but what
international sales in the early 1960s, this was was important was that there was still some
more about the symbolic significance of the lingering connection to the authentic original
new London than direct competition. The in the Paris collections.
Parisian couture system relied on more than
the production of a few hand-made dresses The new sensibilities coming out of London
for the aristocracy or super-rich. The sale of showed that cutting-edge fashion could be
patterns to foreign ready-to-wear companies different. The rise of Mary Quant — from
(illegal in France itself) underpinned the joint proprietor of a rather chaotic and
mythology of Paris as the authoritative source amateurish boutique on the King’s Road
of fashion edicts. This system reached a high to major international fashion influence
point in the post-war accommodation between ~ js indicative of the London effect. While
the French and American fashion industries that in Bazaar’s early years most of Quant’s
was aggressively promoted in American Vogue. clothes went to a rather elite Chelsea set,
The period after Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ what she achieved was a kind of symbolic
of 1947 was marked by an unprecedented democratization of fashion that was then
penetration of Parisian designs and influences exported to a wider world. Quant’s claims
into the American market. At the top end these for the classlessness of her looks could be
were officially licensed copies, but the rapidly naive, but she played a leading role in shifting
expanding American middle market was the focus of fashion towards a new kind
dominated by copies of the season's Parisian of figure. In place of the wealthy, elite and

Above ‘Come in 67
Your Time is Up.’ Drapers’
Record. 6 January 1968.

110 Sw iIngiIng o
SOSCHHHH
HEHEHE
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mature couture customer, Quant promoted the temptation for others to cash in with
the Chelsea Girl, a figure defined by her cheap copies of cheaply made originals was
youth (and her skinny body shape), her casual, irresistible.'* Sixties London saw a new intensity
seemingly spontaneous, confidence in the city, of copying that often undermined the position
and her willingness to experiment with a rapid of elite design. Garments such as the Saint
succession of new looks. Mixing metaphors Laurent Mondrian dresses became simply
magnificently, Quant acknowledged that she another look to be ‘knocked out’ as cheaply
had happened to start out when ‘something as possible in the latest cut-price fabrics, Bri-
in the air was coming to the boil’, recognizing Nylon included. If, with hindsight, this was just
the way that this new fashion type tapped into a staging-post on a road that was to lead to
social changes and new markets that were the ‘fast-fashion’ of multi-national firms, off-
international in scope: ‘Chelsea ceased to be shore production and planned rapid turnovers
a small part of London; it became international; in style, at the time it seemed to mark a new
its name interpreted a way of living and kind of fashion order that was less controlled
dressing far more than a geographical area.’'? and hierarchical, and more sensitive to the
demands of actively creative consumers.
This new form of fashion, unashamedly Tellingly, both Quant and Cardin recognized
ready-to-wear, relatively affordable, and very early that the way for the designer to make
targeted at an international youth market, money in these new conditions was through
was also increasingly disposable and the branding of mass-produced clothing.
replicable. Quant (together with her business Perhaps one of the most prescient events in
team of husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, the fashion history of 1960s London was the
and manager Archie McNair) was particularly appearance of a Cardin diffusion range at
astute in the licensing deals she made in the the opening of Miss Selfridge, the first of a
States, but in general it was hard to control new wave of ‘boutique’ chain-stores.
the local and international spread of these
looks. If the point was to ‘knock it out because The late 1950s and early 1960s were a
people aren't going to wear it very long’, buoyant time for the British rag trade. The

Breakaway
Breakaway

Breakaway GIRLS REACH FOR THE STARS—AND MAKE IT!

Left Yves Saint Laurent,

dress. Silk crepe. French,
1965. Given by M. Yves Saint
Laurent. V&A: T.369-1974.

Above Bri-Nylon Mondrian

style dress advertised in
British Vogue, March 1966,
palo
volume of fashion exports roughly doubled In the post-war period, guidebooks for
between 1954 and 1963, then doubled again American visitors to the French capital
by 1965, with a total value that year of £50 routinely included itineraries around the
million.'® This increase was in part the success main fashion houses. Swinging London
of individuals such as Quant, but also reflected worked differently. Here the invitation to
a wider restructuring in the industry’s supply the tourist, and particularly to an emerging
chains and publicity networks. In 1954 the generation of young travellers, was to
Fashion House Group of London was founded, become part of the scene, rather than to
which aimed to promote British designers observe the sacred shrines of high fashion.
internationally through London Fashion Weeks Unlike the music scene, which tended to be
(from 1958) and other events. By the mid- nocturnal and episodic, and dependent on
1960s, the Fashion House was increasingly who was playing where, fashion culture
caught up in the kind of promotional activities provided the most visible and reliable tourist
that were developing in the music industry. spectacle of the new London.'” Entrepreneurs
In 1966, in an echo of Beatlemania, the such as John Stephen recognized this well
latest London designs were shipped across before Time’s Swinging London edition,
the Atlantic. As Moss Murray, chairman of producing T-shirts, novelty hats and badges
the Fashion House, remembered: ‘we sailed that actively commodified Carnaby Street
on the Queen Elizabeth with a party of eighteen as a tourist experience.
model girls, manufacturers and twelve top
British journalists. We were a wow! It simply The fame of the Time edition has also obscured
wasn’t done for a big store not to have the degree to which the idea of Swinging
British fashions.’'® London was an international media event,
to some extent driven by the canny publicity
The international marketing of Swinging of key players in the London fashion world,
London worked in other ways. The spectacle but increasingly with a momentum all of its
of fashion had long been part of the way that own. The Time edition was just one part of the
Paris was promoted as a tourist destination. media frenzy of 1966 that brought widespread

Far left Ties in Carnaby

Street as pictured in Triunfo
magazine, November 1966.
Pictures by Gigi Corbetta.
V&A: AAD/1998/5/16.

Left The London

‘Mod’ fashion as seen
from Germany. Bravo
magazine, 1966. V&A:
AAD/1998/5/16.

112
 Voor U en Uw
personeel
(zie achter pagina)

am Street
wee
N dorado voor the incrowd-
~~» Beatle en Stone muziek maken het kopen van
2» mode eenvoudiger (zie pagina 2).

;: Emiterwieuw met
| olan Stephem
cme | *KING OF THE ROAD”
oleae voor
r en de nodige |,,Binnen drie jaar was ik miljonair’’(zie pagina 3) ae

MODEPROGNOSE
rgekair
Interessante kollektie op stand
> aa beurs Rai - Amsterdam.
ins

Above Carnaby News

— selling Swinging London
in Amsterdam, September
1966.
international coverage of the new London. Although Carnaby Street was indeed long
As well as many short fashion features on spent as a force on British fashion by the
the London look, there were more substantial end of the 1960s, and declined still further
commentaries and photo-essays on London in succeeding decades to be dominated by
in Die Zeit (Germany, March 1966), Sogno cheap jeans and cheaper tourist tat, the
(Italy, June 1966), Oggi Illustrato (Italy, August myth-making of 1960s had permanently
1966), Réalités (France, October 1966), altered tourist geographies of the city. The
Triunfo (Spain, November 1966), and Zie rediscovery of Carnaby Street in the 1990s
(Netherlands, January 1967). De Spiegel by multinational trainer and other ‘streetwear’
(Netherlands, July 1966) ran a special feature companies owes much to the lasting power
on ‘Londen’ that even included an alternative and commercial value of the clichés that
map of the city, more explicitly youthful than were encoded in guides and tours of the city.
the Time version, focusing on Carnaby Street
and the clubs and discotheques of Soho.'® John Fashion took other routes out from London.
Stephen was smart enough to recognize that The emergence of a national media,
the promotion of the London scene depended particularly new television programmes and
on more than the mainstream press. By 1966, magazines aimed at a youth audience, meant
Carnaby Street was increasingly regarded that knowledge of new fashions spread much
as a tourist trap and past its best, both by the more rapidly than before in Britain. Demand
fashion press and particularly by those who for these looks was met in part through mail
had been the Mod ‘faces’ at the cutting-edge order. Biba began in 1963 as the Biba Postal
of earlier fashions. Stephen turned to young Boutique, one small example of what became
Europeans, trying to prolong the image of a major innovation in retailing.'? Mail order
the street as the world centre of youth culture. itself was not new, but the proliferation of
Carnaby News was an early attempt at stealth publications, particularly the new music and
marketing, freely distributed from several new fashion press, meant that youth fashions could
London-style boutiques in Amsterdam, and be carefully niche-marketed. The small ads
designed to look like an independent fanzine. of the New Musical Express or Melody Maker
 Se memes (SaemeESESA
| Bill Fach ley an imaginative _ Produceo! a basve paper pattern.
sympa hetie dev/gner.... Aj Os1g various fabrics he created
an ovt
fie for every OCCAtION
; | fee

|He was Completely '

! overwhelmed
f/!

Above Cinderella wears a

pattern-made dress to the
ball. Nova, July 1966, p.48.
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became a printed version of Carnaby Street the excitement of the metropolis, but both
or the King’s Road, supplying versions of the underplayed the significance of other cities
London look to Reading or Redditch. The in the development of new youth subcultures.
1960s were also the last great age of home- Nottingham in particular saw the development
dressmaking in Britain. Designers such as of a strong boutique culture that for a time
Quant and Gerald McCann produced pattern in the mid-1960s sustained an independent
designs, with one Quant for the Butterick design culture, including Paul Smith’s Birdcage.
company selling 70,000 copies.”° Even Elsewhere the boutique could be rather more
magazines such as Nova promoted home- derivative, as footballers and other new
made dresses as the way that ‘Cinderella celebrities climbed aboard the bandwagon.
could get to the ball’ without spending But one-off stores owned by individuals were
a fortune. Both mail order and home- disappearing in London and other cities by
dressmaking worked as the vicarious the end of the decade. John Stephen, for
consumption of a piece of metropolitan example, moved the focus of his business
style. One of the features of the 1960s was away from Carnaby Street to concentrate on
the extent to which a relatively circumscribed 0 national chain of rather more conventional
London scene rapidly entered national menswear stores. Nonetheless, there were
mythologies, and how many people some who still strove to keep the flame alive.
wanted some material connection to it. The Drapers’ Record reported on the Top Gear
Motique, a psychedelic caravan, owned by Mr
Time simplified the geography of Swinging Marcus Weiner, a former cigarette salesman.’!
Britain to an outline map with a large arrow The Motique’s mission was to take the latest
pointing south to London. Time’s arrow gear to the style-deficient citizenry of East
matched the stereotypes found in such films Anglia. Perhaps this was one journey too
as John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar (1963) that far out of London, as the Motique was last
contrasted the greyness of the north with spotted in a field outside Ipswich.

Out of Londo 117

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Goodbye Baby
and Amen
A POSTSCRIPT FOR THE SWINGING SIXTIES
CHRISTOPHER BREWARD

It will be a little time yet before the to admit disappointment.’? Some commentators
writers and sociologists, and all the were harsher in their evaluation of the decade,
other chart makers, get the age pinned and certainly used less fantastical prose. Indeed
down beneath the seismograph needles Goodbye Baby was one of the more positive
and make patterns that are not merely records of a moment that others had dismissed
pretty, but enlightening. Meanwhile, as delusional. As early as June 1966 Queen
we shall recall it with pleasure and fury produced a response to Time under the
and some sadness too... It was great dismissive banner ‘Swingeing London’.? In The
fun. Sure.' Neophiliacs Christopher Booker expanded on
the theme of the Swinging Sixties as solipsistic
In their elegiac book of 1969, Goodbye Baby nonsense, to be joined in his analysis a year
and Amen: A Saraband for the Sixties, David later by fellow traditionalist Bernard Levin.4
Bailey and Peter Evans provided an epitaph Yet, as the glamorous images and word-
for the decade before it had even finished. Like pictures of Bailey and Evans proved, there
Time's ‘Swinging London’, the publication was was still something sufficiently attractive and
an entirely self-referential project, immortalizing tangible about the ‘Swinging’ phenomenon
a metropolitan clique of models, actors, to ensure that its myths would endure for
film-makers, restaurateurs, designers, writers, much longer than its critics may have hoped.
musicians and artists whose achievements
somehow crystallized the aspirations and mood Forty years on there is undoubtedly an
of an epoch. The authors themselves were irreducibility about surviving garments that
very aware that the times they were aiming challenges the ephemerality of the fashion
to record were actively mythologized through photograph, the cinematic scenario or the
‘the molten fraud of commerce, and literary confection — a presence that moves
copywriters, and journalists, carried to the beyond the myth. A Mary Quant dress or a
far corners of the earth by sexual fantasists John Stephen suit makes an emphatic and
who floated by in clouds of lavender coaches, embodied statement: ‘I was designed,
like shy lovers in tunnels of love, unwilling manufactured, bought and worn. | was there.’

120 Swinging Sixties

eeeececreeeecee PEOOE ODDO OS0.00 OOOO GOOG DO OOS OCORCOCO SOOO OUUUOCIOOOCOUOHO COOOL OO EBDOCHAOCOALOGSABBAAAANGSArGr

The clothes of the period perhaps provide a more informed assessment of the reasons
the most potent proof that the Swinging Sixties why different versions of the 1960s gained
were an identifiable moment of real change authority at particular times.® There is certainly
and development, and not just a figment of a sense from this evidence that the Swinging
the myth-maker’s imagination. They are, above Sixties never died, but simply offered
all else, concrete products of a new consumer- subsequent generations a template for
oriented economy where material benefits constant re-invention.
were more universally enjoyed than ever
before.° And in their details and stylistic ‘Re-inventing the Sixties’ would be a fitting
references they announce the flowering of theme for a future project, but for now it’s
a cultural and artistic renaissance that had worth indicating just two notable instances
important repercussions for the reformation when the fashions and styles of the period
of old hierarchies of taste and social behaviour have formed the basis of striking new
and new understandings of city life. interpretations.’ In the late 1970s, invigorated
by the licence Punk had provided to London’s
Most importantly a reconsideration of music and fashion entrepreneurs to cut up
the work of 1960s fashion designers, retail and reinterpret the pop-cultural past, New
entrepreneurs and consumers themselves Wave bands such as The Jam and retailers
helps us to move beyond what historian Mark such as Lloyd Johnson (who provided clothes
Donnelly has rather dismissively described for the 1978 film of The Who’s Quadrophenia)
as sterile debates about the myth or reality pioneered a Mod revival. Carnaby Street and
of the period. Thinking through the particular its environs enjoyed a fresh popularity as cult
contexts in which new styles were produced destination for a new generation of fashion
and consumed, paying close attention to their followers, eager to purchase the tight mohair
material and visual qualities, pulls into focus suits, button-down shirts and two-tone shoes
the objects, images and ideas that contributed that were now (erroneously) associated with
to the formation of such potent myths in the the street in its mid-1960s heyday before
first place. This allows the historian to make the descent into pedestrianized banality and

Ben
London? No, nat more about doned like the yo-yo, too real to sea and Portobello and Carnaby
London! Yes, more about London, be walked out of like a spy film. — Street.~the Pop Cults, and the
and seldom have a lew words been London is one of the most stim- t
y lating pital cities in the
ethe Lenth Muse hasbeen in which to live and work
at large in the streets, the Tenth least ten years, it has ger t
and most dangerous — Publicity ~ extraordinary vitality, which has ultraanodern — pleasure-concepts,
hal€-wwind-bag and hal&demi-urge, been absent, over the same period, the Discotheques. These are the
which every : year blows up and Swings and Roundabouts
notofthe
blows down —bigwer,! F
Well, of course,
bunk is on now, led style and at
by all the predictable gated talents work more or less underground
debunkers ave just as much the Just why have conditions been for the most part. They are ob-
victims of excess publicity as are so promising > Margaret Mead, the
the inaner ravers. London has not, a

is tury, it is no good jus nem away again, David Bailey recently

with one item, say, refrigerators, paid a bemused second-time-ever
But, if they are totally equipped visit to the King's Road Saturday
from the fa {within the same week,
lode adjustmen : © paid her first
This, roughly a\
has happened in Lond But the Sw and Round
now equipped, has suddenly dis- abouts go whirling merrily on
> covered style all of its own and with or without the people who
yough a min
ish filpn-uni
. i betwees xarp, exhilarating. }
selves querulously d for {re
vices real freshness, |
originality.
they haven't even heard of.
Iv is annoying, but no more.
London is too big a place to be 1a. Wherever. In
all the fi as : or oe
demoted, when
died down, into Last-Year’s-Girl, those par Sah h he has” mildly
and too important to be aban. stalked. the efflorescence of Chel- Roundabouts, And the Swing

Above ‘Swingeing London’,

Queen, 22 June 1966.

Goodbye Baby and Amen 121

 popsiorel.
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touristic kitsch.2 And in March 1997 in a move encourage future approaches to the swinging
that deliberately played on Time’s original theme that both acknowledge the myth
reification of London as the epicentre of ‘cool’ and look to its deeper messages for future
in 1966, the American magazine Vanity Fair inspiration. London historian Roy Porter, himself
devoted a special issue to the ill-fated concept a product of the 1960s, deserves the final
of ‘Cool Britannia’. It informed readers that word, for providing an analysis of the
‘London Swings Again’ while actress Patsy period’s vibrancy that more than upholds Bailey
Kensit and rock star Liam Gallagher sprawled and Evans's expectation of meaningful closure:
across the cover under a Union Jack duvet.
Here the cocksure signifiers of 1990s ‘Brit- A culture materialized that was irreverent,
pop’ sat in uneasy alliance with the political offbeat, creative, novel. Politically idealistic
optimism of a young Labour government, ...It broke through class-barriers and
in much the same way that Quant and the captured and transformed many of the
Beatles were bracketed with Harold Wilson’s better elements of traditional London: its
aspirations for a newly dynamic Britain. cosmopolitanism and openness, its village
quality, its closeness, its cocktail of talent,
In the new century, no doubt the look of wealth and eccentricity. There was a
the 1960s will invite further retrospective rare alliance between youth culture and
glances. In the meantime, we hope that commerce, aristocratic style and a new
this current appraisal of its significance will populism. It was a breath of fresh air.”

Opposite Carnaby Street

pedestrianized, c.1975.
© Getty Images.

Goodbye Baby and Amen 123

 ROSS CUSERSARSERERENTOECERGCSECOSCORS CUMS SNCS RUD UD eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
MOSCCEC CSCC CEEESTSRSES COCTAC SSG SHEL ER RESCH

NOTES
INTRODUCTION ‘BRAVE NEW LONDON’: ARCHITECTURE MYTHS OF THE SWINGING CITY
. Time, 15 April 1966, p.32 FOR A SWINGING CITY 1. The Times, 1 July 1968
. Booker (1969) . Sunday Times Magazine, 1 April 2. Sunday Times Magazine, 4 February
. Moore-Gilbert and Seed (1992), p.3 1962, p.15 1962
. Booker (1969), p.18 . Ackroyd (2001), p.753 3. Harrison (1999)
. For a recent summary of key products
aAkWN-> . Guardian, 15 April 1966 4, Sunday Times Magazine, 10 May 1964
and images of ‘Swinging London’ see . Rappaport (2002) 5. Ibid.
Donnelly (2005) or Levy (2003). ‘Living with the motor car’, Sunday 6. Ibid.
6. Quant (1966), p.35 Times, 24 November 1963, p.9 7. Lawson & Denning (1997)
. See Breward (2004) and Breward, . Sunday Times Magazine, 1 April 8. Bennett (1999), pp.77-81
Ehrman and Evans (2004) for pre- 1962, p.15 9. Ibid.
histories of London’s fashion sector. . Carter (1962), p.13 10. Rojek (2001)
. Donnelly (2005), p.95 . Quant (1966), p.134 11. Rous (1999), p.xxi
. Schmiechen (1984) . Time, 15 April 1966, p.41 12. Murphy (1992)
. Sladen (1995) . Ackroyd (2001), p.760 13. Geraghty, in Murphy (ed.), (2001)
. De la Haye (1996) . ‘The Plug-In city’, Sunday Times, 14, Walker (1974)
. See Fogg (2003) 20 September 1964, p.33 15, Church Gibson and Hill in Murphy
. See Amin and Thrift (2002), . Jackson (1998), pp.198-202 (ed.), (2001)
Appadurai (1990) and Gilbert (2000) . Text accompanying Archigram, ‘Instant 16, Miller (1999)
for useful discussions of urban City’ exhibition panel, 1969 (Prints 17. Marwick (1998)
formations in relation to fashion culture. circ 472-1972) 18. Green (1999)
. Rycroft (2002) . ‘The Plug-In city’, Sunday Times, 20 19. The UK Cosmopolitan was launched in
. See Cohn (1971) and Cole (2000) for September 1964, p.29 1972, edited by Joyce Hopkirk and later
the relationship between gay subcultures . Drapers’ Record, 3 December 1966, p.7 by Deirdre McSharry, both from the Sun.
and the development of Carnaby Street. . Kenneth Browne, ‘A Latin Quarter for 20. Thatcher quoted in Levinhas (1988),
. O'Neill (2000), pp.487-506 London’, Architectural Review, (March p.55
. Gorman (2001) and Osgerby (1998) 1964), p.193 21. Tebbit quoted in Jenkins (1987), p.326
both discuss the links between _ Ibid., pp.196-7
subcultural dressing and new forms OUT OF LONDON
of retail in interesting ways. ‘| THINK THEY’RE ALL MAD’: SHOPPING 1. Sandi Stewart, ninth-grade American
18. Time, 15 April 1966, p.42 IN SWINGING LONDON Beatles fan interviewed in 1966 in Davis
. Time, 15 April 1966 (1985), p.265
KALEIDOSCOPE: FASHION IN . Aitken (1967), p.18 Gorman (2001), p.36
SIXTIES LONDON . Bultitude (1966), p.vii Chenoune (1993), p.276
The designers pictured on p.23 are: . Winship (2000) The Outfitter, 11 January 1964, p.7
Mary Quant; Alexander Plunket Greene; Vogue, January 1950 See Green (1998)
Marion Foale; Kiki Byrne; James Wedge; . Glynn, The Times, 23 September 1966 Breward (2003), p.87
Sally Tuffin; Gerald McCann; Jean . ‘The London Way’, Vogue, February Mendes and de la Haye (1999), p. 169
Elizabeth Muir; David Sassoon and 1950, p.77 . Lobenthal (1990), pp.100-01
Kenneth Sweet. . Drapers’ Record, 18 October 1958, p.1 . Chenoune (1993), p.268
. Quant (1966), p.74 . ‘The Teenage Thing’, Vogue, . lbid., p.271
. For further details on couture December 1959 . Lobenthal (1990), pp. 78-9
dressmaking in London see Edwina . Morgan, New Statesman, 26 RWOCONOM
N= . Green (1997), p.120
Ehrman (2004), Edwina Ehrman (2002), November 1965 o>)~ Quant (1966), p.73
Amy de la Haye (2002), Marion Hume . Baker, Nova, September 1969 os . Colin Woodhead of Austin Reed, quoted
(1996) and Lou Taylor (1996). . Quant (1966), pp.43—-4 in Gorman (2001), p.60
. Hulanicki (1983), p.62 _ Ayton (2005) 15. Sunday Times Magazine, 27 March
. Queen,
WwW 2 February 1960 . Quant (1966), p.46 1966
. See Christopher Breward (2003), . See for instance, Cossack vodka 16. Fairley (1969), p.45
pp.190-213, Paul Gorman (2001) and advertisement, Sunday Times Magazine, 17. Wynn-Jones (1966), pp.22-7
Ted Polhemus (1994). 15 November 1964. 18. John Stephen papers, press cuttings
. See Paul Gorman (2001) and Hebdige . See Christopher Breward’s analysis Victoria and Albert Museum, Archive of
(1988), pp.109-12. of the ‘dolly bird’ (2004), pp.151-76, Art and Design, AAD/1998/5
. Quant (1966), pp.76-7 and Pamela Church Gibson's chapter 19. Hulanicki (1983), pp.71-3
. Barnes (1979), p.10 in this book. 20. Fogg (2003), p.141
. Johnson (1967), p.50 . O'Neill (2000) 21. Drapers’ Record, 30 September 1967,
- Quant (1966), p.35 . ‘Lynda Lee-Potter meets Mr. Carnaby p.l4
. See Janey Ironside (1962, 1963 and and his £1000 teeth’, Daily Mail,
1973). c.August 1968 ‘GOODBYE BABY AND AMEN’: A POST-
. See Sylvia Ayton (2005), pp.117-27, for . Aitken (1967), p.30 SCRIPT FOR THE SWINGING SIXTIES
an account of training at the RCA and . lbid., pp.18-19 1. Bailey and Evans (1969), p.237
working as a designer in the 1960s. . Lawson (1997), p.33 2. Ibid., p.10
. Vogue, 15 October 1966, pp.124-29 . Brittain, Investors Chronicle, 28 3. The title ‘Swingeing London’ would also
. See Lobenthal (1990) and Pierre Cardin January 1966 be used by the pop artist Richard
exhibition catalogue (1990). . Morgan, New Statesman, 26 Hamilton for his collage of 1968
ey Rowbotham ( 2000), pp.119-20 November 1965 commemorating the famous Rolling
16. The example given, a Mary Quant . Baynes, Design, August 1966, no.212 Stones’ drugs trial.
Ginger Group dress, similar to plate . Hughes-Stanton, Design, February 4. Booker (1969) p.308, and Levin (1970)
2, is illustrated in Vogue, September 1968, no.280 pp. 186-7
1967, p.106. | am grateful to Lynda . Drapers’ Record, passim . Donnelly (2005), p.195
Hillyer for first-hand information about . Glynn, The Times, 6 June 1967 . lbid., pp. 196-7
being a consumer of fashion in London . Flack, c.1989 (Courtesy Harrods . For academic considerations of the
NO
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Archive) cultural and economic impact of the
17. Pringle (1988), pp.37-8. See also Tyne . Black, Financial Times, 9 June 1966 Sixties, see Cairncross (1992) and
and Wear Museums (1993) and Turner . Glasgow Herald, 1 March 1966 Moore-Gilbert and Seed (1992).
(2004). . Fraser, New Yorker, 18 February 1974 . Gorman (2001), p.142
18. See Watt (2003). . Ibid. sO
co Porter (1994), p.363
ee Bennett-England (1967), p.92 . Turner (2004), p.80
20. Vogue, May 1964, p.122 . The store was successfully evacuated,
although damage was done to the
basement.
. Drapers’ Record, 8 May 1971, p.5

124 Swinging Sixties

itr cnc CK Mec e 225206 e eRe eereassesserccseedssseersosssc
sescusveerceseceeesssobooeuece
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fe66:00 0161616 6 16'6.0 6101010101010 010101010 016.616 601610 6101000 0.0 010 01010 016 © 0:0 :6.010'0:6)6

INDEX
Adam (shop) 65 Carter, Ernestine 40 Granny Takes a Trip 66, 69, 78
An Aid to Pedestrian Movement 46, 46 Cathy Come Home 96 Green, Bill 65
Alfie 8 Cecil Gee 102 Gurley Brown, Helen 97
Ambassador 57 Centre Point 45, 48 Guy’s and Doll’s 20
Amies, Hardy 22 Chaillet, Catherine 57
Angry Brigade, ‘Communiqué 8’ 74 Chanel, Coco 40 Hamilton, Richard 15
Annabel’s 20 Charles, Caroline 29 Harper's Bazaar 26
Annacat 66, 66 Chelsea Girl 111 Harrison, George 91
Antonioni, Michelangelo 52, 95 Christie, Julie 94, 95 Harrods 62
Apple boutique 78 Christie’s 16 Way In 73, 78
Archigram 51-2, 51 Clapton, Eric 92 Hartnell, Norman 22
Architectural Review 52,55 Clark, Ossie 14-15, 34, 34, 52, 62, 65, Haywood, Doug 20
Armstrong-Jones, Antony 87 66, 88, 92,95 Hemmings, David 95
Asher, Jane 88, 100 Clobber 66, 78, 92 Hendrix, Jimi 94
Aspinall, Jack 20 Clore, Charles 73 Heron, Ron, Instant City 51, 52
Austin Reed 69, 70 Cook, Peter (architect) 51 Hills, Gillian 52
The Avengers 30, 95 Cook, Peter (comedian) 91 His Clothes 25, 26, 65
Ayton, Sylvia 30, 62 ‘Cool Britannia’ 123 Honey 61, 80-3, 95
Corbetta, Gigi 112 Hornby, Charley 38
Bailey, David 20, 85, 87, 95, 100 Cosmopolitan 97 Hornby, Helen 81
and Evans, Peter, Goodbye Baby and Countdown 66, 70, 78 Horrockses 22, 24
Amen: A Saraband for the Sixties 120, 123 Courréges, André 31 Hulanicki, Barbara 22, 31-4, 34, 55,
Baker, Caroline 97 Space Age collection 88, 89, 106 62, 65, 66, 68, 74, 79
Banks, Jeff 66, 92 Courtenay, Tom 95 Hung On You 16, 66, 67, 77,79
Bara, Theda 97 Covent Garden 45, 52, 55
Barnes, Richard 25-6 Cowan, John 57 Incorporated Society of London Fashion
Barok 78 Creed, Charles 59 Designers 15
Bates, John 14, 30, 31,95 Cressy, Simon 109 Independent Group 15
Baynes, Kate and Ken 69-70 Crisis (charity) 96 Ironside, Janey 29
Bazaar 15, 26-9, 26, 31, 61, 62, 63, Cue 69 | Was Lord Kitchener's Valet 70, 71
69,78 Curtis, Tony 69
Beardsley, Aubrey 31 Jaeger 22, 73
Beatle jackets 94, 102-5 Darling 95 Jagger, Bianca 34
The Beatles 38, 78, 91, 94, 100, 102-5, Denny, Robyn 70-3 Jagger, Mick 20,94, 95
HO}, Wiltsy, WPS} Denza, Vanessa 70 The Jam 121
Beaton, Sir Cecil 917, 100 Derry and Toms 74, 75 Jane and Jane 29
Beatty, Warren 21, 93 Design 69, 69 Jean Varon 30
Bender, Lee 66 de Villeneuve, Justin (Nigel Davies) 75, John Michael 78, 102
Best, George 118 88-9] Johnson, Lloyd 121
Beyond the Fringe 91 D. H. Evans 73 Jones, Brian 94
BibculopoleAnoZ OO mO2 OONOO 74> Dickinson, Geoffrey 8, 9, 12 Joseph, Leonard 109
74,75, 78, 78,79, 114 Digby Morton 44 Jump Ahead boutique 52
Billy Liar 95, 117 Dior, Christian 40 Just Looking 66
Birdcage 117 ‘New Look’ 110
Birkin, Jane 52 Dispo, paper dresses 53 Kaleidoscope 93, 95
Birtwell, Celia 34, 34, 52, 88, 89, 100 Domus magazine 12 Kensit, Patsy 123
Blackburn, Tony 94 Donnelly, Mark 121 Kingsford, Sue 20
ack, Cilla 92 Donovan, Terence 87, 100 King’s Road 16, 20, 26, 31,51, 61,
ack Dwarf 97 Drapers’ Record 52, 117 66, 69, 95
ackman, Honor 95 Drew, Diana 109 ‘Kinky Boots’ 95
ades 36, 38, 66 Duffy, Brian 87, 100 The Knack 95
ake, Peter 94
DBwWwWw®D Dylan, Bob 74 Knightsbridge 58
‘Blow-Out City’ 52 Kray brothers 95
Blow-Up 52, 95 Erik 40
Bond Street 45, 58 ‘Layla’ 92
Booker, Christopher 12 Faithfull, Marianne 92, 94 Lennon, John 12
The Neophiliacs 51,56, 120 Farleigh, John 46 Leonard 88-91
Booth, Pat 66 Fashion House Group of London 112 Levin, Bernard 120
Bootique 76 Finney, Albert 95 Liberty 29, 30
Boshier, Derek 78 Fish, Michael 38 London Museum 40
Bourne & Hollingsworth 61 Fitz Simon, John 31 Lord John 26, 26, 73
Bowyer, Jackie 41 Foale, Marion, and Tuffin, Sally 14, 16, Lulu 92
Boxer, Mark 80 SOFS2Z=3F 62/071 Sr / IRAP on 9D Lycett Green, Rupert 36, 38
Boyd, Patti 82, 91-2 Fonteyn, Margot 21
Boyfriend 62 Fordham, Pauline 20, 70 McCann, Gerald 29, 30, 30, 78, 117
Bradford, Rose 69 Forward Look 109 McCartney, Paul 91
Brando, Marlon 20 Fox, James 97 McConnell, John 78
Bravo 112 Franks, Lynne 84, 100 McDowell, Roddy 20
Browne, Kenneth 52-5 Fraser, Robert 20 McGowan, Cathy 20, 88, 92, 94, 100
Buchanan, Colin, Traffic in Towns 46 Fratini, Gina 29 McLaren, Malcolm 77, 79
Burtons 25 French, John 87, 100 McNair, Archie 26,61, 111
Bus Stop 66 Frye, Madeline 70 McSharry, Deirdre 91
Butterick 117 Fulham Road Clothes Shop 62 Macnee, Patrick 95
Byrne, Kiki 29 Male West One 65
Gallagher, Liam 123 The Man's Shop 65
Caine, Michael 20, 69, 94, 95 Gay News 97 Margaret, Princess 87
Cardin, Pierre 31, 34, 95, 102, 104,111 Georgy Girl 95 Melody Maker 114
‘Cosmos’ outfit 34, 35, 106, 106 Gernreich, Rudi 88, 100, 109 Men in Vogue 97
The Caretakers 118 Ginger Group 31, 40, 60, 61, 82 Millings, Dougie 102, 104
Carnaby Street 16-20, 17, 25, 26, 31, Glass and Black 29 minet style 109
46,51, 55, 62, 62, 65, 66, 69-74, 78, Glynn Smith, Juliet 73 miniskirt 40, 52, 88, 92, 106
CPE, MN, MS AIA A eA ee Gold, David 26 Mirandi, jerkin 67
Caron, Leslie 21 Gold, Warren 26, 73 Miss Selfridge 73, 111
Carter, Edward 48 Goldsmith's College of Art 26 Mlinaric, David 38

126 Swinging Sixties

PODBOIQDOSOOICOCOO GOO OD GO 0000 COCO COCO COCO OC OIOC OOO OCGOO COC COCCOOOOUCCOOCOCOCKOCCOOCO DOOR TE CBOE CAA ATeTene rine

Mods 25, 30, 65, 69, 84, 105, 112 Rainey, Michael 66, 79 Vince 19, 25, 65
Moffitt, Peggy 95, 100 Rampling, Charlotte 95 Vogue 31, 31, 31-3, 56, 56, 61, 73, 79,
Mondrian, Piet 106, 111, 1171 Ready Steady Go 92, 100 80, 91, 93, 100, 110
Moon, Sarah 100 Redgrave, Lynn 95
Mr Fish 37, 38 Red Mole 97 Walthamstow School of Art 30
Mr Freedom 77, 79 Rees-Mogg, William 84 Warhol, Andy 91
Muir, Jean 28, 29, 62 Regent Street 45, 46, 46, 73 Wedge, James 30, 32-3, 66
Murray, Moss 112 Renoma 109 Weiner, Marcus 117
Le Réve Restaurant 20 Westwood, Vivienne 77, 79
Nevill, Bernard 29 Revolver 94 Whitehorn, Katherine 84
New Musical Express 114 Rhodes, Zandra 62 Whitmore-Thomas 78
New Statesman 61, 69 Richards, Keith 94 The Who 8, 121
New Wave 121 Rigg, Diana 30, 95 Willats, Stephen 50
Nottingham 117 Rive Gauche 77 Wilson, Harold 8, 100, 123
Nova 62,97, 100, 101, 117 Roberts, Tommy 77 Woollands 30, 52, 69, 70
Rockers 84
O'Neill, Terry 94 Rolling Stones 82, 84, 94 York, Susannah 93, 95
Op Art 8, 78 Rome 118, 119 Young, Paul 109, 118
Ormsby Gore, Jane 20 Rowbotham, Sheila 31
Oxford Street 45, 45, 46, 58, 70 Royal College of Art 15, 29, 30, 34, 79
On Dy
Sagan, Frangoise 21
Palisades 70, 78 Saint Laurent, Yves 77, 106, 111, 1171
Pallenberg, Anita 94 Sassoon, Vidal 20, 40, 62, 76
Paraphernalia 109, 118 Savile Row 45, 69
Paris 105-6, 110, 112 Schiaparelli, Elsa 106
Parkin, Molly 97, 100 Schlesinger, John 117
Parkinson, Norman: Seifert, Richard 48
‘Beat the Beatniks’ 22-5, 25 Selfridges 73
London designers by the Thames 23 Sellars, Irvine 70
Paul, John 70 Shaw, Sandie 92, 92
Paul’s 65 Shelter 96
Peccinotti, Harri 100 Shepherd, Peter 29
Peel, John 94 Shrimpton, Jean 20, 31, 66, 85, 86, 87,
Penney, JC 40,118 88, 94
Performance 95 Simpson's 69, 73
Peter Jones 61 Sinclair, Anthony 93
Peter Robinson 73 6.5 Special 92
Petticoat 83-4,92,95, 100, 101 Smith, Caroline 38
Piccadilly 45 Smith, Paul 117
Piccadilly Circus 46, 46 Sottsass, Ettore 10-11, 12
Pipard, Gerard 30 Southern, Terry 21
‘Plug-In City’ 52 Spare Rib 97
Plunket Greene, Alexander 26, 30, 61,111 Springfield, Dusty 92
Poiret, Paul 106 Stamp, Terence 20, 66, 69, 94, 94, 95
Polanski, Roman 69 Stephen, John 19, 25-6, 48, 61-5, 62, 69,
Pollard, Eve 84 WO), Ws, They, WA, WAS, Wiz, WIS WS) P20)
Pollock, Alice 34, 62 Stern Bros 118, 119
Polly Peck 22 Stevens, Jocelyn 80, 98
Pontings 73, 73 Street-Porter, Janet 84, 100
Pop Art 78 Streisand, Barbra 21
Pope, Alexander 84 Susan Small 22
Popper, Harry B. 30 Sweet Charity 110
Porter, Roy 123
Porter, Thea 38, 39 Tebbit, Norman 99
Portobello Club 20 Teddy Boys 25
Portobello Road 69 Thatcher, Margaret 99
Private Eye 91 That Was The Week That Was 91
PVC 51 Time magazine 51, 58, 70
cover 8,9, 14-15
Quadrophenia 121 ‘Swinging City’ issue 8, 12, 20-1, 84, 96,
Quant, Mary 14-15, 22, 25, 26-9, 30, 1O2 OS y2-47 ZOnI23
Bil, Sey, AWE, ZO) A
ey, Sey, By, Cll os), VA0), Top Gear boutique 66, 66, 78
TOP NOOMLOD I NO202,) 117, 18.9, Top Gear Motique 117
120, 123 topless dresses and swimsuits 88, 100
Alice dress 82 Top of the Pops 92
ankle boots 4] Top Shop 73, 73
bodystocking and pantie girdle 40 Traeger, Ronald 90
dress 60 Trecamp 65
dresses 91 Triunfo 112,114
pinafore dresses 13, 14, 27, 48, 49 Turnbull and Asser 38
raincoat 4] Tushingham, Rita 95
‘Wet Collection’ 40, 51 21 Shop 30, 52, 69, 70
wool jersey dress 22 Twiggy (Lesley Hornby) 66, 73, 75, 81,
‘Youthlines’ range 40 88-91, 90, 91
Queen magazine 22, 38, 56, 57, 80,
100, 101 Ungaro, Emanuel 106
‘Swingeing London’ 98, 120, 121 Unger, Hans, Brave New London 43
Quorum 34, 62, 69 United States 102-5, 106-9, 111, 118
Utility scheme 15
Rabanne, Paco 106, 106
Radio Caroline 94 Vanity Fair 123
Radio One 94 Verushka 95
Radziwill, Princess Lee 109 Vietnam War 97

Index
etl bees i
‘fe