Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly Boutique - 1969

December 23, 2016, 10:15 am

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Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly, the sheffield fashion boutique launched in 1967 by local business entrepreneur Roger Howe, has been a source of intrigue to me for quite a while. He was inspired to name the shop after one of Marc Bolan's lyrics from 'Desdemona' the John's Children single which had been released earlier that same year (and then subsequently banned because of it by the BBC, as they considered it to be too controversial). I first came across the boutique in 2009, when I picked up a copy of the excellent King Mojo and Beyond book about the Pop Art scene which sprang up around the legendary Sheffield live music venue. There on page 39, amongst the club posters, membership cards and murals, were three small images which included an advertisement for the shop and a couple of photographs of Sue Barfield, one of the artists who had painted the facade and designed the interior while also working as head sales assistant. I've always been curious to know a bit more about it, but apart from one other fantastic photograph taken by JR. James in december 1967, I hadn't managed to find anything else until quite recently. Sometimes these things tend to unravel at their own pace and purely by chance, it eventually arrived via a weekly boutique feature written for Jackie Magazine in 1969 called Around the Boutiques with Sam. It gives a little bit of information about the owner and the back story of how he launched the shop, plus a really great description of the interior and the type of gear that they sold, which you can read all about for yourself in the original article below.

All because John Lennon made a slip of the tongue

Question: What have a cut-price bathroom suite showroom and way-out boutique got in common??! The answer is —tah-rah—a very trendy, go-ahead young man by the name of Roger Howe, who owns both. His main interest, though, is in the boutique at 157 Norfolk Street, Sheffield, called ''Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly.''''Ooo!'' I hear you gasp. ''How Suggestive!!'' But keep your hair-piece on. It was all due to a boob made by John Lennon when, in a show, he introduced the song ''Desdemona'' as ''Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly.'' which is a line in the song. That decided Roger to call his boutique the same. What has all this got to do with cut-price baths, then?? Nothing.

A man of many interests is Roger, so he opened the bath business last year as a prosperous sideline. Although he is racing off to London, buying stock for the boutique every week, he still manages to run both enterprises successfully. AND, apart from all that Roger plans to turn the back half of the ''Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly'' into an antique shop. About two years ago, several young ladies were almost arrested for parading around Sheffield's main streets wearing kinky Quorum see-through blouses! VERY DARING!! But it was only a brilliant opening-day publicity stunt, contrived by Roger. With the result, he succeeded in getting the recognition he set out to achieve for the boutique, by his shock tactics! Clever!

There is a sort of Victorian air in ''Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly'' although the music which constantly blows your mind, I'm sure would not amuse Queen Victoria!! The interior of the boutique was creatively designed by head assistant, Sue Barfield, who should know what she's about, after doing a three year design course at Sheffield College of Art. One wall is completely white with a gigantic psychedelic flower decoration. The two deep red walls add to the mysterious atmosphere created by the striking blue tinted window, which takes up the entire front of the shop. The clothes hang on red rails attached to chains suspended from the tiled mirror ceiling.

Everywhere you look there are relics of Victoriana times. A super, huge antique cash register, old but now brightly painted chairs, the same with a chest of drawers and painted-up curly coat stand which some of the most fantastic gear is draped over. The communal changing room is divided at one end by a heavy wine velvet curtain hanging from large white rings on a low, white pole. Old reproductions decorate the deep blue walls along with 1930 pin-up type notelets which sells for a shilling each. Although this is the colour scheme now, it may change tomorrow because every time Roger returns from London he not only brings back new clothes but also lots of groovy ideas for interior design, which Sue soon puts into action! ''Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly'' is definitely THE place for Sheffield's turned-on dollies stocking such excellent makes as Ossie Clark, Alice Pollock, Early Bird and Consortium.

The illustrated trouser suit by Ossie Clark is black crepe with scarlet silk edging and costs £10 10s. A bit pricey perhaps, but so outstanding it's really worth it. The jacket is fitted, giving a very slimming effect and the trousers flare out gently with an edge split from the knee down. Also featured is a gorgeous dolly dress in flame satin by Early Bird with black velvet bands round the gathered cuffs and neck and round the hemline. A bit more economical, this at £5 5s. Other good buys are Ossie Clark blouses for £3 15s which look really soopah teamed with a shocking pink velvet tunic suit by Early Bird £6 19s 6d. Dresses range from as little as £3 to £7 and trousers at roughly £5 5s.

The black crepe trouser suit illustrated above is featured in this episode of the German TV series Der Kommissar, it's modelled by Pattie Boyd at approximately 1:50 into the clip, along with several other Ossie Clark designs throughout, which are again modelled by Pattie and some more well known models of the era, including Amanda Lear and Kari-ann Muller.

The Fashion boutique Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly, Norfolk Street, December 1967, Image titled "Sheffield Graphics" by JR James, courtesy of The JR. James Archive.

Sue Barfield at the entrance to Lift Up Your Skirt and Fly on Norfolk Street, Sheffield.

Another photograph of Sue Barfield inside the boutique.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from the following publications except where stated *otherwise (1.) Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly (poster advertisement) from King Mojo and Beyond by Peter J. Stringfellow, Dave Manvell and Paul Norton. (2.) Ossie Clark & Early Bird illustration from Jackie Magazine issue No.226 April 1969 for an original article by Sam (artist uncredited), (3.) The facade of the Fashion boutique Lift Up Your Skirt And Fly, Norfolk Street, December 1967, Image titled "Sheffield Graphics" by JR James, *courtesy of The JR. James Archive, (4. & 5.) Sue Barfield at Lift Up Your Skirt and Fly on Norfolk Street, Sheffield, from King Mojo and Beyond by Peter J. Stringfellow, Dave Manvell and Paul Norton. Listen to 'Desdemona' by John's Children here, Discover more about Peter Stringfellow's King Mojo Club here, You'll find footage of an early interview with Alice Pollock & Ossie Clark at Quorum from 1966 here,, an example of another dress from Early Bird Boutique here, And finally, purchase the King Mojo book here, it's a really interesting read with incredible images, and all author royalties go to a very deserving charity.

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New York — Fashion's Golden City 1967

January 16, 2017, 2:24 pm

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Most other fashion industries of the world rely for solvency on the American store buyer: New York itself can import the best from Paris, London and Rome, and exacts the utmost in professionalism from her own fashion industry. The enormous demand in rich America has made New York the financial centre of world fashion, considers Cherry Twiss.

MINI-SKIRTED velvet doublet and orange hose photographed at the Electric Circus. Note: This particular photograph was the magazine cover shot for the seven page fashion report from New York contained within, but apart for the previous brief description which I found in the contents section, there was no other information. However, I'm pretty sure that it is the work of the designer Diana Dew, which was available from the boutique at the Electric Circus. I've uploaded an illustrated example of the dress from a print advert for the Electric Circus Store below, also from December 1967.

Muttonchop Dress in brown crepe and brown velvet by Diana Dew, available from the boutique at the Electric Circus, December 1967.

THE STRAIGHT SHIFT—another New York basic—is given a bosom-revealing top, by Rudi Gernreich, the originator of the topless swimsuit. A transparent caramel silk crepe bodice joins a lined wool skirt crepe skirt. Its lines are almost as pure as those of the suspension wires scanning the skyline of Brooklyn Bridge (Most shops ordered this dress with the bodice lined).

RUDI GERNREICH is so highly thought of that his clothes are donated to museums of modern art in the United States. This short silk apron dress, above, by him, the apron in a contrasting print, is supported by some of the ever-increasing youth of the Puerto Rican section of Harlem.

NEW YORK fashion is personified by the dazzling pink crepe dress above — dead simple and an obvious choice for the casually chic. It was designed by Leo Narducci, who specialises in the middle price range. It is coolly at home even in this no-women, no-whites atmosphere of a Harlem pool-room. The ''little dress'' is an American forte.

THE CONSPICUOUS EAST frames the long printed silk crepe shift above by Oscar de la Renta, the newest star in the New York design firmament. His design holds it's own with the ultra-violet lighting and psychedelic murals of the Electric Circus, New York's swingiest discotheque, in the East Village. The stimulants are drugs — the Circus is strictly non-alcoholic. The constantly changing colour films projected on ceilings and walls — stretched with jersey stockinette — and flickering strobe lighting give the illusion of being ''turned on''. Note: Although uncredited in the magazine, I believe this to be a photograph of the Electric Circus mural artist 'Louis Delsarte' alongside the model, surrounded by his work, on the stairway to the entrance of the club.

TUNIC AND SHORTS above, in wool, are by Oscar de la Renta, and typify the present classic's-can-swing trend of New York clothes. De la Renta's clothes are worn by the '''best dressed'' set, who like the Europeanised approach. These were photographed in the easy-going atmosphere of a Sunday game of boule in the Italian district.

MINI CULOTTES, above, by sportswear manufacturers like Ginori have invaded the American scene. Designed in brown twill, this whole outfit, from gaucho hat to the thigh boots, is clearly influenced by London. Only a confident pedestrian would take as background the intertwined overpasses of highways to and from Manhattan, the nerve centre of New York.

THE SHIRT DRESS, the New York classic stand-by, is softened and romanticised, above, by Donald Brooks in white organza strewn with organza tulips. The wind-blown look was caused by the arrival of of the half-hourly helicopter from John F. Kennedy Airport on the roof of the Pan American building, towering majestically over Park Avenue in the heart f New York. This service, scheduled to connect with Pan Am flights, speeds travel-worn passengers between airport and city centre in minutes.

AMERICANISED KIMONO, above, was designed by Chester Weinberg, whose clothes are an essential buy for hundreds of upper-income shoppers throughout the states. His reputation is based on his ability to create truly American designs out of ideas from all over the world. Doubly stating this dress's Americanisation is the blatantly Broadway atmosphere of the Fun City night-club, where scantily clad showgirls frug incessantly in large windows on the corner of Broadway and Times Square.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from The Daily Telegraph Magazine, December 8th 1967, from an original editorial by Cherry Twiss, all photographs by Horn/Griner. Hair throughout is by Marc Sinclair of New York, Jewellery by Ken Lane and Sant Angelo, Shoes by David Evans, Golo, Hebert Levine and I. Miller, Stockings by Bewitching, Make-up by Revlon, Gloves and scarves by Sant Angelo, model uncredited. You can view one of my previous posts which featured the Electric Circus as the backdrop to a fashion shoot here and you'll discover more about it's creator Jerry Brandt here, and also on The Bowery Boys: New York City History blog here, there are several posts about the club on the excellent ''It's All The Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago' blog as well as 'what can be retrieved from the Grateful Dead's weekend at the Electric Circus and an attempt to look at the club itself' here. Discover further information about 'Louis Delsarte' the artist who painted the murals inside the club and on the stairway featured in the photograph above on his website. Another iconic and long lost St Marks Place landmark in the form of the Limbo St Marks boutique "the East Village clothier of the 'tuned-in' generation." here, And finally, some rare psychedelic footage filmed inside the Electric Circus club here.

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Jess Down - English Boy Ltd Model & Artist - Jackie Magazine interview, 1969.

January 20, 2017, 10:44 am

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I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Jess Down, Artist and former English Boy Ltd model. It's not difficult to see why he was in such demand, he's very easy on the eyes, although he didn't seem to be too enamored with modelling as a profession in this interview from 1969....

Sam Meets The Goodlookers....

JESS DOWN is a male model. He also does interior decorating, painting, or anything else that interests. The day we met, he was planning to paint the walls at his office if there was nothing else to do. He is a tall, broad shouldered, serious young man with a pleasant, but rare, smile. Dressed in a red/brown suit, turquoise jumper and a hat because it was cold. He waved and said ''Hello'' to half the people that came in to the Kings Road coffee bar where we were sitting. In this area everyone knows him. This is where he works and relaxes and he lives nearby in the Cromwell road. Jess should have been a naval officer, he says. When he was 13, he went to a naval training school and then when he was 17, served six months on a training ship as midshipman. ''That was my father's idea, not mine so I bought myself out for £100 after six months.''

''After that I did lots of things. I worked in a shop, Smart Western, for eight weeks, in the store room checking things off. Then I got a job shifting scenery at the Palladium and from there I went to the Criterion. That sort of job is badly paid, so I became a waiter in a restaurant, where at least you get tips, and then I did anything that came up. I ended up in interior decorating and I still do a bit when I've got nothing else on. Then came modelling because I knew Mark Palmer who started the English Boy Model Agency, though it's been taken over by other people since then. Modelling is very unrewarding. You're just like a box of matches. Once you're struck that's it. It's all over. What I'd really like to do would be to have my own agency that dealt with re-touches and stylists. You can hire out an agency at £30 a day, but you've got to know enough art directors.''

He says that this is his aim, but Jess has no burning ambitions to be fulfilled. He doesn't plan the future and just likes to feel that he is doing something, and is associated with something that progresses. ''I don't want to be anything. I just occupy my time as best I know how. Whatever comes along, I take or I don't take, as the case may be. At the same time I keep up my living standards. It's not hard to pay the rent and the other things sort of accumulate. I've just spent quite a lot of money on sound equipment, but if you know the right way to go about it, you can always get a bargain.'' As he knows most of the people in his area, Jess manages to get discounts on clothes and even the speakers he bought for his gramophone came from someone who renovates equipment smashed by groups, so that was cheap, too.

Jess lives in a three-room flat in Cromwell road. ''I like girls who can take care of themselves.'' he says. ''Girls who work and have their own independence and know their own minds, is what I want. I'm not particularly interested in glamour. We don't go out much as friends drop in. I go to a concert now and then, and I paint anything that comes into my head. I don't work regularly, usually during the day, not at night. It's better to relax at night when everyone else is relaxing; sleeping during the day seems to disrupt your whole body and mind.''

Apart from earning enough money to live and buy the few things he needs, he feels he needs to enjoy life. Jess seems more interested in the mind that the material things. His philosophy is first of all to understand himself before he can effectively help others. ''It's no use rebelling against the world or going down to Grosvenor Square protesting against something unless you do your bit inside yourself.'' He feels the best way to improve is through example, both through following other people's and setting one yourself. He thinks example is the most powerful force. Jess also thinks that if everything you do and say is truthful, then nothing can harm you. ''You fall down on it again and again,'' he says, ''because there's no end to how you can improve.''

Our conversation ending on that philosophical note, I came to the conclusion that not much could be done to improve Jess, appearance-wise. Standing at the height of 6 feet 1½ inches, his chest measures 38 inches and his waist 30 inches. He describes his hair as ''light walnut'' and his eyes are a soft brown. While I floated from the cafe, he whispered intimately that he takes an 8 ½ inch shoe. Help!

Jess Down interview - Jackie Magazine, February 1969.

'English Manhood 1967' - One of the publicity shots for the launch campaign of the English Boy Model Agency, founded by Sir Mark Palmer along with his partners Kevin Webb and Trisha Locke, who ran the business from premises which were located above Quorum Boutique. The agency's main aim was to offer a new kind of of male model - younger, slimmer, far more beautiful, dandified versions of what had gone before, who were in tune with what was happening on the street, and to raise the profile of the male model until it was on par with that of their female counterparts. Several well known faces about town as well as The Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones, his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Christine Keeler, were also on the books. Jess Down is at the very back of the group shot above, on the right. Photograph: Ray Rathbone.

Sir Mark Palmer, founder of the English Boy Model Agency, photographed in 1965 by Ron Traeger.

Left to Right: Jess Down, Rufus Potts-Dawson, Nigel Waymouth of Granny Takes a Trip and Amanda Lear. Photograph by Colin Jones, 1967.

Another outtake from the previous 1967 fashion shoot above, Jess Down on the right this time. Photograph by Colin Jones.

Interview with Jess Down for The Sunday Times Magazine.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from the following publications, (1. & 2.) Jess Down interview - Jackie Magazine issue N0.268 February 22nd 1969, original interview by Sam, (Photographer uncredited), (3.) English Boy Ltd publicity photograph by Ray Rathbone 1967 - The Day of the Peacock Style for Men 1963-1973 by Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, (4.) Sir Mark Palmer by Ron Trager - The Day of the Peacock Style for Men 1963-1973 by Geoffrey Aquilina Ross, (5.) Photograph by Colin Jones 1967 - Boutique a 60s cultural phenomenon by Marnie Fogg, (6.) Photograph by Colin Jones 1967 - Sixties Source Book: a visual reference to the style of a decade by Nigel Cawthorne, Except (7.) Jess Down interview for The Sunday Times Magazine Supplement courtesy of the artist's website, You'll find some film footage of Jess modelling for Mark Palmer's English Boy Agency at approximately 45 seconds into this clip from the BBC documentary The Perfect Suit and again at around 3:50 here, View some of my previous posts featuring Nigel Waymouth and Amanda Lear here& also here respectively. Further information about Sir Mark Palmer here, And finally, the begrudging comments about the long haired English Boy Agency models in the previous documentary clip brought this track from The Barbarians to mind.

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La garde robe Dacron 70

January 25, 2017, 3:04 pm

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A really nice peasant/folkwear inspired collection by Dacron, which was available for a mere 40F in 1970 through Prisunic, the chain of French department stores, famed for it's low cost products. It also got me thinking about some of my other favourite Dacron Polyester adverts from around the same period, particularly the commercials made for television and cinema viewers which were narrated by Ken Nordine, the American voiceover and recording artist best known for his series of Word Jazz albums. If you haven't seen them or heard of him yet, you're in for a treat on both counts via the two examples that I have included in this post. Lots more links to further information about Ken, as well as the Prisunic chain stores at the end of the page too!

The Stranger - a 1971 Levi's commercial, narrated by Ken Nordine.

Yet another, animated psychedelic gem from Levi's, narrated by Ken Nordine. Check out the 'Dacron Polyester'whisper at approximately 0:26 seconds into the commercial.

IMAGE CREDIT & LINKS
Image scanned from Elle Magazine 23rd February 1970 with thanks to Brad Jones, Photographer uncredited. Further information about the Prisunic retail outlets here, Discover more about the heritage of DuPont (manufacturers of Dacron) established in 1802 by E.I. du Pont here. Further reading about the rise and rise of manmade fibre in the excellent 'Nylon - The Manmade Fashion Revolution' by Susannah Handley, published by Bloombury Books in 1999 here. Visit Ken Nordine's Word Jazz Website here. View The Eye is Never Filled, the 90 minute film directed by Ken Nordine (2005), which sets a compilation of his "Word Jazz" performances to abstract images here. Stare With Your Ears - part 1 of a short documentary profiling the 'spoken word' of Ken Nordine here. And finally, some words of encouragement in these troubled times, I Want You to Know ...''You're Getting Better'' - Ken Nordine here.

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Breakaway to Ski - Simpson of Piccadilly 1969

February 7, 2017, 1:19 pm

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A 1969 advertising feature for Simpson's of Piccadilly, to show their take on how ski-ing had turned from a mere sport into a 'bold new slant on the high life'. Simpson's department store, established by Alexander Simpson in 1936, was originally intended to serve as a flagship for the S. Simpson menswear brand, but a year after opening they designated the fourth floor of the incredible Joseph Emberton designed building to womenswear. It was also the inspiration behind the television sitcom ''Are You Being Served?'' which was co-written by Jeremy Lloyd, who had worked there for a brief period in the 1950s before pursuing a career as a scriptwriter and actor. More images and further information available via the links at the end of the post.

Breakaway to Ski
The Palace Hotel is the grandiose temple of the St. Moritz scene and Simpson's the centre of fashion for the devotee. Unquestionably. At the Palace Bar or the Kings Club, the international ski world emphasises the strong accent on the après. And listening to the cabaret, Aznavour or Francoise Hardy, perhaps, the snow outside seems a long way away. Until morning.

ABOVE: Après ski-coat: Black Acrylic fur with elasticised Polyamide waist, £60, from Simpson's of Piccadilly, London W.1. Accessories: All ski accessories, including skis, boots and goggles, to be found at Simpson's Breakaway shop.

His anorak: Burgundy, white trim 'wet-look' nylon; £23. Also Black/white. Her tunic: White Acrylic fur with red Polyamide trimming; £26. All from the Breakaway shop at Simpson of Piccadilly, London W.1. Their cigarettes: 'St Moritz' the luxury light virginia cigarette with a touch of menthol.

RIGHT His dinner jacket: Black velvet; £28, His dress trousers: Black mohair and worsted; £13. Her dress and trousers: Silk satin snake print; £80 15s. His clothes from Trend. Her clothes from the Summer House, at Simpson of Piccadilly.

ABOVE His Shirt: Grey and brown abstract print wool; £10. Her shirt: Embroidered beige cotton; £7 10s. Her trousers: Linen and cotton brown crushed velvet; £20. His clothes from Trend. Her clothes from the Summer House, at Simpson of Piccadilly.

ABOVE: Her jump-suit: Black crepe rayon jersey; £47 5s. His clothes from Trend. Her clothes from the Summer house, at Simpson of Piccadilly.

IMAGE CREDIT & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from Queen Magazine 12th - 25th November 1969. Photographs by Vernon Stratton. All clothing from Simpson of Piccadilly. Discover more about the department store established by Alexander Simpson in 1936 here. Read about the heritage of Simpson's and visit the official Daks website here. Some fantastic images from Simpson's catalogues of the 1930s through to the 1970s on the excellent 'The Cutter and Tailorwebsite, and you can also view film footage of the interior via The Observer fashion show, which took place at the store in 1968 here (no sound included with the clip unfortunately!). You'll find further information about the architect Joseph Emberton on Mid Century: The definitive guide to Modern furniture, interiors and architecturehere. More about the wonderful Jeremy Lloydhere, and a clip from Smashing Time (1967), featuring Jeremy as music biz manager Jeremy Tove here. Are You Being Served? Season 1 Episode 4 His and Hers featuring Joanna Lumley, who was married to Jeremy Lloyd in the early 1970s, and it was in fact Joanna who had suggested to him that he should write about his previous experience in retail. One from the international ski world's playlist: Francoise Hardy - Song of Winter (1969) here. And finally, next time that you're in Piccadilly, you can visit the site of the original Simpson shop (now a Grade I listed building), which today serves as the flagship store for Waterstones.

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Return of the Dandy 1966

March 12, 2017, 4:06 pm

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Ruffles foaming over the shirt-fronts of dinner-jackets and lace spilling out of the sleeves, tight-fitting velvet pants, young men who will demand 20 sittings at a tailor to be sure that the length of the vent is just so, that the trouser leg moves an inch bell-wise at the bottom! There are tales about Beau Brummell and Oscar Wilde, interviews with David Mlinaric, Patrick Lichfield, Rupert Lycett-Green of Blades, musings on Pop Stars, Photographers, Hung On You, custom made shirts by the dozen, and much more. It's all here, in this excellent in-depth 6 page feature on dandyism, originally published in 1966.

RETURN OF THE DANDY
Ruffles foam over the shirt-fronts of the dinner-jackets and lace spills out of the sleeves. Velvet pantaloons, which would have raised eyebrows if seen on men three years ago, attract hardly a glance anymore. The jackets are increasingly waisted, flare sharply over the hips and are getting almost Edwardian in length. The trousers fit so tightly that the more extreme ones are hard to sit down in and look best only when the man in them is standing almost at attention. There has not been such elegance, style and boldness in men's clothes in London since Oscar Wilde. The new wave of English dandyism started, most people agree, about five years ago. Young David Mlinaric, a designer, and one of the best dressed young men in London, thinks pop music had a good deal to do with it. ''The pop singers have the panache of the movie stars in the thirties. The pop singers and designers and film stars dress adventurously - and the others have followed them. Also, people today are more interested in young people than ever before - and they copy what the young people do.''

Patrick Lichfield, another of the best dressed young English men, thinks that the adventurousness of people's occupations has a lot to do with their clothes. He himself is an Earl, but he's also a photographer. ''Many people,'' he points out, ''are still stuck in environments like the city where conservative dress is absolutely required. But these days film stars, pop singers, hairdressers, photographers have all become respectable people. People like us can dress as we like: we can experiment. If a duke wandered into a cocktail party without a tie, people would find it odd, but if a film star did it, he'd be accepted. Presently, the duke might even follow suit.''

The revolution in men's clothes has even deeper roots than that. All the great periods of dandyism have occurred in periods of revolutionary upheaval in the pecking order of society. The Regency dandies followed the Napoleonic wars, a period when the monarchy and aristocracy were despised and a new middle class was beginning to emerge. The French wave of dandyism (strictly an import from England) followed the Revolution of 1830, again with a great levelling of social barriers. The Edwardian dandies followed the industrial revolution when the money and power structure shifted from the landed aristocracy to the new industrial magnates. The new dandies of today are living in an age when the caste system in England is breaking down at both top and bottom.

Like Nicholas Hilliard's Elizabethan dandy, today's dandy, Dennis Stansfield (above), looks effective in a rural setting. Stansfield, a 20-year old commercial artist, designs his own clothes and has a tailor in Tooting. His sister-in-law makes his shirts.

The greatest of all dandies, Beau Brummell, was the most scornful of men. (''You can't call that thing a coat?'') He had no title, no fortune, no profession, not even a carriage; he had nothing but a superb arrogance and assurance and presence; with these weapons alone he was copied, quoted, much feared, greatly respected, and wielded very real power. When the Prince Regent (who became George IV) broke with him, he remarked disdainfully of the future monarch: ''I made him what he is today and I can unmake him.'' This Brummellian scorn and self-assurance is very much a part of the make-up of the young pop set. The young film stars, photographers, models, designers and pop singers don't give a damn what their fathers or you or I or anyone else think of their far-out clothes or their far-out behaviour. Albert Camus has called the dandy the archetype of the human being in revolt against society. Almost always the dandy is thumbing his nose at the rest of the pack. The great Beau himself, some of his admirers think, was in the privacy of his own heart, mocking the very dandyism for which he was admired.

Lichfield, when I talked to him, had just come out of his dark-room, dressed casually in a polo-necked sweater and corduroy trousers. Lichfield looks well turned out in even the most casual clothes. ''Some people dress with flair alone.'' he says. I think Mlinaric is the best dressed man I know. Some of his effects are sheer audacity. I saw him one night in evening suit with a marvellous ruffled shirt. I admired it and he told me he'd just pinned some ruffles on a plain white shirt. It looked great.'' Lichfield admits he spends ''a fortune'' on his clothes, and says that some of his suits are total failures. ''I wear them two or three times, then never again.'' We toured his wardrobe. Twenty-six suits. ''I like brown suits very much.'' Many of today's young dandies like brown. ''Tweeds for the country.'' He showed a grey wooly one. ''I like big buckles.'' He showed me one immense silver one on a black belt. ''I think these buckles are going to be very fashionable. I love suede coats.'' He has four of varying cut. ''For shooting...'' He brought out a pair of bottle-green corduroy breeches. ''I've ordered all my gamekeepers to wear these.''

He opened a drawer packed with sweaters. ''I have a lot of polo-necked jerseys, mostly green and beige. They cost me a fortune in cleaning because you can only wear them two or three times. Now here's my most precious possession...'' He pulled out a pair of worn, patched and splendidly faded Levis. ''If the house was burning down, this is what I'd rescue first. The rest of my clothes can be replaced but it takes years of wear to get that lovely patina. American trousers are the only things I buy ready-made.'' He has 50 shirts, most of them custom-made from Harvie & Hudson at £6 apiece. When a shirt catches his fancy, he may buy one and ship it to Hong Kong to be copied by the dozen in silk. He has about 50 ties, many of the patterned pastel type which is very with it at the moment, but he also likes severely plain black knitted ties. He takes very good care of his clothes and is exasperated by people who don't. ''I know people who throw clothes on the floor that have cost them a fortune.'' He has an electric trouser-press in his bedroom which presses his trousers while he's in the bath (the jacket hangs itself out as part of the gadget). ''I haven't had a suit pressed since I left the Army — but cleaning costs me a fortune.'' I don't understand people who dress simply to keep warm,'' says Lichfield. ''A man should enjoy his clothes. He dresses to attract the girls —unlike the girls, who dress to impress one another. I have an idea all men dress to be sexy like cock pheasants in the mating season. I always dress more carefully the first time I take a girl out than the second. English girls, I think, are more adventurous in their tastes than girls of other countries and they admire adventurously dressed men.''

Among the most adventurous is Mlinaric. Standing in the immense square drawing-room of his Tite Street house (another great dandy, Oscar Wilde, lived in this street, a block away), Mlinaric was wearing a brown (he too, likes brown) double-breasted jacket that buttoned almost to the neck, the lapels edged in black, with short sleeves in order to display the cuffs of the shirt. His suits, he said, were getting more brightly coloured. His latest, of which he expected much, was cinnamon-coloured. ''Clothes are my greatest extravagance,'' he says. ''I feel very strongly about the way clothes are stitched. I'm tremendously interested in the best materials as well as the cut. I think a great many of the Carnaby Street clothes are very badly put together and of poor material.''

Ted Dawson, male model, spends about £500 a year on clothes. His wardrobe includes 100 ties, 75 shirts, 30 suits, 14 jackets.

Above: The wonderful Michael Rainey 25, who designed all the clothes for his boutique Hung On You, discusses ties with journalist Christopher Gibbs. (extreme right).

How well dressed are today's young men in comparison with the great dandies of the past? Hardly within whistling distance, I think. Max Beerbohm, the last of the dandies, wrote of Beau Brummell: ''Is it not to his fine scorn of accessories that we trace the first aim of modern dandyism, the production of the supreme effort through means the least extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid perfection of lines, in the symmetry of the gloves with the hands, lay the secret of Mr Brummell's miracle. He ever was most economical, most scrupulous of means.'' None of today's dandies lives up to these uncompromising standards (nor did Beerbohm). Brummell himself would have nothing but freezing contempt for Carnaby Street.

The real dandies buy their suits at Blades in Dover Street. Eric Joy, the partner and chief designer, has a good deal of Brummellian scorn for most of the cutters and designers of Savile Row and thinks all mens clothes designed between 1914 and 1960 were a wasteland of mediocrity. ''Up to five years ago, masculinity was to be a good rugger player,'' he says scornfully. ''I thought it was about time we designed a collection that made men look like men, not bloody Daleks.'' He haunted the Victoria and Albert Museum for ideas. Many of the jackets are the modified descendants of military uniforms which are in fact the ancestors of many great English men's suits.'' Rupert Lycett Green, proprietor of Blades, a bit of a dandy himself (though he denies it), lists as a barely adequate wardrobe for a well-dressed man: two dinner jackets (silk for summer, worsted for winter), with perhaps a velvet evening suit to boot; one grey suit; one black suit; a couple of working suits, both comfortable and elegant; a country suit of lightweight tweed; two light summer suits; one travelling grey suit; one crushproof traveling suit for air travel and trains; three overcoats (one dark evening coat, one tweedy raglan type for country, one short for motoring or town wear); at least two sports or odd jackets; half a dozen assorted slacks or odd trousers; 50 shirts and 50 ties. Blades is opening its own shop in New York soon, but design there will be severely modified. The extreme dandyism quite acceptable in London still has strong homosexual implications in New York, and in fact everywhere else. London is years ahead of the rest of the world in having got rid of the homosexual overtones of dandyism. Most of today's English dandies are blatantly heterosexual.

Above: Rupert Lycett Green, proprietor of Blades where the best beaux are dressed, is opening a new shop in New York soon, but designs will be severely modified.

Historically, dandyism has had a homosexual tint only since its last flowering in the nineties, and you can blame Oscar Wilde for that. Most of the earlier dandies were conspicuously hetero — certainly the Regency rakes were. Brummell himself was thought to be glacially indifferent to women and sex and totally immersed in himself. The Victorian attitude toward dandies and dandyism was laid down originally by Thomas Carlyle in ''Sartor Resartus''. Before ''Sartor Resartus'', dandyism had been reasonably respectable, even admirable. However, Carlyle's Scottish puritanism so changed the emotional climate toward dandyism that Edward Bulwer Lytton eliminated whole passages of ''Pelham'', his very successful novel about a dandy. Ever since Carlyle's outburst, dandies have been considered figures of fun, and since Wilde's day, probably homosexual. Remnants of the Victorian disapproval are still with us. A recent article by John Morgan in the New Statesman dripped with scorn about the new wave of dandyism which he called ''tedious to the point of tears.''''I find it impossible,'' he wrote, ''to make any emphatic leap into the nature of young men who will demand 20 sittings at a tailor to be sure that the length of the vent is just so, that the trouser leg moves an inch bell-wise at the bottom.'' Morgan also states in his article '' No one suffers from elegance but from the prose it produces,'' stating clearly that any writing about dandyism is a bore. This simply isn't true. Dandies and dandyism have a long and honourable literary tradition, both as authors and as subjects of novels and plays, some good, some appalling, but almost all enormously popular. ''Pelham'' by Bulwer and ''Vivian Grey'' by Benjamin Disraeli (himself a great dandy) were enormously popular; both had dandies as heroes.

Dandyism was one of the principal preoccupations of Stendhal in ''The Red and The Black'', though his own attitude toward the dandies is contradictory. Balzac, who considered himself a dandy though no one else did. wrote ''La toilette est l'expression de la societé.'' His ''Comedie Humaine'' was full of dandies. Baudelaire was not only a dandy but also a philosopher of dandyism — ''La culte de soi-meme'', as he called it. The novels of Dickens and of Thackeray (who loathed dandies) are full of dandies and the cult of dandyism. Pinero's and Shaw's plays are larded with dandies, and Wilde's plays, of course, consist of nothing else. ''Dorian Gray'' was dandyism at its most decadent and it has helped immeasurably to give dandyism a bad name. Within the last three years, the winds of disapproval have begun to abate. There are temperamental similarities and at the same time great differences between today's dandies and the bucks of the Regency. Most important, the present crop are conspicuously doers of things, like film making, hairdressing or acting. They are notoriously energetic and ambitious. The Regency dandy —especially Brummell —considered any form of activity except clothes to be beneath them. Beau, again probably in pure mockery, considered even the forming of an opinion slightly wearisome. Once, when a visitor asked which of the English lakes he thought most beautiful, he called the servant in: ''Which of the lakes do I find most beautiful?'' Brummell's wit would be admired by some of the avant-garde film-makers. He was not a man of mot or epigram. A shrug, a lifted eyebrow, sometimes nothing but the memory of a known Brummellian attitude made their own silent but devastating witticisms. When you can be witty without words, why use them?

IMAGE CREDITS, LINKS & FURTHER READING

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from The Observer Magazine, May, 1966. All photographs by Colin Jones, original article by John Crosby.*Except for photo No.6 Rainey/Gibbs an outtake of the original which I scanned from Boutique: A '60s Cultural Phenomenon by Marnie Fogg (purely to include the extra hand-painted tie which had been edited out of the magazine version), View some more examples of 1960s dandyism in one of my previous posts here, examples of Blades tailoring and more here. You'll find a collection of Patrick Lichfield's 1960s photography work on Flickr. Read the transcript of a discussion about the future of the tailoring industry from a 1971 issue of The Tailor and Cutter, which includes some very sharp comments from the outspoken Eric Joy, partner/designer at Blades and Tommy Nutter here, Further reading about The Eccentric Mr. Brummell here and more via the associated links on Dandyism.Net, where you will also find Dandies and Dandies By Max Beerbohm, (1896). Discover more about Sartor Resartus (meaning 'The tailor re-tailored') the 1836 novel by Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in 1833–34 in Fraser's Magazine, and you can read the aforementioned Chapter X. The Dandiacal Body here and also Chapter XI. on Tailors, Check out Pelham; or, The adventures of a gentleman by Edward Bulwer-Lytton Watch The Picture of Dorian Gray, the 1945 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel for free and finally, Dandy, you're all right.

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The Swinging Revolution 1966

April 23, 2017, 3:57 pm

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This sartorial vision of a young Ossie Clark (centre), along with Niel Winterbottom (left), photographed in their finery against the incredible Antony Little fin de siecle style backdrop inside Hung On You on Cale St in 1966 by Terence Spencer for Life International, quite possibly makes this my personal favourite cover story by the magazine from the period! Inside, you'll find an eight page report on the continued rise and rise of the revolution in menswear emanating from London. And although some of the content had previously been used in an editorial which the magazine had published on the revolution in male clothes just two months earlier, I would still imagine that when this particular subscription arrived through their parents letter box over fifty years ago, that it merely succeeded in reinforcing the thoughts that many a teenage son already had about getting 'The Look' and heading to where the action was coming from!

LONDON EXPORTS ITS FASHION REVOLUTION

So Long Sad Sack
It all began with the teen-age ''mods'' (Life International, July 27, 1964) who spent most of their pocket money on flamboyant clothes. Now the frills and flowers are being adopted in other strata of Britain's society, and the male fashions born in London have joined the theater among the British exports that aren't lagging. The way-out styles already have appeared in such disparate metropolises as Paris and Chicago and may eventually change the whole raison d'être of male dress. Photographed by Terence Spencer, the sartorial sights of London and Paris shown on these pages—exemplify the clothes that threaten the staid ''sad sack'' which European and American males have considered de rigueur. The explanation? The new clothes, says John Taylor, editor of London's Tailor and Cutter,'' are based on the sexual excitement principle rather than on the respectability and security motif.''

LONDON

Peering through the art nouveau window of Biba's (designed by Antony Little), one of London's most popular boutiques, Model Richard Asman is investing in a common costume of the London Look—a checked version of British battle dress with Bob Dylan cap (unrumpled). Photograph by Terence Spencer.

PARIS

In Le Duke of Bedford pub (like British clothes, British pubs are ''in''), Actor Horst Buchholz is wearing a tight, white Rudy Valentino-style suit bought from the leading avant-garde male couturier of Paris, Pierre Cardin, who closely watches London's styles. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

CHICAGO

The garish London garb has crossed one ocean. American teen-agers, like the Chicago boys above, are shedding their blue jeans for checked pants, dazzling shirts—though now and then retaining local flavor with a cowboy hat. Photograph by Henry Grossman.

‛If You’re Not Way Out‚ You’re On Your Way Out’

The man who fomented London's male fashion revolution revolution is 29-year-old John Stephen, who five years ago opened a small shop on Carnaby Street. Since that time, he has opened eight more men's shops on that street, 14 others in the London area, and is $15 million richer. Stephen created the Carnaby Street Look which emphasizes, among other things, wide op-arty ties, turtle-neck sweaters and flowered shirts, boots and tight checked trousers. One secret of his success is the determination of London's young men to dress differently from their bowler-hatted elders. As one boy said in a boutique called Hung On You: ''If your clothes aren't way out, you're on the way out.''

In typical new-look attire, turtle-neck sweater and checked jacket, John Stephen lounges with customers on his purple and gold Cadillac parked outside one of his Carnaby Street shops. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Brandishing this summer's latest Carnaby Style (solid-color shirt, white collar and cuffs, op-art tie). Baron Nikolai Soloviev lunches with Jenny Philips in the Guys and Dolls coffee shop. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Michael Chaplin, son of comedian and the author of ''I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn,'' poses in 1920s garb at Granny Takes a Trip shop with (Nigel Waymouth) one of the owners. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

The Kinks, a popular rock 'n' roll group, created top hit song ''Dedicated Follower of Fashion'': He thinks he is a flower to be looked at...He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly.'' (*Dave Davies wearing an incredible pair of thigh-high leather boots!). Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Elegant Edwardian Attire of Chelsea's Aristocrats

London's fashion revolution is not all teen-agers and pop singers in op-arty ties and thigh high boots. A new aristocratic tailoring establishment such as Blades (below) is being influenced by the Carnaby Look, and Lord Snowdon and the Duke of Bedford wear styles of the way-out boutiques of Chelsea's King's Road as well as Carnaby Street. The Chelsea shops offer several elegant variations on the new attire such as a 1920s Silent Movie Look and an increasingly popular Edwardian Look like that flaunted by the two youths opposite, and by Christopher Gibbs. Says Gibbs, who is male fashion editor of Vogue and high priest of the Edwardian Look: ''We were revolted by the ugliness of suits of the regular 'good' tailor. We encouraged friends to dig into their heirlooms, to wear old clothes, to turn their backs on ugliness and conformism.''

Actor David Hemmings is being fitted in a Carnaby-like, flowery-lined jacket by Eric Joy, co-owner and top designer of Blades, a new London couturier that caters to the upper classes. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Three young london elegants take their lunch in a popular Victorian pub, the Salisbury. Michael Williams (left), who lives ''only for my car and my my clothes.'' wears a long, velvet-collared 19th Century jacket over patterned trousers. Ossie Clark (see cover) sports a wildly patterned tie, a revival from the '30s. Niel Winterbottom, dressed in battle jacket on the cover, wears a floral Oscar Wilde-an tie with oversized knot while his date, Julia Cooke, adds to the period flavor with a fur boa. Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Christopher Gibbs - Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Trinidad-born designer Christopher Lynch, (second from left) discusses the new ''Chelsea Look'' for this summer: The Victorian Suit, double-breasted, cinched, and above all, white.'' (*Although uncredited, on the far left, is Michael Fish of Mr Fish and on the far right David Mlinaric). Photograph by Terence Spencer.

Fashions Out of This World

France's rival to John Stephen is Pierre Cardin, who last year made $6 million on his ready-to-wear clothes alone. Cardin's line include everything from the tightly fitted suits (below left) that appeal to diplomats and businessmen to fashions that parallel the Carnaby Street and Chelsea themes - checked trousers with an Edwardian stripe down the side and long checked double-breasted jacket (below). Seeing the soft, accordion-pleated boots on the youth below, a journalist remarked that they made the wearer look like a spaceman. ''Yes,'' said Cardin, ''You might say they're out of this world.''

The male fashion revolution has also ''switched on'' parts of the U.S., as shown in the photographs opposite. By fall John Stephen's clothes wil be selling in 17 American stores. ''The English influence is the biggest thing in men's clothes since the Ivy League Look,'' said the vice president of a New York store. ''As long as it's from London or looks like it, it will sell.'' What do the English think of the revolution they've started? Some, like political commentator Henry Fairlie, suggest it's a sign that Albion is about to sink giggling into the sea and that the only hope is a Puritan revival. Others, like Julie Christie, think ''isn't it nice that men can look beautiful and smell nice nowadays without being called sissies!''

Photographs (left page) by Terence Spencer, (right page) Henry Grossman.

IMAGE CREDIT & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from LIFE International 11th July I966, Cover photograph by Terence Spencer, all other photographs by Terence Spencer and Henry Grossman (see individual photo credits above). You'll find further information about Antony Little & Biba in one of my previous posts here. A transcript of an industry discussion about the future of tailoring from a 1971 issue of The Tailor and Cutter which includes contributions from Eric Joy, designer and co-owner of Blades here. Discover more about antiques dealer and collector Christopher Gibbs here. David Hemmings, actor, director, and sometimes singer here. View some examples of the lesser known John Stephen womenswear range in one of my previous posts here. An interview with Julie Christie from the documentary film - 'Tonight let's all make love in London' (1967) here. And finally, an interview with Michael Chaplin, (son of Charlie) and author of I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn, here.

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The Spirit of the Age, Funky Chic, and The Street Fighters - Tom Wolfe 1976

October 6, 2017, 7:19 am

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Some really great illustrations and observations on style by Tom Wolfe from Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, published in 1976, although I believe most of them originally accompanied previous magazine articles which he had written for Esquire, New York Magazine, New West Magazine, Harper's, Rolling Stone, and The Critic, between 1967 and 1976.

The Spirit of the Age, Funky Chic, and The Street Fighters

The conventional wisdom is that fashion is some sort of storefront that one chooses, honestly or deceptively, to place between the outside world and his ''real self'.'' But there is a counter notion: namely, that every person's ''real self'', his psyche, his soul, is largely the product of fashion and other outside influences on his status. Such has been the suggestion of the stray figure here and there; the German sociologist Rene Konig, for example, or the Spanish biologist Jose M. R. Delgado. This is not a notion that is likely to get a very charitable reception just now, among scholars or readers generally - (Tom Wolfe).

Mother was wrong (apparently).

The Pimpmobile Pyramid-heel Platform Soul Prince Albert Got-to-get-over look of Dixwell Avenue. All the young aces and dudes are out there lollygagging around the front of the Monterey Club, wearing their two-tone patent Pyramids with the five-inch heels that swell out at the bottom to match the Pierre Chareau Art Deco plaid bell-bottom baggies they have on with the three-inch-deep elephant cuffs tapering upward toward the ''spray-can fit'' in the seat, as it is known, and the peg-top waistband with self-covered buttones and the beagle-collar pattern-on-pattern Walt Frazier shirt, all of it surmounted by the midi-length leather piece with the welted waist seam and the Prince Albert pockets and the black Pimpmobile hat with the four-inch turn-down brim and the six-inch pop-up crown with the golden-chain hatband...and all of them, every ace, every dude, out there just getting over in the baddest possible way, come to play and dressed to slay...so that somehow the sons of the slums have become the Brummels and Gentlemen of Leisure, the true fashion plates of the 1970s, and the sons of Eli dress like the working class of 1934...

In the grand salon (at the Arethusa/Club dell’Aretusa) only the waiters wear white shirts and black ties. The clientele sit there roaring and gurgling and flashing fireproof grins in a rout of leather jerkins, Hindu tunics, buckskin shirts, deerslayer boots, dueling shirts, bandannas knotted at the Adam's apple, love beads dangling to the belly, turtlenecks reaching up to meet the muttonchops at midjowl, Indian blouses worn thin and raggy to reveal jutting nipples and crimson aureolae underneath...The place looks like some grand luxe dining room on the Mediterranean unaccountably overrun by mob-scene scruffs from out of Northwest Passage, TheInformer, Gunga Din, and Bitter Rice. What I was gazing upon was in fact the full fashion splendor of London's jeunesse doree, which by 1969, of course, included everyone under the age of sixty-seven with a taste for the high life.

Funky Chic came skipping and screaming into the United States the following year in the form of such marvellous figures as the Debutante in Blue Jeans (1970). She was to found on the fashion pages of every city of any size country. There she is in the photograph...wearing her blue jeans and her blue work shirt, open to the sternum, with her long pre-Raphaelite hair parted on the top of the skull, uncoiffed but recently washed and blown dry with a Continental pro-style dryer (the word-of-mouth that year said the Continental gave her more ''body'').

Funky Chic - Butterfly T-shirts and continental baggies with elephant bell cuffs.

The lost coed Cunégonde

The Street Fighters

IMAGE CREDITS, LINKS & FURTHER READING
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine by Tom Wolfe, originally published by Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux in November 1976, (but this particular edition was published by Bantam Books in October of 1977). All illustrations by Tom Wolfe, all accompanying excerpts © Tom Wolfe. Discover more about Rene Konig author of The restless image : A sociology of fashion, and Cunégonde, from Voltaire's Candide, ou l'Optimisme. More about The Monterey Club 265–267 Dixwell Avenue here, and you can watch Unsung Heroes: The Music of Jazz in New Haven which includes further information about the club here. The 1970s trend for platform shoes. Angus McGill’s double-page feature in the Evening Standard asked - Are You One of the Beautiful People? Simple test: Can you get in to the Dell’Aretusa?. The Beatles, being 'beautiful people' at Club dell’Aretusa 107 Kings Rd to celebrate the launch of Apple Tailoring in 1968. And finally, some street fighting sounds.

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The Boutiques Business 1970

October 23, 2017, 8:15 am

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ORIGINALITY FOR SALE

Small boutiques with their slightly different clothes have been around for a long time. But the big business boutiques so characteristic of London today appeared only six years or so ago, revolutionising fashion here and throughout the world. Who were the innovators? Here we look at the five best-known boutiques, and also their owners.

Barbara Hulanicki, owner of Biba, photographed at her Kensington boutique by Duffy.

BIBA

254 Kensington High Street, W8.

Biba, probably the best known of all the boutiques, began business six years ago with a mail order offer of a gingham shift and scarf for 25s, because Barbara Hulanicki thought it was impossible to buy inexpensive well designed clothes and decided to do something about it. At the end of last year, in premises 16 times the size of the original boutique in Abingdon road. Biba opened as a store selling not only clothes but also accessories, make-up and home furnishings, Barbara Hulanicki's distinctive style is carried through all her designs, sold only at the store and by mail order catalogue. She works with her husband Stephen Fitzsimon.

1.Barbara Hulanicki in the store, where carpets and furnishings have all been designed with complementary colours and patterns. Child's dress, 6 gns; matching cap 2 gns; tights 10s 6d. Photograph by Duffy.

2. On the mezzanine floor. Crepe coat and trousers, 15 gns; colour matched straw hat 26s 6d; crepe shoes 5 gns; tights 14s 11d; cross pendant 29s 6d; tassels 7s 6d; Child's dress 8 gns; hat 22s 6d. Photograph by Duffy.

3. Mirrored on the staircase: a slim crepe dress, 9 gns; cloche hat 2 gns. Photograph by Duffy.

4. Printed Tricel dress, 9gns. Hair by Barbara Hulanicki. Photograph credited to Guy Cross.

QUORUM
113 King's Road, SW3
When Quorum opened in 1964, the clothes designed by Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock, who had studied at the Royal College of Art together, were considered outrageous. They were worn mainly by people in the film and pop worlds. Now customers fly in from all over the world. Ossie Clark's wife, Celia Birtwell completes Quorum. She designs the prints for the fabrics. Ossie Clark makes clothes in which women ''feel and look beautiful''. A year ago, Quorum expanded when Radley Gowns bought a large percentage of the business, opening a chrome-fronted boutique on the Kings Road. Ossie and Alice now design a certain number of clothes for Radley, and export to Germany and Italy.

1. Ossie Clark outside Quorum, 113 King's Road, SW3. The model wears a red and cream dress typical of his designs, 20 gns; wedge-heeled shoes 11 gns from Quorum. Photograph by Duffy.

(2.) Alice Pollock reflected in the mirrors of the dressing room. The model wears a Caftan style knitted dress and scarf designed by Alice, 15 gns. (3.) Long black and cream crepe dress designed by Alice Pollock, £20; Ankle-strap shoes 12 gns from main branches of Elliot; Hair by Leonard. Photographs by Duffy.

Some fantastic footage of the much talked about but rarely seen Quorum Boutique at 52 Radnor Walk, which includes an interview with Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark, it's from the CBC daytime series "Take 30" (October 1966) .

The actress Genevieve Waite entering a Chelsea boutique in a scene from Director/Writer Michael Sarne's 1968 film Joanna. After some further research, and also a direct word about it with Michael Sarne thanks to Sophia Satchell-Baeza, I believe it's quite possible that this could be 52 Radnor Walk, which was the location of Quorum.

A closer look at the painted facade of the boutique as it appeared in Joanna, 1968 (Directed and written by Michael Sarne). And No. 52 Radnor Walk, as it looks today with the central glass double doors removed, and the building converted back into a Chelsea residence .

BUS STOP
3 Kensington Church Street,W8
and branches at Croydon, Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow.
As a designer for a dress manufacturer, Lee Bender felt she was not always able to sell the clothes the public wanted, so she opened Bus Stop three years ago. With her own boutiques, Lee Bender feels it is possible to produce ''instant fashion'', and, relying on her instinctive knowledge of what is right at the time she produces designs which anticipate trends such as the current one for ''granny'' prints and the Forties look. Since she first opened Bus Stop, branches have opened in five areas and the business exports to the U.S. and Europe.

1. Lee Bender in the window of the Kensington boutique. The model wears a Tricel suit with peplum; jet beads 2 gns; Sandals 5 gns from Elliot. Photograph by Duffy.

2. An inside photograph of the boutique in Kensington. (3.) Among the old bar and shop signs that are part of the decor, cream knitted suit, £9 10S; tights 10s 11d; beaded choker 21s; Hair by Ivanna at Ricki Burns. Photographs by Duffy.

MARRIAN-McDONNEL
45 South Molton Street, W1 and 80 Sloane Avenue SW3

Typical Marrian-McDonnell is this cotton midi dress with matching sleeveless coat, 20 gns. (Dress 10½ gns; coat 9½ gns). Mock snakeskin shoes 8½ gns from Elliot. Photograph credited to Guy Cross.

4. Outside the dressing rooms, jersey jumpsuit, 13½, worn with zip-fronted snakeskin jacket, 45 gns. Patent leather lace-up shoes, 10 gns. at Kurt Geiger. Hair by David at MichaelJohn. Photograph by Duffy.

FOALE AND TUFFIN LTD

1 Marlborough Court W1

Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin spent three years designing clothes under their own label before opening the Foale and Tuffin boutique in 1965. Their designs, often based on history, are still sold to other stores and boutiques in Britain and they export to the U.S. and Europe as well. They design for a relaxed way of life and make clothes they or their friends could wear.

Top 1. Marion Foale (left) and Sally Tuffin in their boutique.Photographed by Duffy.

2. Chiffon blouse, £7, and three matching skirts, £7 each. Photograph by Duffy.

3. Printed cotton dress, £12 10s; Hair by Vidal Sassoon. Photograph by Duffy.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from The Daily Telegraph Magazine (Number 300) July 17th, 1970. Except *Biba Photograph No.2 On the mezzanine floor which is a higher quality outtake of the shoot than the one included in the magazine, I scanned this from The Biba Years 1963-1975 by Barbara Hulanicki and Martin Pel. All photographs by Duffy *except N0.4 Biba dress and *No.3 Marrian-McDonnel blue cotton midi-dress ensemble which are credited to Guy Cross. Original editorial content by Cherry Twiss. Screenshots of 52 Radnor Walk from Joanna (1968). Why not pay a visit to Barbara Hulanicki's website and Official Facebook Page to see what she's been up to lately. And you'll find Lee Bender's website and facebook page here. More about Duffy - the man who shot the sixties. Celia Birtwell on life with Ossie Clark, being friends with David Hockney, and a life in print. Ossie Clark; The King of the King's Road. Some of my previous posts about The British Boutique Boom 1965 (Part 1), and Part 2 here. And finally, "Transient Friends" by the capricious Geneviève Waïte from her 1973 album Romance is on the Rise, the video clip is comprised of footage from Joanna (1968).

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A Raver's Pop Guide round Britain 1966

November 2, 2017, 9:09 am

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A Raver's Pop Guide Round Britain, was published in May of 1966, just over a month after Time Magazine had proclaimed London as the city of the decade, devoting the cover and 13 pages of its April 15th Vol. 87 issue to all things 'Swinging London'...an expression which was initially used jokingly by one of the editors on Time, before becoming a working title for the forthcoming article. According to Andrea Adam's first-hand account in Jonathon Green's excellent Days in the Life 1961-1971, she says, although it was the working title..they never tried to push it as a concept, however, it caught on within the office, so much so, that eventually 'London: The Swinging City' was used on the cover story, which was heavily illustrated and produced in a Pop style collage by Geoffrey Dickinson. The intro to the feature, written by Piri Halasz, declared, among other things, that ''In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene. This spring, as never before in modern times, London is switched on. Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds (girls) and Beatles, buzzing with mini cars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement. The guards now change at Buckingham Palace to a Lennon and McCartney tune, and Prince Charles is firmly in the longhair set.'' - Great Britain: You Can Walk Across It On the Grass (30). Subsequently making it one of the most influential pieces written on the Swinging London phenomenon at the time. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A RAVER'S POP GUIDE ROUND BRITAIN
England swings! Not only in London, but all over the country fans are wide-awake to the latest raves in fashion and pop. Come for a RAVE-conducted tour as we show you what's happening pop-wise and fashion-wise in other RAVE people's worlds, as we pay a flying visit to RAVE centres Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Bristol.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from RAVE Magazine - May, 1966. View my previous posts about the far reaching influence of Cathy McGowan & Ready Steady Go throughout Britain, The Birdcage Boutique & the fashion scene in Nottingham, and the Sheffield boutique Lift Up Your Skirt and Fly. Let's not forget that Biba's Postal Boutique delivered the 'total look' through the letter box to those living outside London. Further information about the nightclub scene in Manchester in the 1960s & much more, on the excellent Manchester Beat website. The tale of a couple of 'young girls coming down from the North with their heart full of dreams' in Smashing Time (1967) - George Melly's satire on the phenomenon of Swinging London, Directed by Desmond Davis. Take a look at George Best's Manchester Boutique as featured in the opening scene of The Lover's (1973). And Discover Britain on film in the 1960s & 1970s via the BFI Website. A selection of programmes from the 2016 BBC regional documentary series about life in 1966. Living in '66: Suits, Boots and Northern Roots, Newcastle A Gogo, Pop, Pirates and Postmen. And finally, Hit The North with The Fall.

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Courrèges: Clothes of the Future 1965

November 5, 2017, 11:50 am

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CLOTHES OF THE FUTURE ARE HERE

Of all the couturiers now working in Paris, Courrèges is the one whose designs are really revolutionary. He questions some of the basic conventions of women's dress: Why should skirts go down to the knee? What's the use of jewellery? Why shouldn't fashion be functional? The clothes of Courrèges have been called ''Space Age'' clothes - but, as our pictures show, this doesn't mean bizarre pressure-suits and odd helmets, it means clothes for the Space Age: the age of action, freedom, and participation, of the woman who moves around. They are designed to simplify her life. The less important details may change from season to season, but Courrrèges remains faithful to his own fashion belief. Here photographer Hatami records Courrèges evolving the look of the seventies and the new excitements of this season's collection, while Joy Tagney tells what the 40 year old designer is like.

Cover Photograph by Hatami.

THE ENGINEER OF CLOTHES

In his short white jacket, André Courrèges looks like a very healthy doctor. With his athlete's build and addiction to rugby, he's a long way from the popular image of the willowy couturier. In more than appearance, Courrèges brings a breath of sturdy rural individualism into the hothouse world of the salons - he was born in the Basque country 40 years ago. ''I often drive to Pau, to see my family and friends who still live there. I like to slip out of Paris whenever I can, to see the green fields, the trees, the clear sky - I love nature.'' Indoors, he likes the theatre, cinema and Plato. But it's his admiration for the simplicity of the seventeenth-century Flemish painters, and for Le Corbusier and Kandinsky's geometrical abstractions, that tells most about him as a designer and a man.

For Courrèges, who likes to think of himself as an engineer of clothes, started life as an engineer of bridges and roads. ''I wanted to be a painter,'' he says, ''but my parents persuaded me to study civil engineering at the college in Pau. They thought it would be a steadier career. I enjoyed the drawing and designing, but I left before taking my exams. I knew I would never become an engineer.''''While still at college, I began designing men's suits for a local tailor, and also did a little shoe designing. In 1948 I came to Paris and spent eight months at a small fashion-house. But just designing wasn't enough. I wanted to learn the secrets of dress-making techniques for myself. A real couturier must be able to do everything.''''Then I discovered Balenciaga's work. It was a revelation, the perfect balance between technique and art. When the chance came to join his house, I jumped at it. I went into his workrooms at 25 like the youngest apprentice, knowing nothing about needles, scissors, sewing-machines. Eleven years later he made me his first assistant, and I took charge of his salon in Madrid. I admire him tremendously and like him very much.''

The Courrèges 1965 trouser suit has a jerkin with cut-away armholes, and hipster trousers with a looser leg than last year's. The goggles are slit to see through. Photograph by Hatami.

In 1961 Courrèges left Balenciaga to start his own fashion-house in the Avenue Kleber. The decor is almost entirely white - Courrèges's favourite colour - but the atmosphere, though dedicated, is far from clinical. Big gilt mirrors relieve the white walls; the white curtains are draped softly, and bobbled; vases of pink and white flowers stand on white carpets. His first collections were in the tradition of Balenciaga. Then in his fifth he showed a number of trouser suits, and became famous as the Trouser King. For Courrèges, trousers are not just a gimmick, but part of his fashion philosophy. ''I get my inspiration from simple, natural things. I don't like any form of artificiality, in people or life. I don't make clothes for women who lead an unreal, pampered life, but for girls who go shopping, run for buses, women who have jobs as well as being wives. My clothes aren't particularly feminine - I design for a world where women are often as successful as men, if not more successful.'' Courrèges's is one of the rare fashion-houses that don't sell perfumes: ''Most couturiers only exist because of the money brought in by perfumes - the clothes play a very small part, they're really just for the publicity. I appreciate the commercial side - it's very necessary - but I don't let it dictate to me; I won't be bound by anything. When I bring out a perfume I want it to be a thunderbolt, a flash of lightening, and part of the collection - I'd like it to be free.''

The Courrèges trouser suit for evening has hipster trousers on braces and a cropped bolero jacket in pink and white check sequins, worn over a white top. Photograph by Hatami.

At present Courrèges needs no lightening-flashes to electrify audiences. His shows are startling experiences. Models march on and off like robots, giving themselves just enough time to display the clothes with quick, jerky movements. The telephone rings constantly. Musique concrete thumps from stereo speakers. The music is the creation of Coqueline Barrère, Courrèges's first assistant. She too comes from the Basque country, and has known him for over 15 years. Asked about the future, she says: ''His evolution has always been very slow. It will continue like this, always in a straight line, one foot in front of the other.'' This rings true. Whether or not his present success in the fickle world of salons continues, Courrèges will evidently go on producing clothes of scientifically precise design and wonderful craftsmanship. The straight line shows no sign of wavering.

The Courrèges 1965 coat grabs the eye with deck-chair stripes of white and pistachio. It is cut double-breasted with a neat stand-up collar and caught by a belt at the hips. Photograph by Hatami.

French pop star Francoise Hardy wears a white suit designed for her by 'Trouser King' Courrèges. Photograph by Hatami.

His party dress for 1965 is shaped like a gym-slip with a deep, square neck. The white top is latticed in pink and the skirt sequin-covered in pink, with boots to match. Photograph by Hatami.

As the Courrèges collection ends, Rose-marie, his pretty German model, in brief top and pants, holds in front of her a hankie shaped banner with FIN embroidered in silver sequins. Photograph by Hatami.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from the Observer Magazine March 1965. Original text and interview by Joy Tagney. All photographs by Hatami. Read 'Mère Courrèges. La femme du célèbre couturier des année 60' - a very interesting interview with Coqueline Courrèges, creative partner and wife of André Courrèges. Discover more about The Work of Legendary Photographer Shahrokh Hatami, including Ronan and Mia - a 23-minute documentary which was shot and directed by Hatami during the making of Polanski's Rosemary’s Baby, Part one, Two and Three. Vogue Remembers André Courrèges. And finally, some film footage of Courrèges Collections from 1968 , 1969 and 1970.

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Show Yourself In Your True Colours - Jackie Magazine 1971

November 9, 2017, 8:22 am

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SHOW YOURSELF IN YOUR TRUE COLOURS!

Does your personality show through your clothes? (You want to watch what you wear, luv!). No, really, you can tell a lot about people by the colours they wear - especially if they seem to favour one particular colour! To find out a bit more about your friends and also what type you are yourself, look over the colours we've chosen below as example.

REDS
If you seem to have more red gear looming out of your wardrobe than any other colour then as far as you're concerned RED certainly doesn't mean Stop! You're the ''all systems go'' type, with no holds barred! You'll go all out to get what you want and if anything looks like standing in your way you can surmount it with the minimum of effort. Male-wise you go to the top. Good-looking, plenty cash to see you have a good time, but he has to have an understanding nature because YOUR way is ALWAYS best! Get yourself easily spotted in this one-button blazer and reverse print shirt. The shirt has long sleeves and stops at the waist. Complete your outfit with a flirty skating skirt and hat. Jacket from all branches of Bus Stop. Style No.498 £6.95. Fabric: Cotton. Colours: Red, blue, green or yellow, all with white. Sizes 8-14. Spottie blouse from all Bus Stop branches. Style No.3932 Price: £4.95. Fabric: Rayon. Colours: Red or Blue on White. Sizes 8-14. Skating skirt by Miss Impact. Style No. C5024. Price: £1.80. Fabric: Jersey. Colours: Black, brown, purple, red. Sizes: 10-14. Woven hat from selection at Herbert Johnson. Style: Della. Price: £2.50. Colours: Natural, red, white, black, navy. Stripey socks from Mr. Freedom. Price: £2.40.

BLUES

Lots of ''blue'' people are really ''reds'' in disguise because blue is the soft shade of innocence and a lot of crafty ''reds'' would like to think of themselves as such! But true blues are easily spotted. They have this warm friendliness about them which never fails to capture the hearts of those around. Love is the mainstay of their lives. Without it they can't survive so, needless to say, they are rarely without the company of a dishy bloke. Have a fit of the blues—the happy kind of course—in a short skirt and sexy stockings. Shirt by Impact. Style No. D4070. Price: £4. Fabric: Bonded crepe. Colours: Black, brown, burgundy, purple, blue. Sizes: 10-14. Shorts by Medusa. No style number. Price £3.50. Fabric: Velveteen. Colours: Assorted. Sizes: 10-14. Socks by Morley. Style: Hot Socks. Price: 59p. Colours: White, navy, black. One size.

MULTI-COLOURED
We all have our problems, dear. We won't go as far as to call you a ''schizo'' - just a bit mixed up! One minute you're bombing about like a mad thing and the next you've got a hefty dose of the galloping gloomies! You're one of those people who enjoys a challenge but once it's beat, you immediately lose interest. You never stick to any particular thing-including blokes! Your man will have to be willing to share you with lots of others because you change fella's just about as often as you change your gear. Mix yourself up in a myriad of colours. Two t-shirts—one a vest and the other with short sleeves by Maudie Moon. Short sleeve Style No. MMM5. Price: £2.50. Fabric 100% Acrilan single jersey. Colours: As illustrated. Sizes: Small, medium. Trousers by Travers Tempos. Style No. 527. Price £5.75. Fabric: Facecloth. Assorted colours: Sizes 10-16. Flattie shoes with instep lacing from main branches of Lilley and Skinner. Style: Astra. Price: £4.99. Fabric: Suede. Colours: Raspberry/pink. rust/brown. black/purple. Sizes: 3-8.

STOCKISTS

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from Jackie Magazine No. 402. September 18th, 1971. Illustrations uncredited. Further reading on the subject of Colour Psychology and The Emotional Effects of Colours. The role and meaning of colours for a spiritual seeker, and how colours can have a significant effect on our lives. Color is for everyone! 1968. She Comes In Colors, Any Colour You Like, She's like a Rainbow. View some of my previous Jackie Magazine posts from 1969 and 1970. And discover more about Herbert Johnson Hatters.View Twiggy wearing one of their hats in Vogue, 1967. Kensington Market London 1970s - 1995. And finally, the excellent Fans of Jackie Magazine UK Facebook group.

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Nature gave this girl dull brown hair - Jackie Magazine 1969

November 15, 2017, 9:45 am

≫ Next: Qiana - Depéche Mode 1970

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NATURE GAVE THIS GIRL DULL BROWN HAIR.

SUPERSOFT HAIRTONER GAVE HER THE NATURAL ANSWER.

Now there's a natural solution to dull brown hair. A shampoo called Supersoft Hairtoner. It's a shampoo...but what a shampoo! Supersoft Hairtoner tones and tints as you shampoo, to bring out the true warmth in brown hair. To bring out exciting highlights...naturally and gently. There are four Supersoft Hairtoner shampoos, Brown soft, Brown Fire, Brown Gold, Brown Rich. Whatever shade of brown hair you have, Supersoft Hairtoner will make an exciting change.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from Jackie Magazine No.277. April 26th, 1969. Model and Photographer uncredited. View some of my previous posts about 1960s & 1970s Hairstyles here: Curls: The Nouvelle Wave 1967. Leslie Cavendish - The Beatles' Hairdresser 1967-1975. Colour Crazy - Rave Magazine 1967. Let Colour Go To Your Head 1972. Plus some fantastic examples of 'Big Hair' by Derek Roe for Queen Magazine 1966 and also by Jean-Yves Elrhodes 1968. And finally, My Favorite Brunette.

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Qiana - Depéche Mode 1970

November 29, 2017, 9:05 am

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Some fantastic illustrations, which were used to promote Qiana - a luxury, silk-like, nylon fibre developed by Stanley Brooke Speck for Du Pont in 1962. It was initially introduced to the fashion industry by Du Pont in 1968 through its association with various Couture Houses, such as Dior, Balmain, Pucci, Cardin and Ungaro. Eventually becoming widely used by ready to wear designers throughout the early 1970s as shown in these adverts, before filtering down to the home sewing market by the mid seventies. It then disappeared from view as a marketed fashion fabric brand and was banished to the fabric composition label as a 'blend' under it's original chemical name, when synthetic fibres had finally lost their allure as the 'miracle fabrics' of the future and their reputation increasingly moved closer towards one associated with bad taste. It did have one 'last hurrah' though, via the black Qiananylon shirt and white Dacron polyester suit as worn by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (1978), but could never truly shake off the reputation that it had acquired in the public mind as times changed, once it had fallen out of favour. I've included several links related to the fabric at the end of this post, including an incredible selection of DuPont Company films and commercials from the Hagley Museum and Library: Audiovisual Collections and Digital Initiatives Department, there are some particularly interesting ones from the 1960s and 1970s which are definitely worth checking out.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS

All images scanned for the Sweet Jane blog from Depéche Mode, March 1970, with thanks to Brad Jones. All illustrations by H. Majeha. The Hagely Digital Archive's collection of DuPont Company films and commercials. Discover more about the Daniel Hechter brand, and view some other examples of his designs as featured in Queen (1969). Some rare film footage of designer Harry Lans at work, creating a silver foil mini skirt in Paris (1967), and more of his designs as featured in Elle (1969). View Du Pont's Heritage Timeline from 1802 to the present day. Marc Bohan's 1968 wedding ensemble designed for the House of Dior using Du Pont's Qiana, which has been donated to The Met Museum. Here you'll find some of my favourite psychedelic Dacron Polyester adverts, narrated by ken Nordine. And finally, footage from the last official 'hurrah' of Qiana by Du Pont, as worn by John Travolta in 1978.

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The Now Generation - 1970

January 20, 2018, 8:55 am

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THE NOW GENERATION

Groove through-the-looking-glasses with two eye catching knits of easy care Quintess polyester. In get-him-and-keep-him lilac, grape, sand or maize with white. Sizes 5-13. Each about $20.

IMAGE CREDIT
Image scanned by Sweet Jane from Seventeen Magazine, April 1970.

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Multiplex Minis by Peter Max 1970

January 31, 2018, 1:35 pm

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✰ ✰ ✰ MULTIPLEX MINIS BY MAX ✰ ✰ ✰

''You can fall under the spell of astrology and plan your life accordingly. Or you can go beyond it and control the star power yourself.'' Who's the speaker? Peter Max, one-man design explosion and Pied Piper of effervescent young ideas. His joyous creativity begins here, bursts into fashion (for the first time!) on the following pages and practically paints this whole issue in the warming colours of peace and love. His message above is simply this: ''Everyone has to make choices and there are some that only you can make.'' We'll go along with that!

1970s, POP ART, MINI DRESS, FASHION, MODEL,

Make tracks to Peter Max-land, where joy and freedom reign supreme! Here, his exuberance fairly bubbles on a lanky, tanky streak of star power. A triangled crest shields the front; if you swivel round, you'll show the rectangular version. Wear-Dated dress of basically-plum Stretchknit fabric double-knit of Monsanto's Blue C nylon. Sizes 3-13. For Bryant 9; about $27 at Lord & Taylor, New York. Panty hose designed by Mr Max, for Burlington-Cameo. Background artwork also by Peter Max. Our model is Bonnie Lysohir; her helmet of hair by Phillip Mason of Vidal Sassoon. Photographed by Bruce Laurance.

A more recent example of the Peter Max dress above, with an excellent shot of the aforementioned geometric design on the back, which although referred to in the description, wasn't photographed for the original editorial. Sadly the item is no longer available for sale, but you can still view the listing and several other photographs on the Circus Cat Vintage shop website.

Zap! Here's Peter Max, splashing phantasma-graphics on little-knit cutups (it's his first flash into fashion-we'll try to decode the messages). From the left: Love is in the stars, blinking pinks on a sink of soft-bodied knit. Mark XIV choker, spiraling Eye Plus bracelet. Harmony arrives in three tiers: red stars announce the pull-dress, the inner circle is a wide work-of-art midriff, green gives the go signal!

Happiness is an exuberant shirtdress, clowning around with a dotty top. The budding Peter Max tie hides a placket: the skirt cuts corners for a latticed print. Shoes, so far, by Latinas. Balance is the mirror-imagery reflected in a supple symmetrical knit buttoned up and dotted down. Fashion Craft shoes. All by Bryant 9; each $27. Pantyhose by Peter for Burlington-Cameo.

MODELS WEARING TIGHTS DESIGNED BY PETER MAX IN 1970.

Some more examples of the trend for painted tights in this Petticoat fashion feature, which was published around 5 months after the previous Peter Max editorial appeared in Seventeen Magazine.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from an original fashion editorial in Seventeen Magazine, April 1970. All background illustrations and clothing designed by Peter Max. All hairdos by Philip Mason of Vidal Sassoon. An interview with cover model: Bonnie Lysohir - who went on to become executive vice president of Barneys Inc. and the director of women's fashion for the company. And although uncredited in the editorial, I think it's possible that the other model may be Joyce Wilford, who regularly featured on the fashion pages of the magazine during this period and also shared the cover with Bonnie a year later in the July 1971 issue. Peter Max sleeveless dress photograph courtesy of Circus Cat Vintage. Watch an interview with Peter Max on the classic public television talk program Day at Night which aired from 1973-1974. Some film footage of the Swami Vishnudevananda Peace Plane, designed by Peter Max in 1970. Discover more about the recent Wrangler x Peter Max collaboration and shop the limited edition collection. And here, you'll also find some vintage pieces from his original 1970s collaboration with the Wrangler brand. View one of my previous Peter Max Accessories posts from 1970, and another example of the trends for painted pop art fashion and accessories, and astrological fashion. The Petticoat fashion feature was scanned from Petticoat Magazine - 8th August 1970. Photographer and models uncredited. And finally, you can connect with Peter Max on his official Facebook and Twitter a/c.

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Le Masculin Féminin - Dépèche Mode 1971

February 21, 2018, 11:17 am

≫ Next: Would you let your own daughter undergo - The Jimi Hendrix Experience 1967

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LE MASCULIN FÉMININ

The mini-skirted tailored suit on the right is probably the earliest example of Thierry Mugler's work that I've ever seen, judging by the date, this would have been created during the period when he was freelancing for various ready-to-wear fashion houses throughout Europe, precisely two years before he designed his "Café de Paris" Collection, the first one to have been designed under his own name in 1973, and long before he became known for the sculptural, futuristic designs, which we now associate with the peak of his career in the 1980s and 1990s. It was also interesting to note that the printed blouse worn underneath the suit was designed by Gérard Silvi, who was part of his circle of friends, along with Claude Montana and Guy Paulin. I hadn't previously been aware of the fact that Gérard Silvi had also moved into fashion design, I only knew of him as a model/stylist. As you can see in the last image below, he had great personal style, this photograph of him by Chantal Wolf, was included in a feature on Dandyism for Plexus in 1967, and you can view the original article in one of my previous posts Les Assassins du Bodygraph - lancent le prêt - à - choquer from a number of years ago.

From left to right: Double-breasted trouser suit, closed by 6 buttons, in black and grey striped flannel (Miss Diff). Saint-Clair blouse. Tilbury shoes. Felt Fedora from Madelios. Feremé frock coat, with 6 button closure, in finely striped black, grey and white cotton (Sim's Imper). Pink silk blouse from Saint-Clair. Stockings by Sisley. Danaud shoes. Softly curved semi-fitted suit with shoulder pads and very short pleated skirt in black crȇpe. (Thierry Mugler for Karim). Blouse in printed crȇpe by Gérard Silvi. Felt hat by Jean Charles Brosseau. Stockings by Exciting. Shoes France Favert.

Designer Gérard Silvi - Photograph by Chantal Wolf (1967).

IMAGE CREDIT & LINKS

All images scanned by Sweet Jane from an original fashion feature in Dépèche Mode, May 1971. Photograph by Jean-Paul Merzagora. Models uncredited. Gérard Silvi photograph by Chantal Wolf, scanned from Plexus Issue No. 9, 1967. It's good to see the Masculin Féminin look resurfacing so strongly in 1971, five years after Yves Saint Laurent had debuted his somewhat controversial Le Smoking suit, and also to see the continued influence of the Bonnie and Clyde 30s era and 1940s Gangster style revival, which was triggered by the 1967 Arthur Penn directed movie of the same name. This is a recent review of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ at 50: A Revolutionary Film That Now Looks Like the Last Work of Hollywood Classicism - by Owen Gleiberman for Variety (August 2017). Some more examples inspired by Chicago's gangsters of the 1930s in these Hats by Edward Mann from his 1966 Collection. Twiggy modelling the Masculin Féminin Dandy Look for Vogue in 1967, and once again here for the Biggy Twiggy Super Poster 1967. Another poster girl of the look - Faye Dunaway, star of Bonnie and Clyde, and the inspiration behind a full-blast return to '30 styles in 1968. Discover more about the origins of the Frock Coat here. Thierry Mugler, a monster talent - an in-depth article on the elusive designer by Eric Dahan for Vanity Fair (2016). View a Thierry Mugler - Designer Profile by Jeanne Beker for Fashion Television. And finally, while putting this post together (not being a native French speaker) I found myself a little bit Lost in Translation on Google Translate once more.

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Would you let your own daughter undergo - The Jimi Hendrix Experience 1967

March 4, 2018, 1:45 pm

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THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

It was only a year ago, between the end of military gear and the start of Flower Power, that Jimi Hendrix, a completely unknown 22-year-old coloured American guitarist and singer, came to Britain. This autumn he topped the Melody Maker poll as the No.1 musician, and his group ''The Jimi Hendrix Experience'' goes out for £700-£1000 a night. All his records have been tremendous chart successes, but it is in his live appearances that he has made his mark. He burnt a guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival in June, the Daughters of the American Revolution complained that he was too sexy; he treats his guitar like sex-organs and his loudspeakers like lovers. On stage, dwarfing the three group members, are 12 giant cabinets containing 48 loudspeakers, each one of which can fill the Albert Hall with sound. The effect is rather like having the Albert Hall fall in on top of you. Hendrix and his group affect fuzzed-out hairstyles and a giddy variety of brocaded, multicoloured clothes on stage and off. But in spite of the noise, and a riotous, balletic stage act, he is a talented and even significant artist. For James Marshall Hendrix, like any other coloured American, and a generation of teenagers in the Western world, grew up with the violent, vivid tradition of the blues, the urban folk music of the West: and his playing and singing are closer to the blues than any artist of comparable popularity. In his fine, smoky voice can be heard an echo of one of the great hero-figures of the Negro blues, McKinley Morganfield, who is better known as Muddy Waters. For Hendrix, with his hair, the lucky charms hanging round his neck, and the devilish, overt sexuality, can be seen as an embodiment of Muddy's most famous song, the solemn, voodoo-tinged hymn of male potency 'Hootchie Cootchie Man'. Blues of this temper were popularised in Britain by the Rolling Stones, who took their name from another Muddy Waters song, 'Rolling Stone Blues'. But the twitching Mick Jagger can't conjure up the power that is Jimi's birthright. Jimi Hendrix is our very own Hootchie Cootchie Man, our noble savage, a hero riding in a fine frenzy high over the fairytale meanderings of Britain's psychedelic kids, who love him for his pretty clothes. The hard, tough lads who know dig him too. When Jimi first played at a club in London's West End, a young connoisseur turned to Paul McCartney, 'Look, I know blues mate - you need a guitarist like that in your band.'

Jimi Hendrix photographed at his London flat by Terence Donovan, 1967.

Hendrix was born in Seattle on the Pacific Coast in 1945. His father is a landscape gardener. In the honey-beige, wildcat face there is Red Indian from his pure Cherokee grandmother, whom he saw much of when his parents marriage broke up. 'I used to spend summer vacations on her reservation in Colorado, and the kids at school would laugh when I wore shawls and poncho things she made. But on the whole my school was pretty relaxed. We had Chinese, Japanese, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos - we won all the football games! I wanted to be an actor or a painter. I particularly liked to paint scenes on other planets. ''Summer afternoon on Venus'' and stuff like that. The idea of space travel excited me more than anything.' He has a child-like fascination with outer-space. One of his compositions is about visitors to earth from another planet: O strange beautiful grass of green, With your majestic silken scenes, Your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer, May I land my kinky machine? After landing from a three month tour of the United States, Hendrix and his group strolled casually through London Airport Immigration like other-world birds of paradise....Hendrix, tolerant, relaxed good humoured with the customs officials as they impound his portable stereo equipment, fingers his silk and velvet clothes. The entourage - drummer Mitch, bassist Noel, road manager Gerry Stickles, the assistant known simply as 'H', and promotion man Tony Garland - glide smoothly and efficiently past autograph hunters and into the hired Rolls. The chauffeur is apologetic...''The firm couldn't send the new one, sir, as last time it came back with ''I Love You'' scratched on the paintwork with a nail file.' It is all as normal as could be, all part of the gig. Three streams most usually taken by ambitious coloured boys in the United States are: the armed forces, sport - and music. Explaining this, Jimi's hands flutter, making freaky little science-fiction scenes, harps, waterfalls. 'After school I joined the Army Airborne, and got to Spec 4 - that's what you would call a corporal - but I got injured on a jump and hung up on the discipline. I was on the road for a while hitch-hiking with my discharge pay and a guitar. I got to New York. A big rock 'n' roll tour manager saw me playing in a vaudeville act and I started out to play backing guitar to all the big name combos.' Jimi's Career for three years reads like the sleeve-note for an Identikit rebel, for every guitar-picker in every poor dusty town really hopes that his guitar will buy him a Cadillac and deep-freeze. But the way up the professional ladder for a Negro musician is tough. For Jimi, the discipline of playing on one-night stands behind the great names of the 'Solid Gold Soul' (where you could be fined five bucks for missing a step in the routine) was worse than the army.

Jimi Hendrix live at The Monterey Pop Festival 1967 - Photograph by Bruce Fleming.

One of the big names he played with was the ordained preacher-rocker, Little Richard: 'He wouldn't let me wear the frilly shirts on stage, just these shiny silk suits. He said, ''I'm the only one allowed to be pretty.''' This conformity in dress, plus the endless repeated phrases in the music and the mechanical climaxes of commercial Negro bands, couldn't hold a young man with ideas of his own. Jimi kept missing the tour bus, checking out of motels, leaving songs he'd written behind in lieu of payment. Eventually, in August last year, he hitched back to New York. He was having a bad time in a small club in Greenwich Village when Chas Chandler, an English pop star in New York, heard him and saw how he might take to the British pop scene and it to him. Today Chas, long, sleek, and boyish, is at 28 a confident, expansive Geordie tycoon, happy with life. 'I saw Jimi as the governor rebel of all time. I mean he may be nice as ninepence as a bloke, mind, but here was the guy who was going to turn on all the chicks, crucify every blues guitarist in the world. 'He wanted to use a wider idiom than blues, and was being drawn towards Bob Dylan-type fantasy, so we could give him the chance to write his own songs, which he has done with great success. I went into partnership with my own manager Mike Jeffrey to manage Jimi. We spent £5000 before Jimi did a single gig, including wages for Jimi's group. For the group had to be the best possible, both temperamentally and musically.'

They got drummer John 'Mitch' Mitchell from Georgie Fame's outfit, and Noel Redding for bass, who together with the electric hardware make up the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mitch, is small, alert, quick, an Ealing lad, who has been a child actor, with fond parents who sent him to the Corona Stage School ... 'I saw all my friends becoming faggots because it was the done thing. I thought - ''There must be something else.''' He had his twenty-first birthday in Miami Beach after playing the Hollywood Bowl at the climax of last summer's US tour. His parents in Bordars Walk, Ealing, had a cake made for him on his return in an exact full-size replica of a snare-drum with sticks. Mitch gestures like Jimmy Cagney with 10 spread fingers, dead serious. 'I find so many British musicians go to the States determined to be inferior - I mean no one, no one scares me.' On stage his drumming matches Hendrix's pyrotechnics with perfect confidence. He wants to plough back his money into musical experiments, working with jazzmen, but couldn't resist buying a yellow Lotus Elan. Noel the bassist is slight, with a stringy frame, relaxed and laconic. He has a soft, handsome, bookworm's face, with steel rimmed National Health specs and a wooly buzz of hair more spectacular than Hendrix's. 'Mitch perms: mine's natural.' Noel is a straight rock 'n' roller up from Folkestone: 21 years old, a hundred and fifty quid a gig, all the birds he can get and doesn't give a sod. He is a Red Barrel-and-gin man with long experience in groups. 'I've seen it all, been on the road for four years. I get very lonely but I don't show it. What I really like is making love to a girl and seeing her straight after standing there while I'm playing. I'm saving up to buy a nightclub in Spain. I see soldiers there sometimes looking at me, laughing. I just think to myself ''Who's the fool?''' Noel has the kind of steady temperament to stand up playing like an anchor, keeping the foundations solid while Jimi and Mitch are skyrocketing into the fourth dimension. Hendrix has three guitars on stage (he has smashed 13). Two are white and sculptural, and one is like a bizarre painted arrow. He has opened up the expressive range of blues. His playing sounds like about a thousand miles of thin steel sheet in the sky being ripped apart...Sounds like a posse of 500cc Rockers playing chicken in a tunnel...sounds like all the sawmills and goods yards in the world...Jimi rides it all like a child on the big dipper. A composition of his is called 'Stars that Play with Laughing Sam's Dice'. On one level it's all about a trip on a space rocket called 'Butterfly Rollerskate' and it all flies apart as it passes Mars 'somewhere on your left': Jimi himself can be heard shouting delightedly 'I hope you're all enjoying the ride - I know I am'.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from an original article by record producer, graphic artist, painter, lyricist, poet, manager and film-maker Austin John Marshall for the Observer Magazine, 3rd December, 1967. Jimi Hendrix photographs © Terence Donovan and Bruce Fleming respectively. Jimi Hendrix lyric © 1967 A. Schroeder Music Publishing Co. Ltd. Discover more about the photographer Terence Donovan and view his portfolio of work via the Terence Donovan Archive. Visit the Bruce Fleming Photography Website here. An interview with Bruce Fleming: On Jimi Hendrix, the 1960s and the Art of Photography and you can also listen to a podcast about the time that he spent Christmas with Jimi Hendrix. A great piece on Jimi Hendrix's arrival in London in September 1966. More on the Jimi Hendrix influence from this period in one of my previous posts, and view Jimi wearing a shirt by the label Sam Pig in Love created by Paul Reeves, a new line of clothing available from Kleptomania Boutique in 1967. Discover more about this particular clothing label over on The Look: Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion. And finally, pay a visit to Jimi's London flat on the upper floors of 23 Brook Street.

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What's wrong with beads and bells? 1967

April 5, 2018, 7:33 am

≫ Next: Smoke and Leather 1971

≪ Previous: Would you let your own daughter undergo - The Jimi Hendrix Experience 1967

WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEADS AND BELLS?

What's all the fuss about flower children? It seems that everyone over the age of thirty—particularly the national press, the police, and the establishment generally—has had something hard to say about hippies. Loud cries of free love, junkies, nude parties. It seems any girl who throws off her office clothes on Friday night and puts on a cut-down Indian bedspread is in danger of having herself labelled. It means nothing to these critics that the vast majority of Britain's hippies are part-timers; weekend flower children with five day week jobs. Intro's countrywide investigation estimates that nine out of ten of them DON'T take drugs, DON'T sleep around and, most important DON'T harm anyone. All the same, they're being harassed by police and maligned by the papers. Few people have chosen to discriminate between the hard-core, hard drug beat, who is using the hippie movement to excuse his way of life, and weekend part-timers; young people with a desire to be different—to show that they're something more than extensions of the old generation. Who dares to dictate that we must all dress alike, all look alike?

''I can have a good time without drugs.'' Jean MacIlroy, eighteen, (cover model), a Brockley, London, bank clerk, also said she's a part-time hippie. ''I don't use drugs, but I feel it's a matter of individual choice.''

In defence of unconventional dress among young people, Dr. Barbara Gray, a Birmingham University lecturer in Social Studies and a member of the Latey Committee (which recommends that young people should be regarded as adults at eighteen instead of twenty-one) says: ''Almost every group of teenagers tries to produce a different style of dress. Each generation produces something that distinguishes them from the middle-aged. When they dress in a style which could identify them with the hard-core hippie, then everybody gets tarred with the same brush; perhaps it is not so surprising. The fault is partly ours for not trying hard enough to look at each person as an individual; I think that we should try hard to avoid criticizing them as a group.''

WOBURN ABBEY LOVE-IN

Support has also come from one of Britain's most progressive aristocrats, the Duke of Bedford, who threw open his stately home, Woburn Abbey, to a love-in. He said: They were absolutely charming; the most polite people I've ever met.'' It's estimated that there are no more than two hundred real and dedicated hippies in Britain (they utterly ignore society and live a tribal experience. All life is sacred and they preach love and complete freedom to do as they wish). The remainder are part-timers; almost 50,000 young people who are in it partly because they agree it's better to love someone than to hate, and partly for the fun of a new experience. But, part-timers are having a tough time with the law, especially in London. Many of them gather in the West End before moving on to a club or party—and the police take a dim view. To test this point, two INTRO staffers, a girl and a boy, hung around in Trafalgar Square. They were dressed quite normally and ignored by police. Later, they returned, dressed in Indian Guru jackets, bells and beads. Twice they were moved on; each time the girl was roughly questioned-apparently on how she was dressed.

The Festival of The Flower Children, Woburn Abbey, August 26th-28th 1967 - billed as a 3-day, non-stop happening, the line-up of acts included the Small Faces, Jeff Beck, Eric Burdon and many more! plus DJ sets from Jeff Dexter, Mike Quinn and Tommy Vance. Along with the promise of free flowers and sparklers for 'the beautiful flower children in the most beautiful surrounding'.

BRUSH WITH THE LAW
It happens with other weekenders too. Two eighteen year olds, Linda Evans and Janis Coles, factory workers from Middlesbrough, came to London for a week's holiday. They saw the hippies, liked their clothes, and dressed with beads and bells. They were talking to friends in Trafalgar Square when a policeman approached. ''He said to us, in front of everybody: 'Are you prostitutes?' Then he took us to the police station and kept us there for over two hours.'' Despite these embarrassing brushes with the law, Britain's part-time hippie cult is growing and spreading to major provincial centres. In Bristol, there's already a weekend community, mostly hippie parties in private flats. John (he doesn't use a surname), a twenty year old telephone engineer, said: ''Soon the whole scene will be going on in parks in Bristol...until the fuzz comes along. At the moment they just shrug their shoulders.'' York, Littlehampton, Leeds and Cambridge are also developing weekend groups. Christine Simpson, sixteen, a student from York, said: ''I'm a part-time hippie. I've worn beads in York—they're catching on.'' Mandy Harvey is fourteen, still at school, and comes from Harston, Cambridge. She says: It's sickening that the papers put out a completely wrong image, but I suppose I'm lucky; my mother isn't misled by these reports and she doesn't mind me dressing like this.'' Mandy wears beads, bells and no shoes. She uses heavy make-up round her eyes. Drugs are condemned by almost all weekend hippies. Jeanette Osborne, a sixteen year old student from Gosport, Hants, said: ' I don't take drugs and if people can't live without them, life can't be worth much. I wouldn't take them. '' Bernadette Jarvis, twenty-three, a Wembley bank clerk, said '' I can have a good time without drugs.'' Jean Macllroy (she's on our cover), eighteen, a Brockley, London, bank clerk, also said she's a part-time hippie. ''I don't use drugs, but I feel it's a matter of individual choice.''

When hippies met in Trafalgar Square for a sit-in, the police made it a move-on.

GREAT GEAR FOR FUN
Few of the girls in hippie dress are upset by people's stares. ''We don't feel embarrassed,'' said Janis Coles. ''Why should we?'' Jeanette Osborne said: ''I wear jeans, flowers and blouses with love written on them. I go around as a flower child and have a laugh.'' Bernadette Jarvis and her friend Jill Simpkins said: ''We do it because we don't like conservative dress. Unfortunately we can't dress like this all the time because we wouldn't be accepted in our jobs.'' And some girls have mother problems. Ann Bolger, eighteen, a secretary from Leyton, said: ''I'd like to wear the gear but I'm afraid people would laugh.'' And Ann's mother added ''I wouldn't like it at all.'' A South American secret society has an initiation ceremony at puberty for girls and young men, involving intricate body painting (some part-timers have adopted this idea to ''baptise'' new friends). Eyes of ancient Egyptian girls, about to perform acrobatic dances, were heavily decorated with paint. They also wore bangles, flowers and coloured ribbons in their hair-and very little else. Intro says: We don't think the flower children are doing anyone harm. There's nothing wrong with wearing beads. There's nothing wrong with a dress that's different. And it's certainly not wrong to make the most of weekends after a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday life.

Smiling flower children (above) with a banner saying: ''Follow Us'' — everyone did.

Be●In Dress from Way In (1967).

Unisex Kaftans, beads, and bells, available from Chelsea Mail (1967).

That you could also purchase an (almost) complete hippie outfit via these mail order adverts from the same issue of this teen magazine, pretty much signalled the toll of the impending death knell, as the look of the counterculture moved steadily into the mainstream faster than the ideology of the lifestyle behind it. Approximately two weeks after this issue went to print, the Death of Hippie was formally announced in San Francisco, the Death Notice stated: HIPPIE ~ In the Haight Ashbury District of this city, Hippie, devoted son of Mass Media ~ Friends are invited to attend services beginning at sunrise, October 6th, 1967, at Buena Vista Park. The ceremony was led by Ron Thelin, owner of The Psychedelic Shop at 1535 Haight Street, which was set to close, having found itself in debt (to the tune of $6,000, according to Barry Miles author of Hippie - Cassell Illustrated), as were many of the other businesses and clinics in the area. Attendees filled a cardboard coffin with various hippie artefacts and trappings of the lifestyle, such as copies of underground newspapers, beads, bells, and clothing etc, the open coffin was then carried down Haight Street in a funeral possession, stopping at the junction of Haight-Ashbury for a kneel-in, before being ceremonially burned at its final destination. However, although pronounced dead and buried by the people who truly believed in it, in its purest form..it wouldn't be allowed to 'rest in peace' for long. I doubt that it immediately stopped the coach tours full of of hippie-spotting day trippers driving down Haight Street, and it most certainly didn't stop the mass media from continuing the pursuit (as they had hoped it would). The proof is evident in the proliferation of films, books, newspaper and magazine articles, and especially through the advertisement agencies which continued to repurpose the imagery, ideas and language of the counterculture long after it had reached saturation point in San Francisco, and appropriated it for consumers who were living conventional, suburban lives (see examples from 1969-1971 below). Personally, I'm quite fond of a lot of these adverts and artefacts, it was a very creative period, but i'm sure it must have been extremely disheartening to the people who were committed to the counterculture, because they had such high ideals and hopes for the movement, it probably felt like a failure on many levels at the time. Of course with hindsight, we know that it wasn't, it just took a long time for the best ideas and practices to filter down and integrate properly into mainstream society, it always does, you can change the world, but you can't change the world overnight.

A Simplicity Pattern Co. Inc print advert (1969) which makes reference to various aspects of the counterculture lifestyle in a bid to put a slightly new slant on their usual 'tried and tested' selling technique in keeping with the times, by tapping into the decade's quest for freedom from the mainstream, and appealing to the desire for individuality within the non-conformist.

This William Barry Outerwear 'before and after' print advert, would have you believe that trading in an alternative lifestyle choice and look, for a conventional one, was a good move! (note the well worn, real fur and natural fibres on the left Vs. the ''Put On'' in warm, plush pile of 100% Orlon Acrylic on the right) making a clear distinction between hippie culture and mainstream consumerism.

An advertisement for a range of leather belts by Fife & Drum, originally published in September 1971, and although not necessarily 100% hippie, there are many references to the imagery and ideals of the counterculture in both the ad copy and art work, they've even managed to work Frank Zappa into it, and on a subliminal level, the mention of 'a holding company' made me think of Big Brother and the Holding Company..even if that wasn't their intention.



    IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from an original article for Intro Magazine September 23rd 1967. Photographer, illustrator and models all uncredited in the original publication, except for cover model Jean MacIlroy. Simplicity Pattern Co. Inc image scanned from 60s All-American Ads (Taschen). William Barry Outerwear and Fife & Drum advert (1971) scanned from The Male Mystique- Men's Magazine Ads of the 1960s and 1970s by Jacques Boyreau. If you did happen to find yourself in trouble with the law under one of these circumstances in particular back in 1967, the best people to look for were Rufus Harris and Caroline Coon, who founded Release, a civil rights agency providing legal advice for young people charged with the possession of drugs. View an interview with Caroline Coon filmed in 1968, this interview was conducted on the day Coon was released from Holloway Prison, having been arrested for protesting about the prosecution of Rolling Stone Brian Jones for drug possession. Here you'll find a small archive of documents from the drug advice and referral agency, Release, dating from its inception in 1967 through to its tenth anniversary. And in some of my previous posts you'll find Felicity Green's report on the flower power fashion scene, August 1967; Apple Clothing - Apple Boutique 1968; Rave Magazine's in-house dandy decked out in flower-power finery from Kleptomania 1967; Flower Power Maddie Smith (1967) before she became more widely known as an actress; Dentelle Galler & the King's Road Hippies 1969, and The Rise and Decline of the Afghan Coat 1966-197?. Discover more about the Death of Hippie October 6th 1967 (lots of photographs of the event included), and here, you can view some filmed footage plus an interview about it with with Ron Thelin. More film footage of protest scenes outside The Psychedelic Shop after the Police arrested Allen Cohen (store clerk) for selling "The Love Book" by Lenore Kandel, on grounds of obscenity in 1966. A fantastic review of the recently published Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kauffman (a must-read!).  And finally, you know the dream is over when ''they're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's man!''

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Smoke and Leather 1971

April 29, 2018, 1:49 pm

≫ Next: The early illustrations of Wojtek Siudmak - Plexus 1969

≪ Previous: What's wrong with beads and bells? 1967

Pour La Peau

La chance du Short...Leather Jacket and shorts by Brezin, the upper back and elbows of the jacket are studded. Maxi-socks by Colette Brezin, Baroux boots, and José Cotel belt for Beige.

Fine trench coats. In thin, supple skins, the trench becomes a truly feminine garment. On the right: a coat in Lambskin by Gérard Silvi, Boots by Maude Frizon. On the left: a leather-treated Cowhide coat by Thierry Mugler for Divya, braided in red leather. Tilbury boots.

Quilted. Quilting is a general trend this year. It is particularly suitable for leather clothing. Right: a jacketclosed on the side, in quilted lambskin, by Charles Ambers. It is worn with trousers in Paprika. Belt Baroux. On the left: a quilted jacket and lambskin pants from Everskin. Choker and leather strap from José Cotel for Beige. Shoes by Salamander.

The airmen's jackets. Right: a jacket in lambskin from Gets. It is tightened at the bottom by a belt closed with a metal buckle. José Cotel Belt for Beige: Left: a Furs Ettex (Paris) jacket in lambskin, lined with fur. The shoes are from Salamander.

Long jackets. In leather or velvet skin, they are always in good stead. On the left: a lamb jacket with a patina of Sahara-style Paprika. On the right deer skin and fur jacket, and trousers in lambskin by Gérard Silvi. The turtleneck is from Colette Brezin. Salamander shoes.

IMAGE CREDITS & LINKS
All images scanned by Sweet Jane from an original editorial in Dépèche Mode, May 1971. All photographs by Dominique Ruat. Hair by Elrhodes, 122, faubourg, Saint-Honoré, Paris. Models uncredited. View some of my previous posts featuring the designs of Gérard Silvi and Thierry Mugler, and also more Hair Styling by Jean-Yves Elrhodes (1968). The confessions of Manfred Thierry Mugler: on George Michael, Beyoncé, his physical transformation and his new career. Biker influenced leather fashion, by John Stephen of Carnaby Street in Dolly Rockers (1968), and Rags for Riders 1971. Beyond Rebellion: Fashioning the biker Jacket-an online exhibition at FIT New York. Marianne Faithfull making the most of her black leather, fleece-lined jumpsuit designed by Lanvin, Paris, for her role in the 1968 film The Girl on the Motorcycle, also known as Naked Under Leather (1968). You can't talk about leather without mentioning Suzi Quatro's iconic leather jumpsuit, designed for her by Nigel Preston in 1973 under his Maxfield Parrish label, view an interview with Suzi about the look on the BBC Documentary Oh! You Pretty Things: The Story of British Music and Fashion - Idols [Episode 2 of 3]. Watch Suzi Quatro As Leather Tuscadero - All Her Performances On "Happy Days. Discover more about the heritage of the Nigel Preston/ Maxfield Parrish Design Label, and Nigel Preston the man behind it. The Black Leather Jacket (Book & documentary) by Mick Farren. The Evolution of Women Smoking in Film. And finally, The Runaways Black Leather (1978).

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