Costume Since 1945: Historical Dress from Couture to Street Style 9781472539403, 9781472524249, 9781474240758, 9781474240734

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COSTUME SINCE 1945

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COSTUME SINCE 1945 Historical Dress from Couture to Street Style

DEIRDRE CLANCY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 1996 by Herbert Press This edition published by Bloomsbury Academic 2015 © Deirdre Clancy, 2015 Deirdre Clancy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-3940-3 PB: 978-1-4725-2424-9 ePDF: 978-1-4742-4073-4 ePub: 978-1-4742-4074-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clancy Steer, Deirdre.   Costume since 1945 : historical dress from couture to street style / Deirdre Clancy.        pages cm    Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-1-4725-3940-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4725-2424-9 (paperback)  1.  Clothing and dress—History—20th century. 2.  Fashion—History—20th century.  I. Title.   GT596.C54 2015   391.009’04—dc23 2014049826 Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

CONTENTS

Foreword to the First Edition by Adrian Noble  vi Preface to the Second Edition  vii Introduction 1

 1 1945–50 Peace and the New Look 4  2 1950–55 Paris Rules 24  3 1955–60 The Rise of the Teenager 44  4 1960–65 The Kennedy Years 64  5 1965–70 Vietnam Versus Flower Power 82  6 1970–75 Retromania 104  7 1975–80 Rise of the New Woman 126  8 1980–85 Swing to the Right 152  9 1985–90 Power Dressing and the New Man 172 10 1990–95 Pluralism 196 11 1995–2000 Revivals and Casual Chic 220 12 2000–2005 Transition and Complexity 240 13 2005–Present Effortless and Easy 256 Postscript 274 Glossary 275 Bibliography 278 Index 279

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

Deirdre Clancy is ‘good at clothes’ because she is good at people. Her encyclopaedic knowledge of dress, her rigorous research, her diligence in execution, her inspired drawings, her instinct for the right material, the affection and respect, nay awe, in which she is held by cutters and makers alike, her years of experience across the globe in every medium, all this contributes to her greatness as costume designer; but the secret ingredient is a chemical gift based on an uncanny insight into people, whether it be fictional characters or the personalities of actors and actresses. And she brings all this talent to bear upon this treasure-trove of a book. Start with the drawings: there is a whiff of authenticity that comes not just from her depth of knowledge, but from an understanding of humanity. Each one is a witty take on a human being and each one tells a story. They are deadly accurate, but totally original. Next, delve into the text. It’s quickly apparent that she has written an essential reference book, not just for those interested in the past but also for the present. It’s loaded with information, which is all delivered in Deirdre’s wry, direct and amusing manner. Most interesting to me are her easy and very accurate connections between dress and society. Back to people again. A wonderful book, that stands proud from the over-full shelf of dry reference books. ADRIAN NOBLE Director, Royal Shakespeare Company

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

When you are living through your day to day life, it seems that very little of significance is happening as far as fashion is concerned, despite the hectic seasonal collections shown by the top couturiers. It is only when I look back at the collections of the last 15 years that the different character of each phase begins to become clearer. The first edition of Costume Since 1945 was written in 1995, before the internet and the personal computing revolution had got fully under way. The difference that this has made cannot be over-stated. Research and the gathering of visual information have been totally transformed. In 1995 my sources were fashion history books, family albums, women’s magazines, collections of newspaper photographs, filled out with photocopies of middle-market garment catalogues gleaned from the local library. Piles of books and boxes of papers were all over my studio! Although I still love to work with books, as the heaps of them still with me will attest, the sheer amount of fashion imagery now available on the web is overwhelming. Photographs of couture collections are posted almost immediately on Google, keen amateur fashion-lovers post extensive images on their personal blogs or on Pinterest, YouTube is awash with fashion material, and Wikipedia fills in any gaps. The other big social movement which has continued into the twenty-first century is the rise of multiculturalism in the west and a more global, and globally connected, fashion system. The first edition was conceived as a British book, with only a few nods towards North America, and included relatively few examples of wider international influences on fashion. Like twenty-first century fashion and fashion media, the second edition of the book looks beyond the UK and US, and reflects the greater diversity of cultures and ethnic backgrounds today. I have also expanded the number of drawings to include more childrenswear, menswear, celebrity influences and fashion for older people. Even 15 years ago I wondered how a little book of drawings could find a place among so much photographic material, and now the question is even more pertinent. Yet if you are interested in fashion, the new blizzards of information can confuse rather than enlighten. Also, by their very nature, fashion blogs tend to be about couture and the luxury end of the market, whereas my intention has always been to demonstrate a far wider range of apparel, from high end to high street. I think of Costume Since 1945 as a gateway book that will give you a visual and social introduction to the whole enormous subject.

viii

INTRODUCTION

To view the recent past, the past of living memory, as history is a peculiar exercise. Memory may not be very reliable, but it can add unexpected insights to otherwise dry research. The half-century since the end of World War II has seen the most rapid changes in technology, communications and lifestyle the world has ever known. These changes have been reflected in the world of fashion and in the clothing industry – which are not the same thing at all. Long periods of right-wing government in Britain and the US have had the effect of creating almost as great a divide between rich and poor as existed at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, in real terms, and owing largely to the clothing industry’s use of cheap immigrant labour, it is now possible to dress fashionably for less than ever before. Many ordinary people in the west have more disposable income than before the war, and a large percentage of this money is spent on clothes. And at all levels, clothes are now more likely to be discarded after one season in favour of the newest trend, rather than being maintained or adapted as formerly. While clothes in the West differ in many ways from those worn fifty years ago, three particular changes strike me as fundamental. Firstly, even the most utilitarian garments are now available in bright colours; everything from wellington boots to overcoats can now be bought in all the colours of the rainbow, whereas previously only neutral shades were available. The second major change can be summed up in a single word – Lycra. This wonder fabric was initially discreetly introduced in the sixties as a hard-wearing and washable elastic material for ladies’ support garments. Bras and girdles were suddenly far more long-lasting and comfortable than before. During the 1980s scientists discovered how to combine Lycra with many other fibres. Combined with nylon or acetate it revolutionized sportswear, and within a short time it was added to the most unlikely fabrics, including denim and corduroy, and used for jeans or skirts. Lycra, or Spandex as it is also known especially in the US, meant that a skintight fit could be achieved without complex and expensive seaming. Body shaping, either by weight-training or by a variety of keepfit regimes, became a new popular obsession, and how better to show off your newly-honed muscles than by encasing them in a brightly coloured, tightly fitting second skin. The third change is more difficult to define, but is perhaps the most profound. Until the end of the fifties, fashion as understood by the couturiers of Paris or Milan had always been the prerogative of the rich adult female and followed a rigid pattern. Twice a year the established designers held a major show,

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primarily for their wealthy personal clients, but increasingly for the department-store buyers and the fashion press. Each season the store buyers would choose what they perceived to be the most popular styles, to be manufactured for their shops where the new garments would be purchased by slightly less wealthy women. Journalists would bring home sketches and, later, photographs of the new fashions, and in the women’s magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar editors would demonstrate the shape of the season, with quite bossy instructions on how to achieve the required look and how to update last year’s clothes to render them acceptable for another season. In the 1950s the great Parisian houses such as Dior, Balenciaga and Balmain had a huge influence over what was deemed ‘fashionable’ and what was not. Often the women who rebelled were those who considered themselves too old to bother, too creative to be restricted by the dictates of fashion, or did not have bodies that conformed to fashion’s preferred new shapes. Of course, many women simply could not afford to keep up with fashion, but as far as high fashion was concerned they didn’t count. During the 1960s a radical shift occurred. Quite suddenly, or so it seemed, it was fashionable to be very young. Youth culture had arrived, with its noisy music and rebellious attitude. The world of high fashion was increasingly out of touch; it was perceived as stuffy, bourgeois, middle-aged and, if anything, slightly silly. The next thirty years saw an increasing fragmentation of the strands of fashion, and in this small book I have tried to make some sense of the way clothing in the final years of the twentieth century has developed. As the couturiers lost their power, the main impetus came from the people themselves. ‘Street clothes’ became the dominant force, with the couturiers now using styles discovered on the high street, or in the clubs, raising their status (and their cost) by redefining the ideas in expensive fabrics and showing them on skeletal super-models, thus rendering the original street styles out of date for the fashionable young, who quickly adopted some newer and more outrageous image. Meanwhile, many people simply ignore what they consider to be the whole silly business, getting on with their lives in rather simple, comfortable clothes usually purchased from a department store or high street chain, and wearing particular styles for their various activities. Suitable sportswear for cycling, keep-fit, jogging and the ever-increasing range of leisure activities, and occasion wear for formal occasions such as weddings, dinner parties and visits to the theatre now make up most people’s wardrobes. It may be easier to understand the process if fashion is thought of as moving in three separate strands, each one having a different rhythm. The first is high fashion as it is usually understood, coutureled or street-led, but changing every season in an ever more frantic search for something new. The second strand is composed of the clothes the majority of people actually wear. Although influenced by strand one, these styles change much more slowly, with a greater sense of continuity from one year to the next. The third strand consists of an ever-shifting group of what social anthropologist Ted Polhemus calls ‘style tribes’ or anti-fashion. Occasionally the style of some currently trendy group or other is incorporated into the mainstream, as happened recently with Grunge, and as happens every five years or so with western-style clothes; but on the whole the tribe, be it Punk, Hippy or Leather Queen, gets on with its chosen lifestyle regardless of fashion, mainstream or otherwise. In the following pages I have tried to select a cross-section of these three strands from each five-year period since 1945. (This may seem an arbitrary and artificial division of time, but it is surprising how appropriate it has proved to be.) This will, I hope, be useful to fellow designers, theatre and fashion

Introduction3

students, interested amateurs, and indeed anyone who has a desire to understand clothing in the second part of the twentieth century and beyond. There is so much available material that it has been very difficult to decide on a pure line among the mass of details, and it is in order to find some sense of direction, and some understanding of the endless variety, that I have tried to indicate in the illustrations who is wearing what, and the social background and type of person being presented. A true cross-section of each period has involved considerable use of stereotyping of human beings according to age, race, sex, class and occupation. I am afraid it cannot be helped; this is after all an overview book and I can only stress that all descriptions should be appreciated in a spirit of academic enquiry rather than as in any way a criticism of the wearer.

1 1945–50 PEACE AND THE NEW LOOK Four years before the end of the war in 1945 Britain had introduced the Utility Scheme to ensure that the few available resources would be used economically to produce good clothes. Couturiers such as Hardy Amies and Molyneux chose prototypes that conformed to government regulations limiting the amount of material for each garment, the quality of the fabric, and the length and fullness of the skirt. In consequence, great attention was paid to details such as the colour of the piping, a carefully positioned pleat, topped by a mad little hat trimmed with unrationed milliner’s veiling. Everyone was encouraged to ‘make do and mend’, and younger brothers and sisters were dressed entirely in ‘hand-me-downs’. In the United States, where there were far fewer constraints, fashion developed further along prewar lines. Full skirts swirled out from small gathered waists with fitted bodices, worn with nylon stockings, high-heeled shoes in bright leather, straw hats and matching gloves. Such clothes, so cheerful and so new, were the envy of Europe. When clothes rationing in England failed to be relaxed in line with postwar expectations, the public mood changed to one of impatience and resentment. Matters were made worse by regulations in the late 1940s that allowed British designer fashions to be exported, but forbade their distribution in England. Economist and broadcaster Louis Stanley called the situation the ‘second Battle of Britain’ and said, ‘It is bad enough when such goods do not exist, but to learn that they are being produced, the best this country can make, but not for domestic consumption is a bitter pill.’ Women were further exasperated by illustrations in the press showing exotic fashions in Paris, Brussels, New York, Stockholm, even Germany. The long-term effect of the war years on the garment industry was to establish the concept of mass production. The experience gained from the endless manufacture of uniforms forced the ready-to-wear industry to develop stable patterns of manufacture and distribution that underpin the trade to this day. It is salutary to remember that the clothing industry is the third largest industry in the western world in terms of employment and turnover. New York designers became far more independent as a result of the wartime severing of transatlantic communications. No longer relying on Paris for inspiration, and led by the brilliant Claire McCardell, they invented the American Look. Sporty, relaxed, comfortable, with clean functional lines as a clear expression of lifestyle, these deceptively simple designs became instant classics, and remain effective, inspiring and fashionable to this day. As yet, no postwar look had evolved, though there were signs, as James Laver, one of the most clearheaded writers on clothes fashion, commented: ‘Fashion has reached one of those turning points in history when everything may happen just because anything may happen to the world.’

1945–50 Peace and the New Look 5

What happened was brought into focus on 12 February 1947 in the Paris salon of Christian Dior. For a decade the silhouette of women had remained unchanged. Rationing and the privations of war had imposed a straight, abbreviated, square-shouldered shape, and any deviation was seen as unpatriotic extravagance. It is impossible to over-estimate the impact of Dior’s momentous collection. His tall, slim house models must have looked like creatures from another planet. The mannequins had soft natural shoulders, a wasp waist, a bosom subtly padded for a more feminine shape and rounded hips that were emphasized by shells of cambric or taffeta stitched into the lining. The full skirt exploded into pleats from under the peplum of the jacket or was stitched flat over the hips, and for daytime stopped twelve inches from the floor to reveal sheer stockings and delicate high-heeled shoes. These swirling skirts could have 15 to 25, even 30 yards (12–25 m) of fabric, in itself a sinful extravagance to women who for years had made do with 2½ yards of 36-inch wide utility tweed. The governments of both the UK and US did their best to dissuade women from wearing the New Look, backed up, oddly, by some reactionary ladies in Texas and Atlanta who formed The Little Below the Knee Club on the grounds that it was unpatriotic and unemancipated; but on this issue women were rebellious and unmoved. The shops on both sides of the Atlantic were soon full of the new styles and any manufacturer who had the misfortune to have over-stocked with forties man-tailored suits lost a great deal of money, for nobody wanted them. Men didn’t have fashion in the late forties – they just had clothes, in many instances the same civilian garments that had seen them through their off-duty moments during the war, or that utilitarian garment the demob (or demobilization) suit issued to ex-service personnel. Men wore dark, two- or three-piece suits to the office and a tweed sports jacket and flannel trousers at weekends. Young people wore scaled down versions of their parents’ fashions. The teenager was not invented until early in the following decade in the US.

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Post-War Dress in Europe and the US 1–5  This group is taken from a street party to celebrate the end of the war in 1945. The people are working-class Londoners, for whom fashion, as distinct from clothing, was an unaffordable luxury, even assuming they had sufficient coupons. 1  Young boy. Shorts suit in school serge or flannel. English and European boys usually wore shorts till puberty – or until they reached a certain height. Frozen blue knees and wrinkled knee-socks were common until the advent of elasticated tops to the socks in the late fifties. The shirt is worn open at the neck, over the jacket collar – in a way that would have been disapproved of by the upper classes. The jacket is cut in the style common to all men from the forties onwards – three buttons, small shoulder pads; and the shoes, polished for the occasion, are ordinary laced Oxfords. The outfit is completed with a home-knitted V-neck jumper. 2 The man’s lapels and roomy trousers suggest a pre-war suit. The V-neck pullover is endearingly tucked into the trousers, still braced and with turn-ups. The only concession to modernity is a cheery tie, wide and brightly patterned in a ‘cubist’ style. 3  This lady is something of an archetype. She wears a printed blouse and an old wool skirt. The overall in much washed printed cotton is an almost permanent fixture. The Victory tea was for the children, after all, and washing the dishes had to be done by hand. She wears her good cloth coat, which might have been purchased new, but was more likely bought second-hand in one of the many street markets. Darned rayon stockings and sensible shoes complete her outfit. 4  Her friend looks rather more en fête. The beret and the jaunty checks on her tweed coat are stylish, and she has taken her apron off. Otherwise the short-sleeved jumper and skirt are almost a uniform. 5  The girl, aged perhaps fourteen, is wearing a small adult’s utility suit in its most basic form, with check open-neck blouse, white socks and laced shoes. 6 and 7 Leisure-wear was a very new and American concept. These examples are from the Sears Catalog, the bible of middle America. She wears dungarees over a neat print shirt, and wedge-heeled shoes. The garden trowel shows that such practical clothes in washable fabrics were to be worn for suitable feminine hobbies rather than display, but such garments would win the day in time. He wears a slubbed cotton two-piece. The shirt is cut straight, so that it can be worn outside the ‘pants’ (American for trousers) as a cool summer suit. 8  It is difficult to believe that this lady’s outfit belongs to the same period as the others on this page. This is Dior’s 1947 New Look. The corseted waist, natural shoulders and long draped skirt are for conspicuous display only. 9  An excellent example of a New Look suit modified for real people. In 1948–9 almost every young woman of any means at all would have possessed such an outfit for formal day wear. The neat jacket with set tailored sleeves and nipped-in waist came in all sorts of variations on the same basic shape. The full gored skirt would be about 30 cm (10–12 in) off the ground. The colour and style of the carefully matched accessories could vary. The whole effect was demure and lady-like.

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Formal Dress: An English Wedding, 1949 1  Nanny. I do wonder how many people on this page are wearing clothes bought or made especially for them. Nanny’s good coat was made for a much taller woman, see the hand-sewn hemline. She wears this classically tailored overcoat in sensible dark brown or grey, with a round-necked, possibly handknitted, jumper. The low-heeled shoes are enlivened by fringed tongues, which together with the straw loops on her hat are the only touches of frivolity on this rather grim outfit. 2  A classic image of British middle-class childhood, complete with velvet-collared Harris tweed coat, white ankle socks and Start-Rite strapped shoes. 3  Another lady whose smart cream coat was too long and has been turned up. Her hat is stylish too, a kind of enlarged beret with a fringe on. 4  The boy’s mother. It is difficult to see, given her somewhat depressing clothes that this actually very pretty woman is still under thirty. I know the fur coat belonged to her mother, and I suspect the toque ornamented with peculiar feather bits did as well. 5  The groom is of an age and class where he could have owned his morning coat and striped trousers. They fit very well for hired ones. The suit is completely traditional down to the pearl-grey waistcoat (US vest) and carnation buttonhole. 6  The bride has a cream satin dress with a ‘sweetheart’ neckline, long tight sleeves, a full-flared and gathered skirt and the family veil held on by a pearl bead tiara.

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Formal Dress: International Occasion Wear 1  A tunic dress from the Sears Catalog 1947/8, decorated unnervingly with nail heads. The dress was made in the signature fabric of the forties, rayon crepe, in black, of course, beige or dark moss green. Sears suggest it is an ideal frock for the fuller figure. 2 Luncheon dress by Digby Morton for Lachasse in caramel and white houndstooth check suiting. Designed in March 1947, it was destined to languish in the back of the wardrobe, overtaken by the New Look. If you could afford clothes like this you would naturally wear only the latest fashion. 3  The Hollywood version: the producer’s wife at a première. This draped, sparkly dress was over a boned foundation and worn with a smart evening jacket made from Chinese silk brocade. The silver sandals and lots of jewellery complete the effect. 4  Seriously good taste from Balmain, who would have thought Mrs Producer vulgar. A beautifully fitted brocade jacket, mink trimmed, worn with a grand floor-sweeping satin skirt. 5  A bit of an oddity by Maggie Rouff for Miss Europe. Duchesse satin with beading and an unconvincing bustle. Mae West goes to Paris, perhaps?

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Celebrities: Including David Niven and Rita Hayworth 1 In 1945, iconic British actress Celia Johnson received lasting popular success and an Academy Award nomination for her part in the film ‘Brief Encounter’ in which she heroically decided not to have an affaire with the attractive character played by Trevor Howard, after meeting him at the train station. Station waiting rooms gained an air of potential romance that, despite the strong tea and stale sandwiches, they never quite lost. Miss Johnson wears a severely tailored air-force blue two piece suit, a cap inspired by the military version designed by Norman Hartnell, sensible shoes and a neat rayon blouse – an outfit that was almost a uniform for middle class ladies at the end of the war. 2  Rita Hayworth was an American dancer and film actress who achieved fame during the 1940s as Gilda in the film of the same name, which was made in 1946. The black satin dress worn for a provocative strip scene, where all she removed were her long evening gloves, was structured within an inch of its life! Designer Jean Louis invented a cast plastic corset to enhance Hayworth’s spectacular hour-glass figure while hiding the signs of her pregnancy. It must have been very uncomfortable. 3  David Niven starred in the 1946 Powell and Pressburger film, A Matter of Life and Death, just after he had returned to acting from active war service in the Rifle Brigade, where he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In the film, Niven plays the part of an airman, Squadron-Leader Peter Carter, who is shot down over the English Channel and, landing in the sea, mistakes the fog for a prelude to the afterlife. Niven wears the field uniform of the RAF: a dark blue dungaree suit, or all-in-one, with flying boots and a sleeveless sheepskin flying jacket. He sports the classic RAF moustache that became the actor’s trademark, and a blue spotted foulard cravat. 4  Mickey Rooney arrives at Southampton Docks having travelled from the US on the Queen Mary in 1948 for an engagement in London. He keeps warm against the British weather in an over-long, belted trench coat, Trilby hat and warm woollen gloves. 5  The incomparable Bette Davis stars as the tempestuous fading star Margot Channing in the 1950 film, All About Eve. This famous and unusual brown velvet, fur edged costume was designed by eight times Oscar winning designer Edith Head. Apparently the neckline was too wide when it arrived so Davis solved the problem by slipping the dress down to reveal her shoulders. Much sexier that way.

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The New Look by Christian Dior 1947

1945–50 Peace and the New Look 15

VE Day 1945. Women and children in England at the end of World War II in Europe

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Casual, Sport and Leisurewear 1  Playsuit – an open-necked shirt and neatly pressed tailored, flared shorts worn with wedgy espadrilles. Such simple open-air clothes were mostly American. English women were still deprived and rationed, so wasting precious coupons on new sports kit was not really an option. 2  Informal riding clothes – tweed hacking jacket, twill jodhpurs, brown leather jodhpur boots, soft shirt and tie. A felt hat or velvet cap could be worn for hacking, or a headscarf if preferred. These clothes were very well made in hard-wearing materials, so most English women could wear their pre-war kit and still look acceptably well turned out. 3  Sunsuit or swimsuit – a bra top with a tiny flared skirt over matching built-in knickers. Note the daringly bared midriff. 4  Tennis dress – in this instance a crisp white shirt tucked into a pair of white pleated shorts or a divided skirt. This style of garment became the standard girls’ school games uniform; made in school colours of navy, maroon or brown and worn a regulation 15 cm (6 ins) above the knee, with an aertex shirt. The shorts were not at all flattering to the bulgier adolescent form and the aertex shirts shrank alarmingly, however huge they were to begin with. 5  Casual wear – a pair of rolled up white drill jeans could be worn with a plaid lumberjack shirt or, as here, with a striped yachting jersey. Jeans did not become really popular in the UK until the sixties.

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Underwear and Accessories 1 and 2  A spun-rayon nightdress and a classic wool flannel dressing gown (US robe) in women’s sizes. The edges are neatly piped in a contrasting colour. 3  Bra and girdle made of rayon satin and marquisette with elastic panels. 4  Popular late-forties shoe – high heels, sling back, peep toe, platform sole. Assorted sensible colours and bow detail. 5  Sensible shoes of a shape that would continue to be manufactured for decades, ending up as extrawide fittings for the mature customer. 6  Modified wedgy sandal, for the summer. 7  One of an assortment of popular ‘young’ hat shapes with rolled brims – somewhat doughnut-like in shape. 8  Little boater. 9  A bonnet with rouleau trim. 10 and 11  Gloves, in leather, suede or cotton, were obligatory on most smart occasions. The classic handbag (US purse) and a more adventurous bucket bag were either in leather or, more frequently, leatherette.

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Menswear 1  English boys would have killed for such splendid clothes! Denim dungarees and an open-necked shirt, cotton or plaid, won hands down over grey shorts and school shirts. English parents, perhaps in revenge for the privations of rationing, seemed to delight in having their adolescent offspring look as unattractive as possible. 2  Hawaiian print sports shirt worn with woollen swimming trunks. Cotton boxer shorts rapidly became more popular, for obvious reasons. Note the belt, much needed if the weight of the wet wool was not to part the wearer from his swimsuit. 3  This is the sort of coordinated leisure wear that so horrified the English gent. ‘Hollywood’ tailored jacket in light wool, decorated with chocolate brown suede or Melton. A very bold tie and soft slacks completed the outfit. 4  The windcheater was a sort of early anorak made popular by President Eisenhower. Evolved from the battledress blouson jacket, it was much worn by golfers and film technicians as it was a comfortable alternative to the sports jacket, and was usually made in proofed cotton, or brown suede if you worked on the front end of a movie camera. Slacks, pullover, shirt, hat and shoes came as standard. 5  English gentleman’s athletic clothing. An old college blazer and cravat was probably the only strong colour permitted (for instance the shrimp pink worn by members of the Leander Rowing Club). These would be worn with a soft cream Viyella shirt and baggy shorts in khaki cotton. Smarter sporting events would warrant whites for tennis, or white flannel ‘bags’ – loosely cut trousers – for cricket and rowing. 6  The classic English city gent, emulated by solicitors and bank managers. Black bowler hat, threepiece dark suit or black jacket and waistcoat with pinstriped trousers, worn with a white or finely striped shirt with semi-stiff detachable collar, and a silk regimental or club tie in subdued colours. Black Oxford shoes and rolled umbrella complete the image. 7  The city gent off duty and the ‘uniform’ of the university-educated professional. A tweed sports jacket, its life extended by leather elbow patches, a soft-collared shirt often in a faint check, wool tie, trousers of grey flannel or cavalry twill, wool socks, laced brogues usually of brown leather, sometimes daringly of suede (known disparagingly as ‘cad’s creepers’ or ‘brothel creepers’). The outer garments were often made to measure for those who could afford it and, given the indestructible nature of the fabrics used, lasted for generations. Indeed the extreme age of a favourite sports coat was a source of subtle pride, especially since obvious newness was to be avoided lest the wearer be thought ‘nouveau’ or ‘arriviste’.

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Zooties 1 and 2 Zoot suits were an extraordinary expression of rebellion against the sober garments of the 1940s. They used yards of expensive, impractical fabric and were a defiantly ostentatious statement of cultural identity by the young black American male. They were also adopted by ambitious Mexican Americans. Unfortunately for this flamboyant, entertaining style, cloth rationing rendered such extravagance to be considered un-American, even illegal. Drunken, off-duty marines felt it their patriotic duty to attack Zoot suiters – beating them up and destroying their suits. The style re-emerged in Colombia during the 1950s as a vigorous nightclub fashion, not unconnected with jazz and the consumption of marijuana. 3  The lady wears a halter-necked dance dress in white cloque.

1945–50 Peace and the New Look 23

2 1950–55 PARIS RULES

The 1950s are remembered as a time of renewal and regained security. The shadow of the war was fading, rationing had come to an end, and the New Look heralded a decade of great vigour during which fashion was dominated by the great couturiers of Paris. Known only by their surnames, Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga, Givenchy ruled their salons, workrooms, clients and the fashion press with rigorous precision. Whims of iron indeed. Season by season the new styles appeared: the Princess line and the Tulip, the A-Line, the Trapeze, the Envol and the Sac. Each one became useless after its allotted season, to be superseded by the next. This state of affairs was challenged from two angles: the first was the unstoppable rise of the working woman, the second was the new and alarming American phenomenon of the Teenager, for whom the essentially grown-up fashions of Paris were an irrelevance. The ideal image of the decade was that of the family, which is hardly surprising when you consider the losses and upheavals of the war years. The typical fifties family, portrayed in countless magazines and advertisements, lived in a neat suburban house. Father, wearing a suit and a soft Trilby hat, left each morning to catch a commuter train to his place of employment where he spent the day earning his family’s keep with other fathers, and perhaps flirting discreetly with his secretary (we will come to her later). Meanwhile, his pretty, cheerful wife took the two children to the local school, or sent them off with their packed lunch boxes to walk or cycle on their own, for the roads were safer then. She would then don an apron and rubber gloves and do the housework, making use of the many labour-saving devices now available. In the afternoon she might shop, cook or visit a similarly situated lady friend, always remembering to be home in time to make tea for the children, help with their homework and put them to bed before changing into an attractive dress in order to welcome her exhausted husband home from work with a cooling drink and a nice supper. At weekends her husband would wear his casual clothes and they would indulge in family outings to relations or places of interest. Men and children had every interest in maintaining this idyll, but even at its height it was under threat because the children turned into teenagers and an increasing number of women refused to play the game. This brings me to the secretary I mentioned earlier. An ever-increasing number of women worked as a matter of course before marriage, usually as typists, teachers or nurses. More women than ever went on to higher education and, with difficulty, forced themselves into medicine, the legal professions and even journalism, creating a demand for feminine business wear. Many saw no reason to lose their independence on marriage, and during this decade the harassed figure of the working mother appeared on the scene.

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Men also began to be far more fashion-conscious. During the forties the ideal of the well-dressed gentleman was to look as inconspicuous as possible, an inclination encouraged by clothes rationing, when men had given their clothing coupons to their female relatives, and so become shabbier than ever. The nostalgia that had prompted the New Look also affected men’s fashions. The city gent began to borrow the styles of his Edwardian grandfather, complete with curly-brimmed bowler hat and navy single-breasted, velvet-collared overcoat. It must have been a great surprise to these men to find that they were used as inspiration for the South London youths who became known as teddy boys. (Teds did not, however, wear bowler hats or carry rolled umbrellas.) Young working women, though an unlikely counterpart to the vigorously working-class teddy boys, are at the other end of new young fashion. Both evolved ways of dressing that identified their class and chosen lifestyle in a way that had only a little to do with the biannual changes of haute couture.

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Formal Dress: Designs from Women & Beauty 1950 The manufacturers of the garments drawn on this page have modified the extreme fashion statements of Dior and Balmain and created wearable classics that remained in fashion for many years. 1  ‘Little’ tweed suit by Jaeger enlivened by red gloves and a matching silk scarf. Shoes and hat were brown. Then, as now, Jaeger clothes were known to be smart, well-made, well-designed and reassuringly unextreme. I have recently bought a nearly identical suit on sale as a current style. 2 Characteristic fifties dress for the home dressmaker, described thus: ‘kimono-shaped bodice, the waist accentuated by patent leather belt; standout hip pockets on softly full skirt, big roll collar to give a deep neckline.’ The dress is shown made up in deep green corduroy, khaki wool and dark green, trimmed with toning stripes. 3  Two-piece jersey jumper suit. This useful outfit has deep, almost batwing sleeves and a straight skirt. It was made in two shades of red. 4  Flattering red velour coat, with the hood lined with soft grey, by Windsmoor, another British firm still flourishing 80 years later. 5  An absolutely splendid swing-back coat in caramel wool. It has outsize pockets, collar and design features. This is another shape that comes back into fashion every five years or so.

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Formal Dress: International Couture 1  Batwinged peplum in pleated faille on a velvet, stem-skirted dress from the Hartnell collection of 1950. This interesting idea could be used to modernize last year’s plain black evening dress, as the trained overskirt is easily detachable. 2  This cocktail dress is described as having a ‘corolla bosom’ – whatever that might be. The dress would be constructed on the stand by draping and folding stiffish satin or taffeta in the manner of an origami table napkin, and then stitching it to the rigidly boned and darted bodice. The double skirt, straight below, stiffened, flared with a dramatically asymmetric hem above, appeared in a collection by Jean Dessès. 3  ‘Shocking pink’, the colour most closely identified with Elsa Schiaparelli, implies the combination of humour and outrageous elegance found in this designer’s imaginative work. The pink overskirt and bodice are embroidered by the long-established firm of Lesage with tiny jet beads in a striking baroque pattern. The crinoline-shaped underskirt is black silk organza over a stiffened petticoat. 4  The American designer Charles James was described by Balenciaga as having raised dressmaking from ‘an applied art to a pure art form’. He built his clothes like architecture, over a complex substructure more usually associated with sculptural engineering than fashion. James called this dress ‘four-leaved clover’ and made it from the heaviest quality ivory silk duchesse satin (which would cost about £80 ($120) per metre these days if you could still get it), inset with perfect black velvet. 5  Men’s evening clothes did not change much in the early 1950s. Older men still wore dinner jackets and, for grand occasions, tails with a white tie that had no doubt been made for them before the war. Very young men quite often wore their father’s suits. However, the upper and upper-middle classes still regularly changed for dinner, at least on special occasions, so the possession of a black dinner jacket, either single- or double-breasted, was still a normal part of a gentleman’s wardrobe.

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Formal Dress: Parisian Couture 1  Fifties chic by Balmain. Princess line wool dress with bias-cut crepe neck and short sleeves. Swathed drum hat, long gloves, lots of pearls. 2  Glamour by Balenciaga. Dinner suit in black velvet and moiré with an outsize collar and witty hat. The tiny pillbox, in this case with a stiffened tassel sticking out behind, was typical Balenciaga and beautifully balances the exotic proportions of the suit. 3  Also by Balmain, for his younger customers. Dresses such as this, made as here in lace and tulle or frequently in satin and poult with net underskirts, swirled through countless balls and dances. Note that the solid heels of the early 1950s are now lethal stiletto points. 4  This was thought to be the acceptable way to smoke – head thrown back and with a long cigarette holder. This is Dior 1950 with a very smart reworking of the artist’s smock into a hugely bloused top, with a very tight skirt. 5  En vol double apron day dress by Dior in fine check tweed with a velvet Peter Pan collar and bias-cut cuffs. This charmingly silly idea could well have been the forerunner of Vivienne Westwood’s padded bottoms four decades later, designed rather more for the photographers than the public.

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Evening dress in sunray pleats 1955

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First Night at the Opera. She wears a tremendous taffeta evening coat, inspired by Balenciaga. Her escort’s classic tuxedo suit is finished with a purple lined evening cloak.

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Celebrity: Young Actresses Photographed in 1955 by Norman Parkinson 1 The most conventional of the three wears a neat check wool pinafore dress and almost sensible shoes. She wears her dress with a polo neck jumper – had she been a secretary the jumper would probably have been a crisp white shirt-blouse. 2 Corduroy smock and knickerbocker suit. This is something of an original, as breeches were not usually worn in a non-sporting situation. However, they are a sensible solution to rehearsals. She wears ballet pumps and seamed stockings. 3  A more American look, with the girl’s hair in a ponytail; she wears her polo neck jumper tucked into high-waisted tartan ski pants and curious laced dance pumps. 4  The black leotard top is worn with a long circular skirt and stole in enormous checks. This dramatic outfit was an excellent solution to informal dinner parties in draughty country houses, being warm and attractive and allowing you to keep your vest on.

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Casual and Occasion Wear: The Middle Class English Family 1  Grandmother. Her coat is of the then fashionable pony skin, trimmed and collared with beaver. It seems that every woman apart from the very poor owned at least one fur coat. They were a desirable status symbol, but with efficient central heating still an unusual luxury in the home, and almost unheard of in popular cars, they also helped to solve the problem of keeping both warm and smart. 2  The small boy wears a traditional tweed coat with matching cap, and gaiters – an infuriating garment with a huge number of fiddly buttons and a strap under the foot. They were worn by boys and girls since long trousers or warm tights were either considered unsuitable or were not available. 3  The boy’s mother wears her good suit – nearly New Look, with a neat waist and double pocket detail and a fullish pleated skirt, worn with well-polished shoes. 4  Great-grandmother is not wearing her fur coat for once, replacing it with a smart edge-to-edge swingback cloth coat. Like Queen Mary, the elderly often wore ankle-length skirts left over from the thirties, or even earlier, never having adopted the short skirts of the forties (or twenties). Her flowerpot hat is trimmed with flowers in dark silk. 5  Maternity clothes remained quite a problem, since decorum still demanded that you conceal the bulge for as long as possible. This young mother-to-be wears a simple smock top and wrap-around skirt.

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Casual, Sport and Streetwear: Bohemia 1  This over-size sweater – known as the Sloppy Joe – was hated by middle class parents, and therefore became a modest symbol of rebellion. Here worn by a young actress, hair cropped ready to be asked to play Joan of Arc, and teamed with tight ski pants and ballet pumps. This look became a favourite with art students and indeed most girls with creative ambitions. 2  The successful poet. Odd and baggy Irish tweed coat worn over a surprisingly well-pressed check suit and cheery bow tie. The umbrella is not tightly furled. 3  A cashmere polo neck jumper worn with flannel or tweed slacks, much favoured by conductors and actors when rehearsing. 4  A very grand film director slumming it. Crumpled Italian suit worn with a knitted sports shirt and the obligatory cigarette. 5  Actresses led the way in reintroducing the raincoat as a glamorous garment. This example has storm flaps and is in plastic-coated cotton. They did look very good, and their cheapness made them very popular: art students and prostitutes favoured black, to the confusion of kerb-crawlers.

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Hair and Accessories 1, 2 and 3  In the fifties it was usual to wash and style hair at home, but chemical permanent-waving solutions were sufficiently dangerous and unpredictable to send most women to the increasing band of professional hairdressers. These three examples of ‘Salon Perm’ advertisements demonstrate the decade’s obsession with rigid personal grooming. Typically the hair would be cut and permed every six or seven weeks, and once a week, or once a fortnight if money was a bit short, the hair would be washed and set, again by the hairdresser. Even schoolgirls slept in wire and coin rollers, kept in place by hairnets or silk scarves. The tortured hairstyles now only seen in ballroom dancing competitions stem from this period. 4  Boys and men went to the barber once a month and had a ‘short back and sides, please’ without any option. Long hair was considered frighteningly decadent and unmanly. Almost no one rebelled. 5  The alternative. When my mother allowed me to have an urchin cut in 1953 she was thought to be encouraging a dangerously arty and independent streak, in the small provincial town where I grew up. The freedom from hair grips and slippery hair ribbons was splendid. 6  Girls often pushed their shoulder-length hair back under a velvet band, made with a bit of elastic at the back to ensure a snug fit. In the late fifties and early sixties this would be substituted by a folded scarf.

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Menswear 1 The new formality. City coat in Crombie wool with black velvet collar. A tight descendant of the Edwardian frock coat, worn over formal black jacket and pinstripe trousers, bowler hat and the rest. 2  Successful composer. Pre-war double-breasted suit and a rather theatrical cloak. 3  Biker. When Marlon Brando starred in On the Waterfront wearing a Perfecto leather jacket and denim jeans, whole platoons of teenagers yearned for a jacket like his. It was based on a flying jacket, and became the essential garment not only for bikers, but for rock stars and the seriously butch of both sexes. It is worn with a tight T-shirt and tighter jeans. The six-segment cap, padded gloves and heavy boots are also leather. As a ‘look’ it has proved astonishingly enduring; only the other day in my village I encountered an entire family, including grandparents, so attired, resting beside their machines. The look sprang up, apparently fully formed, as early as 1954.

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3 1955–60 THE RISE OF THE TEENAGER Before 1950 children became girls or youths at around the age of puberty, and at about eighteen years of age they became adults. They had no special styles and no spending power. By the end of the decade things were very different. Many young people in their late teens had some kind of paid work which, as long as you were not having to pay much rent, you could actually live on. The young, armed with this new spending power, demanded their own fashions and their own places of entertainment where they could listen to their own music. By the mid-fifties there were clubs where students in over-sized sweaters jived to the new rock ’n’ roll bands and dance halls where skiffle groups played Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Leather boys in jeans and black, many-zippered jackets fed juke boxes in coffee bars, and all day the new Italian machines made coffee in espresso bars, milk bars, soda fountains, Wimpys and ice cream parlours. It was all very noisy but, to look back on, curiously innocent. Except among the fast and decadent jazz musicians themselves, drugs were still substances you were given by the doctor when you were unwell; gay still meant happy and nice girls didn’t go all the way. The clothes worn by the young were largely defined by the boys, in itself a new trend. Girls’ clothes were fairly restrained; they might wear a buttoned cardigan with a string of beads and a simple skirt or pinafore dress or, more daringly, tight trousers and ballet shoes – it was considered tarty to wear high heels with trousers. In summer a full cotton skirt was worn over several layers of crackling petticoats (my school tried to ban them), with flesh-coloured stockings and stiletto heels. Boys, other than American preppies or the English public school product, could choose from short Italian jackets, fluorescent socks, winkle-picker shoes, leather jackets and jeans or a shaggy sweater and sandals. It was a reversal of Vogue’s world, where fashion could begin only in Paris and then filter down to the street. Now teenage fashions began in the city streets and worked their way outwards and upwards. In 1959 the all-powerful fashion journalists started to notice that their domain was beginning to show signs of insubordination and began to question the new trends. ‘What does fashion represent?’ Vogue asked in 1959: Decoration, disguise, a mood of society. For millions of working teenagers clothes are the biggest pastime in life, a symbol of independence and the fraternity of an age group. The origin of the teenage look might be urban and working class, but it has been taken up with alacrity by the King’s Road. It owes nothing to Paris or Savile Row; something to entertainment idols (the Tommy Steele haircut … the Bardot sex babe look) and much to Italy.

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In 1955 a new art-school-trained British designer called Mary Quant opened a shop called Bazaar in the King’s Road, Chelsea, to sell the artlessly simple clothes that by the next decade would make her the major fashion force in the world outside Paris. Her shop became the social centre for the bohemian Chelsea Set, and soon the new-style café society was blooming in little French and Italian bistros and the latest help-yourself boutiques began to overrun the grocery shops and artists’ pubs that had originally lined the King’s Road. The gossip columns now began to be dominated by this Chelsea Set, who liked to fraternize with the left-wing playwrights and actors of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, handily situated in Sloane Square at the western end of the King’s Road. This theatre company has been credited with the single-handed revival of the British theatre, replacing West End drawing room comedies with gritty dramas involving angry young men and kitchen sinks. John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger, staged to exceedingly mixed critical reviews in 1965, was a liberating attack on patrician complacency or one long whinge, depending on your stance. In America, the ultimate bohemians were the Beats, a generation of college drop-outs who could be found leading nomadic and amoral lives from Berkeley, California, to Greenwich Village in New York. They discovered marijuana, published poetry and read the novels of Jack Kerouac. In London, their influence gradually overcame the working-class primness of the Royal Court set during the next decade.

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Formal Dress: Couture by Dior, Jacques Griffe and Marion The three couture outfits on this page are high fashion, indicative of the almost tyrannical hold that each new season’s ‘lines’ had on clothes. Marion’s summery offering (below, left) was far more likely to be what most women actually wore. 1  Smart day suit in fine black wool, belted on the natural waistline, Dior 1957. 2  Trapeze dress by Dior. You can often tell if a garment is haute couture because the waist is in the wrong place, or in this case non-existent. Dior would not have been amused when this shape was enthusiastically adopted by the pregnant, the waistless and the frankly stout. The model’s rather twee pose reminds us that this is fashion, but not for long. 3  Day dress by Marion in striped pure cotton with a stiff collar, wide belt and five widths of fabric boxpleated into the naturally placed trim waist. (It would have to be trim, with those horizontal stripes.) Layers of sugar-washed nylon frills give the skirt its bounce. 4  This neo-twenties hobbled day dress by Jacques Griffe was also destined for the sale rail. It is a truism that if a woman has a waist she prefers to show it, and if she has not she has no wish to pay designer prices to hide it.

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Formal Dress: Balmain and Others 1  Balmain’s design credo was that dressmaking is the architecture of movement. At the height of his fame he designed exquisite clothes for royalty, movie-stars, glamorous ladies of – as the French put it – ‘a certain age’, actresses in plays and films, as well as air-hostess uniforms and, most surprising of all, roomy garments for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. This sketch shows a matching outfit of a relaxed coat worn over a fine wool suit, with a spotted neck scarf in the same silk as the coat lining. 2 A remarkable evening dress made from a half-circle of silk printed in a bold abstract design and constructed with a single seam. It is an oddity well out of the mainstream but an interesting experiment nonetheless. 3  This dress in rose pink georgette over deep pink taffeta was made for Princess Alexandra. The simple transparent bodice is mounted on a boned bustier, and the straight cocktail-length skirt is draped in the same georgette. She wore it in a series of photographs by the English photographer and designer Cecil Beaton.

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Celebrities: Newsreel 1  By 1956 Elvis Presley, former truck driver from the deep south and the undisputed king of rock ’n’ roll, had made three influential movies – Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog and Love me Tender. It has been said that without him, modern pop music might not have happened, or at least would have taken a different form. The vocal style that he made his own was lifted straight from the black popular music of the period, then filtered through both Gospel singing and Country and Western music. The connections between the style of music and the apparel of the musician are endlessly fascinating; never more so than in the case of ‘Elvis the Pelvis’! He influenced two style tribes: firstly the working cowboy look which reached its apogee with Ralph Lauren two decades later, and secondly by wearing ever more outrageous stage costumes that made him the original Rhinestone Cowboy and spawned a generation of imitators. In 1958 Elvis was drafted into the US Army to the accompaniment of intense media attention, and served in Germany for eighteen months. It must have been an interesting experience for both parties. 2  Ralph Vaughan Williams was the grand old man of English music till his death in 1958. He was not interested in fashion. The baggy grey suit could have been anything up to twenty years old, and his daily wear of a grey knitted waistcoat, soft shirt and well-worn tie were typical of his class and profession. 3  This is a sketch of the great Miles Davis, exponent of cool jazz and hero of many a student at the time. I checked the date of this photograph several times, as the long lurex overshirt comes as a great surprise. It is another example of where black American musicians go, everyone else goes sooner or later. 4  In 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller married filmstar and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. This American intellectual wears a tan summer-weight three-button jacket, dark tie and pleat front trousers. 5  Either the English painter, John Bratby, was very poor, or his mind was far above clothes; I think he has tried to mend the pocket of his old tweed coat himself with string, and although he was very popular as a painter of vigorous, somewhat orange portraits, his reclusive nature did not allow for much in the way of coordinated leisure wear.

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Casual and Leisurewear: Claire McCardell and the Teenager 1  Co-ed student at Syracuse University, 1955. Peter-Pan-collared blouse, cardigan, tweed skirt, bobbysox and loafers; all prepared for a good marriage to the man in the grey flannel suit. 2  Late fifties’ sack dress, stretched taut over the lady’s rear. 3  This little dress looks both back to the New Look and forward to the sixties’ miniskirt. It is difficult to divine the occasion it was designed for – the original photograph shows a department store carrier bag, but it does look overdressed for just shopping. 4 and 5 Two innovative designs by the wonderful Claire McCardell, who really invented American fashion! The denim summer dress on the left is apparently just two huge triangles of fabric held by a slim belt. Miss McCardell was the first to use dance clothes for street wear, using leotards as a ‘body’ with matching tights; the striped wrap skirt and ballet pumps make a versatile and useful look. Her clothes are nearly impossible to date, and the American design industry owes her an enormous debt.

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Uniforms and Sportswear 1 and 2  Girls’ school. Insisting that adolescents wear middle-aged hairstyles and unflattering uniforms was a peculiarly British phenomenon. All schools except for a few ‘progressive’ establishments did insist on uniforms until quite recently, and a few still do, on the grounds that it promoted team spirit and cooperation. It is certainly easier as a parent to know that your increasingly independent offspring has no choice in the matter. On the whole, girls’ uniforms were as similar as possible to their brothers’, simply substituting a gored or pleated skirt for grey flannel trousers (2). In summer, however, simple shirt-waist dresses were worn, often with white collars, in a range of striped or checked cotton, with a cardigan in the school colour against the chill (1). For colder weather, the school blazer was worn with a shirt and tie, and a cardigan or V-neck sweater was added for warmth. Some schools still wore soft grey or navy felt hats, with straw boaters in summer, but a beret became an attractive alternative. Fee-paying schools added smart Harris tweed coats, belted raincoats and occasionally a skirt suit, as well as the clothing needed for a variety of team games, usually lacrosse or hockey, and netball, an English forerunner of basketball. 3  The smarter British boys’ schools expected their students to look like trainee bank managers. For classroom and formal wear black jackets with the school crest were worn with a waistcoat (US vest), or V-neck sweater, striped black and grey or plain grey trousers. Really grand schools still insisted on stiff white collars, with studs, and a boater. 4  Not strictly a uniform, but close. The duffle-coat was designed for naval officers to wear to sea, so it was quite natural for it to be adopted by other professional men who had to stand around in the cold encouraging other chaps to run about. Here the coat is worn over a variety of checks – checkered flat cap, shirt and tie, discreetly checkered tweed sports jacket. The trousers were probably in a plain fabric. 5  Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in four minutes in 1955, achieved his record in a singlet made of cotton jersey with the logo of the Amateur Athletics Association on the chest, his number card safely pinned on, front and back, cotton drill elastic-waisted shorts and black spiked running shoes. No Lycra anywhere.

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Casual and Street Style: Teds and Others 1  San Francisco bohemian from The Subterraneans, a film loosely based on Jack Kerouac’s novel. This was the relatively staid beginning of the Beat Generation. The dancer wears very tight white ski pants and a black striped cream top with fairly tidy Bardot-esque hair and a lot of eye makeup. 2  The Teddy Boy, or Ted, was an accidental by-product of the tailors of Savile Row. The flamboyant frock-coat-length jacket, brocade waistcoat and narrow trousers were aimed at their usual upper-class customers, the majority of whom were far too conservative to adopt it. However, the idea of dressing in a way that ridiculed ‘toffs’ and also looked exotic and glamorous touched a loud chord in the young, urban, working-class male. Details were added: narrow cowboy tie, zootie styling, suede shoes with immensely thick crepe soles known as ‘brothel creepers’. The Ted attracted a great deal of horrified media attention and confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions by acting the part of hooligan, slashing cinema seats and flashing flick-knives and greasy combs, so that the term ‘Teddy Boy’ became interchangeable with ‘delinquent’. Compared to the later teen tribes such as Hell’s Angels, punks and skinheads, the Ted is now remembered almost with affection. 3  The folky precursor of grunge, born-again Christians and the Liberal Party. Ted Polhemus defines folkies as a distinctive group – young people who aspired to a purer, rural, more hand-crafted aesthetic. He makes a distinction between the nihilism of the beatniks who despaired of humanity, and the optimism of ‘the folkies who felt that given the chance, and the right music, something could be done’. The tendency to political activism has convinced many that it is not possible to be left-wing and well dressed, though the activists would say that they had more important issues to think about than matching accessories. 4  The intellectual. This lady’s feelings about clothes were mostly negative. She did not want to appear prim, bourgeois, dainty or sweet, or any of the things that the bossier glossies would have her be. This made the choice of suitable clothes surprisingly difficult; increasingly the solution was to wear black, and borrow your boyfriend’s coat and, in this case, college scarf. 5  The early rock singer was not an intellectual, even if his shirt owed something to the American folk singer. He wears an open-necked piped shirt, tight pants, and slightly too much jewellery.

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Hair and Accessories 1  ‘Glamorize your beauty zone’ says the advertisement for this well-cut strapless bra. The pernicious skeletal ideal may already have gripped haute couture in its deadly clutches, but real women needed seriously well-engineered help, and the new nylon fabrics and elasticized satins were perfect for the job. 2  Smart quiffed hair-cut, long, greasy and hated by the middle classes. 3  Crocodile winkle-picker shoe to wear with the above hair-do. 4  Impossibly rigid standards of grooming, as promoted by women’s magazines at this time, intimidated all but the most rigorous of fashion’s followers. This model has it all: cast iron rollered hair-do, perfect make-up with the ubiquitous cat’s-eye liner in stark black, dark lipstick with matching nail varnish, and sparkly modern jewellery. Boned corsetry made sure that no unseemly slouching occurred. Women looked fifteen years younger the minute this look loosened up in the sixties. 5  Diamanté bows decorate the shoulders of this poult evening dress. 6  Resort fashion. Sun hat to protect the frizzled perm, dark glasses, cigarette holder and lipstick as in town. 7 Stately swimsuit in french navy with white lace-covered insert. The rubber swimming cap was obligatory for lady swimmers – it did protect the hair-do, but not even little rubber petals could make the things flattering.

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Menswear 1  Alf Ramsay was often regarded as one of the greatest players of English football. Here he is in 1952 training in Epping Forest. From 1963 to 1974 he was captain of Tottenham Hotspur, becoming manager of the England team for much of the ’60s. In those days footballers were far from the highly paid superstars they are today, as his hand knitted sweater and long, baggy cotton shorts might attest. 2  The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator. He was also a snappy dresser who clearly appreciated top quality materials and tailoring. It is clear, if you look closely, that the overcoat and scarf are finest cashmere, his classically tailored suit of Savile Row English worsted and his artistically tied cravat of spotted silk are as finely made and durable as his famed ‘organic architecture’. 3  Robert Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic, and classicist. For many years he lived on the island of Majorca, enjoying the sun, the café culture, and no doubt, the low prices. He is said to have much resented the rise of tourism that disturbed his tranquil retreat. Here Graves is dressed in the recognisable ensemble of the idiosyncratic arty gent abroad, a locally sourced straw sun-hat, floppy silk scarf, open-neck linen shirt, pale linen suit, tastefully crumpled. The cigarette and a glass of wine are obligatory accessories. 4 During the 1950s, Britain’s economy was suffering greatly and the nation was plagued with high labour shortages. This guy was part of the wave of Jamaican immigrants that arrived in England on their British passports, hoping for work and a better life. Many settled in the South London district of Brixton, now colourfully supplied with African fabric shops and what would have seemed very exotic fruit and vegetable markets, but in the 1950s as bleak and unwelcoming as most other places in Britain. He wears a soft hat, a drab second hand suit, and carries his belongings in leatherette suitcases. 5  This off-duty singer could only be from the West Coast of America. He wears a soft cream cardigan, with a tan trim, lemon coloured open necked shirt, tan lightweight slacks, white socks and tan moccasin shoes.

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Maternity and Childrenswear It is no accident that we had to wait until the late fifties for pregnancy to become fashionable. Immediately after the war came a tremendous ‘baby boom’ which lasted for ten years or so, producing healthy babies to compensate for the loss of so many of their potential fathers. Women were encouraged to feel pride in their condition rather than just putting up with it. These examples are all from a smart Italian magazine called Cosí and were possibly the first suggestion that it is possible to be pregnant and (fairly) stylish. 1  This two-piece with a jaunty spotted neck-tie made in bluey/grey shantung for the top and a straight cream skirt with hidden stretch tummy panel was a classic shape. 2 and 3  Two pretty pleated smock tops, which retain the crisp, neat details of the period. 4 and 5  Summer dresses in washable cottons were a warm weather uniform for little girls, and were the basics for school uniforms for many years. Such dresses were surprisingly well made; matching knickers, three-inch hems and generous turnings in the side seams were standard practice, so that a favourite dress would be handed down to younger sisters or cousins. 6  Sunsuit in washable cotton. A comfortable playsuit for the very young, to be worn with a cotton sun hat and bucket and spade.

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4 1960–65 THE KENNEDY YEARS

If the late 1950s were a time of hope, the early sixties seemed, at least for the young, to be years when much that was hoped for had been achieved. The youth of America and Europe were more than fashionable, they were fashion. The permissive society got under way, accompanied by the haunting tones of four boys from Liverpool who became the most popular human beings on the planet: the Beatles. Sexual and social taboos were eroded, changes epitomized by hallucinogenic drugs, the contraceptive pill and the miniskirt. As is often the case, short skirts and frantic social change were the visible froth on the groundswell of much greater turbulence. The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, made a famous speech about the ‘wind of change’ blowing through Africa as Britain, France and Belgium released country after country to the unstoppable tide of black nationalism. In the United States black civil rights leader Martin Luther King fought for recognition against the forces of prejudice and inertia and, despite ugly outbreaks of white supremacist viciousness, he achieved more in a few years than had been managed for a generation. Meanwhile, the Cold War between the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union rumbled on, bringing the world as close as it has ever been to nuclear war. The decade began with spectacular scientific and medical achievements. Russia and America spent billions of dollars to prove their supremacy in space with rockets, sputniks and eventually manned spacecraft. The first human heart transplant promised, for a while, to conquer death itself until America’s young President Kennedy was shot in the head by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. The new social order was unrecognizable, uncongenial and deeply alarming to members of the old establishment. For a while the traditional events of society and the summer season seemed likely to be swept away by the egalitarian tide, for in the sixties only the young were news. There was a new élite in the west: its members were all young and all concerned with the creation of image – photographers and hairdressers, pop singers, actors, models, interior decorators, writers and designers. They came from all kinds of backgrounds, from London’s East End to America’s wealthy East Coast. Because their prestige was founded on talent rather than inherited wealth they shared a great respect for professionalism and held the old-fashioned amateur in contempt. The cult of the working-class hero meant that, in bohemian circles, if you spoke with an upper-class accent you took some pains to disguise it and if your politics tended to the right you kept quiet about it. Fashion reflected the interest in the Space Age by incorporating new man-made fabrics in stark geometric shapes. Two important designers of the decade were Paco Rabanne and Courrèges (see page 86). Rabanne made chain-mail dresses from lightweight plastic paillettes, to be worn with huge plastic earrings and rings made from Perspex. Silver or chrome became the precious metal of choice

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and white a major couture colour. The favourite dress was a brief sleeveless shift worn with a short sharp haircut and false eyelashes. The extent of the fashion revolution could instantly be seen in men’s clothes. Longer hair, printed shirts, no ties and skin-tight jeans became commonplace. Homosexuality at last ceased to be a criminal offence and, as the newly-legal gay men in the creative professions stepped gingerly out of the closet, they quickly raised the standards of male elegance now that they no longer had to disguise themselves as straight. The attitude held by ordinary Englishmen, that an interest in sartorial display or excessive personal hygiene was effete or worse, was still firmly in place in politics, the city and the armed forces. But liberation in the arts began to infiltrate even these bastions of tradition. ‘Running away from the grey pox’, Vogue explained, was a recurring theme of the decade and a brittle newness for its own sake became the admired quality. It talked of a lust for professionalism, but in fact the visual arts were in some confusion. Figurative painting underpinned by academic life drawing was suddenly completely unacceptable, as was harmony in modern music. As a result, students of fine art were not taught to draw in case it damaged their natural talent. Abstract painting and atonal music were the only acceptable forms of expression in serious art circles; if your talent was representational then you had better use it in one of the many applied design fields such as stage design, graphic art, advertising or textile design; and if your musical ability involved the composition of tunes, then you turned to the theatre, films or TV for employment. You might not be accepted as a ‘serious’ artist, but at least it was possible to earn a living by your creative talents without selling out to commerce.

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Formal Dress: Norman Parkinson 1  The great Norman Parkinson photographed the models on this page for Queen magazine. Possibly the only photographer who combined glamour with an enchanting sense of the absurd, his pictures define the look of any period in which he worked. This coat made from Aztec-inspired wool blanket is a typical choice. The straight, simple shape, waist-length sleeves and hem exactly on the knee are synonymous with the more ladylike aspects of the sixties, but the bohemian fabric lifts the whole image from ordinariness. 2 Weeks of work must have gone into this grand evening two-piece. The knee-length silk tunic is encrusted with beads worked in a daisy-like design, each flower spilling over with dangling crystal bugle beads. The motifs on the underskirt (which I suspect has a simple camisole top) are simpler, though the beads on the hem must have come adrift at the first dance. 3  One of three little black dresses from the Paris collections of 1961. It was worn with a boned backless and strapless bra, hardly necessary on the skinny model but crucial on those better endowed. The sombre black is enlivened by the silly cocktail hat of ruched silk organza.

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Celebrities: From Jackie O to Jesse Owens 1  Entrepreneur and night-club owner Hugh Heffner with one of his Bunny Girls. A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at the Playboy Club. Bunnies wore a costume called a ‘bunny suit’, inspired by the tuxedowearing Playboy rabbit mascot, consisting of a strapless corset teddy, bunny ears, black pantyhose, a collar, cuffs and a fluffy cottontail. They were supervised by rather fierce ’Bunny Mothers’ who saw to it that the girls did not consort with the customers for anything other than their waiting duties, though it would have been hard to get up to anything unseemly in that corset. Hefner wears an entirely conventional two-piece suit with a tie covered with bunnies, the Playboy logo. 2  Jacqueline Lee (Bouvier) Kennedy Onassis, commonly known as ‘Jackie O’, was the wife of John F.  Kennedy and First Lady during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. She is remembered for her contributions to the arts and preservation of historic architecture, her style, elegance, and grace. She was a fashion icon; her famous ensemble of pink Chanel suit and matching pillbox hat has become symbolic of her husband’s assassination and one of the lasting images of the 1960s. Here she arrives in France in head-to-toe cream and white by Givenchy. 3  In the tortured history of sports and politics, one moment has always stood above the others: Jesse Owens’ performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. A black man entered Hitler’s Coliseum and destroyed the theory of Aryan physical supremacy by winning four gold medals in track and field. The Führer was apparently furious. However, Owens’ subsequent life was hard; he had to take any job going, from car park attendant to DJ. Here, in neat dark blue jersey shirt, Owens lends his image to a cigar advertisement. 4 Salvador Dalí was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter. He was an absolutely superb draughtsman and realistic painter who translated his often tortured dreams into unforgettable paintings. Here, in middle age, he sports the dyed black hair and elongated moustache for which he was famous, with an elegant cream double-breasted suit and a patterned tie, designed by himself. 5  Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former actress, singer, and fashion model and was the first and greatest of the European ‘blonde bombshells’. She trained as a ballet dancer, which gave her a charm and grace not often associated with film actors. Here she strides out across St Mark’s Piazza in Venice wearing ballet flats, pink spotted ‘Capri’ pants and a white vest top with spaghetti straps. Her tiny waist was natural, the bouffant hair-do had a little more help. The original photo shows her hotly pursued by the paparazzi.

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His and hers pinstripes 1960

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Girl in a red and white striped cotton dress, with two boys in the background, summer 1961

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Leisurewear: Smartly Casual 1  A fully-fashioned jumper worn over ski-pants (again). It becomes smarter to wear a headscarf crossed under the chin and tied at the back of the neck, with the fringe peeping out from the pushed back scarf. 2  Another important look that became very popular for semi-formal evening wear. A long, dark velvet skirt is worn here with a satin blouse collared with a circular-cut frill. 3  Blouse and skirt ensemble using several different toning patterns, in simple shapes that could easily be made at home. 4  This V-necked top and straight skirt was a useful alternative to the pinafore or jumper dress. It could be dressed ‘up’ with a frilly blouse, or ‘down’ with a striped pullover, as here, and worn in the office or at home depending on the fabric and the accessories. 5 The late sixties start here, not so much with the top but with the new haircut invented by Vidal Sassoon, and the change of emphasis in the make-up. Owl-eyes rule. The eyes were skilfully painted, using new, refined make-up, to look as huge and round as possible, accentuated by theatrical false eyelashes. Lips became paler, to draw even more attention to the eyes. 6  Simple shirt blouse, worn with the new hipster skirt and matching frilled scarf – here tied peasantfashion behind the head. The hipster was a difficult style for women to wear well, as it only looked smart if you didn’t have any (hips, that is).

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Sportswear 1  Skiing became increasingly fashionable and, with the proliferation of package tour companies offering all-in deals of comparative cheapness and chummy efficiency, the winter holiday was within the reach of many people for the first time. Department stores from Macy’s to Lillywhites catered for growing interest in this sport. This girl is wearing a cagoule or anorak in waterproofed poplin; the cheerful check is reversible to plain blue or red and is worn with stretch pants reinforced with bri-nylon. The stitched centre-front crease and strap under the foot kept the look neat. Ski pants, usually in black, became the uniform of the female art student, before being overtaken by jeans. 2  Tennis dress by Teddy Tinling. Even quite informal play demanded whites. Discreet coloured trim was allowed, on buttons and piping to begin with, but becoming increasingly bolder as fashions changed. This smartly tailored dress has a picture collar buttoning into a small waist belt. All sorts of shirt-and-skirt or shirt-and-shorts ensembles were also acceptable. 3  The tennis professional wears long white trousers, and a windcheater when not actually playing. Men still wore long trousers, as they continue to do for cricket, but increasingly white shorts replaced them. 4  A casual ensemble of a printed silk or rayon shirt-blouse worn tucked into a cummerbund, if you had the waist, or outside the tight three-quarter-length pants, if you didn’t. Considering the level of the girl’s grooming, which includes roller waved hair and full make-up, the bare feet and flip-flops come as a bit of a surprise. Stockings or, from the middle of the decade, tights were worn on all formal occasions and always in ‘town’, however hot the weather. 5  Even nice girls take to wearing bikinis. This one in gingham is trimmed with broderie anglaise and has a matching sun hat. 6  One-piece cotton playsuit, with a lightly boned strapless top and side-zippered shorts. The brightly patterned drawstring skirt is made of fine terry towelling and could be pulled flat to use for drying, sitting upon, and as a sort of impromptu changing tent for the beach.

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Underwear and Accessories 1  In the 1960s, almost all women wore some sort of foundation garment as well as a bra. They were available in all sorts of styles: sarong girdles (as here), pull-on and panty-girdles, long-line corselettes, all-in-ones – ranging from industrial-strength near-corsets involving pink rubber and circle-stitched cotton, to airy confections of Spandex, nylon and lace. This firm Berlei bra and girdle featured a crossover front, effective as a vigorous tummy flattener, and an efficient, if rather pointed, bra. 2 A bra and pull-on girdle aimed at the younger market, described as ‘on the go casuals with the fabulous Gossard lift’. Breasts were worn a couple of inches higher than nature intended and never allowed to wobble. 3 This is the ‘co-star’, designed, the ad says ‘to mould you to woman’s most envied shape. The wonderful star-formed cups to make more of the wonderful figure that is yours in only co-star.’ I remember hating the torpedo breasts this type of bra produced and spending quite a lot of time stitching across the points to produce a rounder shape. 4  While English women had to put up with boring underwear in white or Germolene pink, their American sisters could have pretty coloured prints, such as the bra and long panty-girdle shown here which was available in Spanish Sherry, Granada Pink or Madrid Blue. You could even buy D and E cups in attractive colours, whereas the average English store only stocked large sizes in nursing-mother styles in boilable white cotton. 5  The Baby Doll nightie set, so called when Caroll Baker wore such a garment throughout the film Baby Doll. Normally made in nylon, trimmed with nylon lace and sporting matching knickers, it was thought to be the last word in provocative dressing – despite a tendency to be sticky and uncomfortable. Sets like this are still available, though usually in red or black see-through nylon and only in sex shops.

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Menswear: Early Sixties Man 1 Narrow-cut suit in pretend-mohair with Terylene, one of the new man-made yarns that made lightweight fabrics as easy-care as the new drip-dry shirts. The new young styles were originated by Italian tailors but quickly caught on in both England and America. Such a flashy look never gained the approval of Old Money or the aristocracy, but the increasing power of youth hardly cared about that. Tight trousers were worn over winkle-picker shoes, with button-down shirts and long string ties. 2  The car coat became associated with used-car salesmen and all that was slightly ‘dodgy’ about the post-war era. Car ownership increased so dramatically in the sixties that it is not surprising that a whole culture was devoted to it. The little curly trilby and leather driving gloves completed this long-lasting look, more long-lasting than the fake fur collar on the coat. 3  Glasgow market. This image of the working-class man is a good illustration of how smart middle-class styles become the workwear of the next generation. The wide-lapelled jacket looks like a demob suit to me and the Fair Isle sweater, which would once have been worn by fashionable golfers, is now worn instead of a waistcoat (US vest) on the cold Glasgow streets. 4  Winkle-picker shoe in fine Italian leather, with hand-tooled detail. 5  The half-wellington, Chelsea, spring-sided or elastic-sided boot. A smart boot of military origin, much liked by officers and gentlemen because of the uninterrupted line formed by the plain front under the cuff-less trouser. 6  Casual suede shoes, still being sold in cut-price catalogues today.

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Childrenswear 1  Little girls now get their own fashionable look. This is a smart, if somewhat scratchy, ‘shift’ in black and white striped washable Welsh wool, which was featured in Vanity Fair, September 1964. The simple shape remained a classic, although with the development of man-made, drip-dry fabrics it became increasingly unusual to make children’s dresses in wool. 2  A boy with his first ‘man’s’ haircut, in the same issue of Vanity Fair. He is wearing an unstructured wool blazer and grey marl shorts. All boys and girls seem to have worn short white socks while very young, followed by knee-length socks held up by garters of varying efficiency. 3  A Cub, the junior version of the Boy Scout. This worldwide boys’ movement was founded in 1908 by Robert, later Lord, Baden-Powell. The green sweater and khaki shorts were a version of the standard boy’s uniform. 4  Pinafore rompers for a toddler to wear over a blouse or jersey. The toddler, like the teenager, was a new age-group eagerly welcomed by marketing personnel. Even so, rompers were an excellent invention as they fitted neatly over saggy terry nappies. 5  This pretty sundress from a 1960 Vogue in white poplin with the bodice decorated with appliquéd tulips. It could well have been made from a paper pattern, with the flowers lovingly stitched on by the child’s mother. The child has been allowed to remove her socks, a real sign of high summer. 6 Long dresses for children remained popular for bridesmaids, often matching the bride’s older attendants in fabric, if not in cut. This simple dress with a raised waist is made interesting by the use of broderie anglaise and a coloured sash. 7  Home dressmaking was very popular, with a multitude of excellent paper patterns for the amateur, ranging from this easy two-piece pinafore dress to the most challenging couture outfits. Versions of this useful style were made in all sorts of fabrics and worn with any blouse or polo neck already in the wardrobe.

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5 1965–70 VIETNAM VERSUS FLOWER POWER The only obvious link between the American conscript to the increasingly ugly war in Vietnam and the hippy flower child was the liberal use of marijuana. Whereas the hippies took drugs to expand their minds and experience exalted levels of consciousness, to the young soldiers trapped in the flea-bitten hellholes of the Vietnam War, drugs offered the only possible mental escape from the carnage. This unwanted war in the Far East did untold damage to America’s self-image, not least because the all-conquering superpower that had rescued Great Britain in two world wars could not win its own battle. Hippy culture and its pursuit of love, peace and psychedelia was the antithesis of 1960s main street fashion. The media gave everyone with long hair the label of ‘hippy’, but it was always a very loose collage of attitudes and styles. Anyone who didn’t buy into the prevailing materialism, expressed by short geometric dresses and haircuts, was liable to be included in the term. Hippies admitted to roots in beatniks, folkies, surfers and psychedelics. The beats provided the link with that source of all hippiness, black jazz. The folkies gave them a vision of a simpler, non-industrial, communal lifestyle, and the psychedelics provided the sound and light shows, the colourful clothes and the LSD. The many subgroups came together to express mounting horror at what was happening in Vietnam. Youth rejected both the social and the imperialist ethos of their parents’ generation; everything their elders had fought for was rejected as culturally irrelevant. For the first time in fashion history, the young led the old. The rich and grand began to ape their social inferiors. Parisian supremacy was shattered; the world looked to London for inspiration for the rest of the decade. The enduring image of swinging London in the sixties is of young girls in miniskirts. Inexpensive nylon tights, now widely available, allowed skirts to be far shorter than ever before without quite becoming pornographic. Reaction to this new fashion ranged from lascivious delight to moral outrage. Mary Quant has been credited with the invention of the miniskirt. She was certainly so ‘in tune’ with the mood of the moment that it is her version that everyone remembers. She was one of the first designers to understand that young women no longer wanted to dress like their mothers and to design clothes specifically for the 15–25 age group, who remain an ever expanding market to this day. Hot pants, or mini-shorts, also became popular in the mid-sixties, usually worn with tights and flatheeled white boots. They created as much of a furore as the miniskirt and even constituted a judicial incitement to rape. The fashion press stated that the miniskirt would never be seen again after its disappearance in the 1970s, but it re-emerged in a new guise, unrepentant and as sexy as ever, in the mid-eighties. The catalysts that fired the many changes in social attitudes were the contraceptive pill and the rise of feminism. It is easy to forget the importance of these two facts. For the first time women were put in

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a position of control which, until now, had only been available to a privileged few. Women’s new assertiveness meant that designers could no longer impose a single shape or hem length on their customers; they could only offer ideas for women to adopt or not, as they saw fit. By 1967 the Space Age look had abruptly run out of steam. As Vogue put it, ‘the pop revolution burnt out with a crackle of paper dresses’. The musical Hair arrived in London and the Rolling Stones held a massive open-air concert in Hyde Park. These two events appeared to confirm the victory of hippy styles of dress. For most of the decade the couturiers had embraced a futuristic brutalism; it was now time for something different. The confusion that was sixties fashion, with its futuristic looks, unisex jeans and perverse little girl clothes, gave way before the end of the decade to its complete opposite. This manifested itself as long romantic clothes from a multi-national dressing-up box. Designers stopped looking to the future for inspiration and began to plunder the world’s ethnic minorities. Every culture had something to offer: Afghan coats, Mexican knitwear, American Indian bead-work, Russian peasant boots and Mandarin trousers could be assembled with anything from India to create the look of an expensive gypsy. The fashion was ratified by the couturiers, who fought a vigorous rearguard action against the combined influences of the unstoppable growth of the ready-to-wear industry and the ever-growing stream of genuine ethnic imported garments. Sartorially speaking, the 1970s began three years early.

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Formal Dress: Couture 1  Balenciaga. Paris is still the centre of the fashion world, just. This severely elegant red tunic coat is worn with a straight skirt, wide black hat, and long black gloves. Colin McDowell considers Balenciaga to be the greatest designer of the century, bringing a Spanish sense of drama and formality to France; his mastery of cut was unsurpassed, and equalled by very few. He trained Ungaro, Givenchy and Courrèges. 2  Madame Grès originally wanted to be a sculptor, but her family considered the finer arts an unsuitable occupation for a woman so she turned to the creation of the perfectly sculptural, draped silk jersey gown. She did all her own cutting, working directly onto the mannequin with the minimum of detail and without any pattern. Always drawn to the fluid drape of jersey fabric, she worked in wool for day and silk for evening. Her clothes are so classical as to be timeless. Add carefully tousled hair and a sexy expression and this dress would not look out of place at a Hollywood awards ceremony today. 3  Sybil Connolly. Born in South Wales in 1921, Miss Connolly moved to Dublin where she started to design her own collections in 1950. Her classic ladylike clothes made her a great success in America. This finely-tucked blouse in pure Irish linen worn with a long moiré skirt became almost a uniform for country house dinners, at least in part because, most importantly for those draughty Irish castles, warm underwear could be elegantly concealed beneath.

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Formal Dress: Late Sixties Young Couture In the 1950s, all women who wore couture clothes looked at least thirty-five. In the sixties, women became girls and looked as if they had barely reached puberty. Transparent fabrics, tiny hipster skirts and boys’ haircuts combed forward into heavily made-up eyes became the rage. 1  Geometric mini by Rudi Gernreich typifies this approach. 2 Courrèges, 1968. He was the most influential French designer of the sixties, with his space-age fabrics and flat, white booties. He certainly inspired a generation of futuristic costume designers but his garments were nearly unwearable in their pure form. This little dress in transparent nylon and plastic typifies the style. 3  Miniskirt for the working girl with matching striped shoes. 4 and 5  A pair of casual outfits featuring an outsize butcher-boy cap and a huge knitted cowl collar, here teamed oddly with a bare midriff. The heavy fringe, heavier clown make-up and pale lips are classic late sixties. 6  A minidress made from square yellow plastic platelets with metal ring fastenings, worn with flat white patent peep-toe boots and outsize perspex hooped ear-rings. The model’s dark hair is cut in a Vidal Sassoon style crop and she is wearing three pairs of false eyelashes, two on the top lid, and one underneath. Rabanne also made the same dress in aluminium plates, which must have been most uncomfortable.

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Formal Dress: Party Clothes 1  Considering how difficult late sixties clothes were to wear for anyone over a size 8, or over the age of thirteen, it amazes me how long this image has lasted. The mid-nineties even saw a revival of little sleeveless shift dresses. This is a seminal example. The raised waist seam was designed to make the bust look as small and virginal as possible; side seams skimmed the midriff and hopefully skinny hips. The skirt ended somewhere between mid-thigh and three inches above the knee. Tights were now very popular and were nearly always the colour of tanned skin, especially for evening wear. 2  Dressy silk shantung two-piece by the Italian designer Princess Galitzine worn with a back-combed beehive hairstyle tied back and decorated with a formal matching bow on a slide; simple court shoes and, like all the models on this page, as much eye make-up as possible. 3  I think this girl is an early Jilly Cooper heroine. She wears a dark blue mini-shift dress with the flattering and ingenious bust dart invented by Barbara Hulanicki of Biba, and long, open machine-lace sleeves. Her shoulder-length fair hair is back-combed. Silly earrings and tarty eye make-up contrast with the girlish figure and innocent expression.

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Celebrities and Others from the Newsreel These drawings were taken from contemporary newsreel stills, newspapers and magazines. 1  A protester in wet weather gear: nylon cagoule jacket, jeans and wellington boots. 2  Golfer in open-necked sports shirt and flared trousers, in what used to be known as a loud check. Flat golfing shoes with large fringed tongues. 3  Off-duty singer. Longish hair, somewhere between Elvis and the Beatles, dark patterned shirt and tweed sports jacket. 4  A French film star visits America as if dressed for a society wedding, in a Chanel-style summer suit and picture hat. 5  A Canadian politician braves the hustings in a Russian sheepskin hat and wool overcoat with a beaverfur shawl collar. 6  It was considered unpatriotic for American political wives to insist on wearing French couture instead of the home-grown version, but some were popular enough to get away with it.

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Op art suit illustrated in Vogue 1965

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Three hippies from Hyde Park 1968

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Casual and Leisurewear: Women’s Day Fashions 1  Coat in faux Persian lamb worn by a middle-aged English woman. Countless ladies of a certain age still wear coats and skirts like this. Another example of clothes as distinct from fashion. 2  Neat short jackets were very popular. This collar detail is also very typical of the time. Here it is worn with a beret, skinny-rib polo-neck sweater and trousers in one of the new man-made crimplene fabrics. 3  The classic late-sixties coat was cut to make the wearer look as small and skinny as possible, with a childish raised waist and narrow shoulders. Here it is worn with a butcher-boy cap, neat pumps and short gloves. 4  Mandarin-collared raincoat and headscarf. Showerproof cotton poplin was made up in bright colours for weatherproof coats. 5  Another overcoat, this time cut in a slightly barrel shape with raglan sleeves, fastened with three big buttons and worn with a silk scarf tied at the back of the neck and a round furry hat. 6  Sheepskin jackets and coats were popular for both sexes. They were made with the fur side inside and obviously were very warm; much favoured for observing the grander outdoor sports such as horse racing and rugby football. The headscarf has an ingenious padded edge at the front to make a triangular piece of fabric seem a bit more formal. Also, if you were planning to go out in the evening, it hid the curlers needed for the obligatory big hairstyles.

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Hair and Accessories Considering that the perceived memory of the sixties is of London swinging with rock ’n’ roll, drugs and compulsory sex, I have been surprised to be reminded how sweet everybody looked. Just like Bambi really. 1  This is a nice girl going to a wedding in a Gigi boater hat, her shoulder-length hair waved but carefully tousled. By now hats are only worn for formal occasions such as funerals, weddings and grand social events such as Royal Garden Parties and Royal Ascot. 2  Bobbed hair by Vidal Sassoon, false eyelashes, space-age perspex earrings in dayglo pink and orange stripes. 3  Tiny evening bag in pale leather. Short stretch gloves were available in checks or stripes. 4  Delicate sandals with the set-back medium heel typical of the period. 5  Seminal sixties look by Mary Quant. Asymmetric sharp bob by Vidal Sassoon, pale lips, enormous doe eyes, and tiny mini-dress made to look like a pinafore – in this case with a little purse stitched into its midriff, semi-opaque tights and chisel-toed shoes. 6  Owl-eyed glasses made famous by artist David Hockney. 7  Warm ribbed tights prevented the legs exposed by the miniskirt from freezing in winter – worn here with flat-heeled white plastic boots. 8  Curious and cosy Courrèges slipper-sox. Useless as the outdoor wear for which they were designed but a good solution for trendy housewear. 9  Simple laced shoe in orange leather.

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Underwear and Nightwear 1 Foundation garments continued to be reminiscent of armour plating, with pointy bras and rubber girdles still the norm. Only if you were shaped like the current model, Twiggy, could flesh be unconstrained beneath the tiny mini-dresses or crimplene ski pants. Here is a lace and stitched-nylon torpedo-shaped bra worn with a long-line pull-on in Lycra and nylon elastic net, which was supposed to flatten the tummy and upper thighs but in reality produced a curiously squashed ‘mono buttock’ that looked dreadful under the trousers that it was supposed to enhance. 2  Housecoat in brushed acrylic pink moufflon trimmed with pink and white yoke and cuffs. This fabric looked sweet and cuddly when new but dreadfully sad after a few washes, and has come to be associated with the unhappy image of the downtrodden cigarette-smoking wife doing the washing-up with a nylon chiffon scarf on her rollered hair, and down-at-heel fluffy slippers on her feet. 3 Mauve nylon baby-doll ‘nightie-n-knicker’ set worn with beribboned hair and smudged mascara. A younger and hopefully sexier version of (2). 4  Cotton bra and tiny flowered waistslip for the younger girl, sometimes worn with … 5  … a roll-on rubber panty girdle. 6  What nice girls wore instead of (3). Warm, unsexy (oh, the relief) flowered pyjamas in pink or blue brushed cotton winceyette.

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Menswear: Late Sixties Men As women under forty became girls in the 1960s, so men became boys, and they shopped in London’s Carnaby Street, originally a run-down area full of the cheaper kind of tailor. Thanks to shops such as His Clothes (for Mods) and the Carnaby Cavern and I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet (for everyone else), this backwater of the grander Regent Street became, along with the King’s Road, the focal point of open ‘swinging London’. Clothes for the urban male quite suddenly exploded into a riot of colour and pattern, upsetting the older generation of short-haired, tweed-clad men a great deal. The three examples here are a fairly representative selection. 1  Shirt with large collar in flower-print cotton with a wide matching tie worn under a hippie-style Afghan embroidered waistcoat and straight-cut hipster pants. As with the girls, big hair worn with a mop-like fringe hiding the ears was de rigueur. 2  Despite the fact that the Viva Zapata moustache was later to become a homosexual symbol, at this stage effeminacy was widely adopted by heterosexuals as a sign of sexual liberation from existing stereotypes. They could be seen in frilly satin shirts open to the waist to reveal a medallion worn on a long chain. This example goes all the way, sartorially speaking, with flared trousers made from a floral furnishing chintz and worn long enough to cover all but the toes of the zippered boots. 3  Polo-neck shirt in bright Pucci-style print. 4 and 5  Little Italian tailored suits were worn by Mods, whose style was neat, unadorned and squeaky clean. The look was typified by the matching collarless suits worn by the Beatles in their early days, who seemed so well brought-up when compared with the anarchic, sometimes cross-dressed, Rolling Stones.

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Childrenswear 1 Quilted multi-purpose suit. The idea was that the baby stayed warmly asleep in this coat-cumsleeping-bag, but as she turned into a toddler and began to walk, you unpoppered the hem, and lo! the garment became a dressing gown. 2  The babygro – an all-in-one, machine-washable sleep-suit with poppers down the front and through the inside leg seam for ease of access – has to be one of the most useful garments of the late twentieth century. The baby stays neat and warm whatever it does, until growth and increasing mobility wear out first the knees and then the feet. 3  Winter ensemble for the small boy. A direct descendant of the fifties Harris tweed coat, with long trousers in the same fabric, are warm and comfortable. The head is covered by a curious woollen hat with a stiffened peak to stop it looking like his sister’s bonnet. 4  Romper suit designed to look like a pullover and shorts in easy-care red and white knitted Acrilan. 5  The girl’s dress is a replica of an adult’s (or vice versa). It has a high waist and a Peter Pan collar, and is worn with matching ribbed tights. Brightly coloured tights were more easily available for children than for adults. 6  Young boys still allowed themselves to be dressed as little men; this lad wears a drip-dry shirt, bow tie and waistcoat. 7  Zip-up anorak with fun-fur trim round the hood and hem.

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6 1970–75 RETROMANIA

The schizophrenic manifestations of fashion in the 1970s were an accurate reflection of women’s uncertainty about their place in the world and of the uncertainty of the world in general. It was the decade that saw the emergence of women’s lib, when the chicks and dolly birds of the sixties decided that enough was enough and demanded a real piece of the social and professional action. The movement began in 1967 in the US when Betty Friedan, in her book The Feminine Mystique, began to ask uncomfortable questions such as ‘Who am I other than X’s wife or Y’s mother?’ ‘Man isn’t the enemy,’ she said to Vogue, ‘he is the fellow victim’ – a sentiment not shared by the hard-line feminists for whom men were, indeed, the age-old enemy, agents of suppression and exploitation. The newspapers and women’s magazines enthusiastically joined in the fray. In almost every issue there would be an article entitled ‘The Guilt of the Working Mother’ or ‘How to be Super Woman’. One of the key figures was Germaine Greer, brilliant and controversial Australian writer whose book The Female Eunuch, published in 1970, set the stage for a decade of journalistic bickering and dinnerparty debate. She argued that women did not suffer from penis-envy as Freud believed, but that centuries of patriarchal society had led to the castration and distortion of women’s natural personality. Greer argued that reform was not enough, that what was needed was revolution in the social structure. Her message was profound: it was not inevitable that love led to dependence. Most men, and not a few women, found her extremely frightening, and were threatened by her explosive mix of academic rigour and full-blooded sexuality. Previously women could tentatively admit to enjoying sex, or to having a PhD – but not both. By the seventies women over thirty had lived through more changes in fashion than at any other time in history; during the previous twenty years, ‘looks’ had come in and, almost immediately, gone out, still apparently dictated by a small band of remote, unconcerned male designers. By the end of the sixties, women and men began to adopt a more DIY attitude to fashion; as Vogue expressed it, ‘the real star of fashion is you – the wearer’. Women began a hunt through the fleamarkets and thrift stores in a search for romantic clothes from the past and from the furthest corners of the planet, and wore them all, one on top of another. Instead of sending out signals of sexual availability, women decided to express their independence by deliberately adopting a more graceful and covered-up style of dressing. Men complained as legs were hidden by maxi-skirts, while many sighed with relief and vowed that our knees would never be seen in public again. As the feminist viewpoint gained momentum, women decided that the clothes of the previous decade, with their perverse air of under-age sexuality, were another way of pandering to dubious male tastes. What had begun as liberation was now seen as exploitation.

1970–75 Retromania105

The new layered and decorated clothes were intensely romantic and expressed a great yearning for a purer, more handcrafted past. The decorative revival spread outwards to embrace furnishings and interior decoration. In Britain the tendency begun by Biba, with its tasselled cushions and moody lamp shades, was taken up by Terence Conran of Habitat, the first and most successful of the stores that promoted a whole lifestyle. The work of William Morris was enthusiastically revived, Sanderson reissued many of his complex and beautiful wallpaper designs, and Liberty of London found itself at the cutting edge of fashion once more. Disused chapels were turned into stripped-pine warehouses where Victorian and provincial varnished or painted furniture was revitalized by immersion in a bath of caustic soda. For most of the decade it seemed that the liberal classes shopped exclusively at Habitat, Liberty and Laura Ashley.

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Formal Dress: Vogue 1  One of the main and, in my opinion, one of the most attractive ‘looks’ of the seventies was this threepiece ensemble by Ossie Clark using a range of silky fabrics printed by his then partner, Celia Birtwell, here in two shades of brown on white. The use of multiple patterns in one outfit was very popular and, if used with a sure eye, original and interesting. Although ever more popular during the day, the wearing of trousers for evening still caused comment – as, indeed, in some circles it still does. 2  Also by Ossie Clark, American Indian cut and fringed soft caramel suede jacket and skirt. Perfectly in tune with the growing political correctness of interest in indigenous cultures, this suit makes a change from the many Asian garments that were beginning to be seen in the European market. 3  Romantic long top and skirt in richly patterned fabrics by the great textile designer Bernard Neville, who was the head of design at Liberty. Designers such as Bellville Sassoon and Thea Porter encouraged the love of dressing up in garments of ‘antique splendour’ decorated with lace and gold cord. These gently feminine clothes also made splendidly exotic maternity garments.

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Formal Dress: Laura Ashley and Jean Muir 1 Laura Ashley was the first of the so-called ‘lifestyle’ designers. Her clothes were the antithesis of the sharp, modern and angular sixties. They were made of washable 100 per cent cotton in small all-over prints in soft colours, and usually had long gathered skirts and demure necklines finished with a lace collar. The effect was of an English Edwardian summer, with angelic children gathering strawberries in sailor-collared dresses and pinafores while their mothers, in sun hats and consciously ‘old-fashioned’ dresses, dispensed home-made lemonade. Laura Ashley’s dresses were never high fashion but they had enormous appeal for the liberal middle classes, embodying, as they did, a more innocent, less relentlessly sexy age. 2 Home-spun walking outfit in cream knit, including a hand-knitted Aran sweater tied round the middle, Fair Isle cap, mittens and socks, worn with warm walking boots. Apart from the boots, this ensemble might have been warm but was hardly practical, as it made no attempt to be shower-proof and the cream pants would have become entangled on the first gorse bush. 3 Jean Muir’s detractors complained that she designed the same dress for thirty years. Certainly her signature style remained unusually consistent. She usually worked in a wonderful fabric called Hurel Jersey in moody bruise colours and her clothes involved intricate body-skimming cutting, reminiscent of the great dressmakers of the 1930s. Miss Muir insisted on technical expertise of a very high order and was regularly on record as complaining that there was too much art and not nearly enough craft among her younger (British) competitors. She was right, of course, but her disciplined perfectionism was always too austere for the more ephemeral tastes of the speedy young. She is remembered as one of England’s greatest fashion designers; and a small but significant point, I have never, ever, found one of her dresses or beautiful suede coats in a charity shop – their owners keep them for life. Overleaf: Dorothea Noelle Naomi ‘Thea’ Porter was a British artist, designer and socialite who in the 1960s and 1970s brought opulent Middle East textiles to London. Porter settled in London in 1964 and opened her first shop, an interior decorating business offering imported cushions, fabrics and hangings called Thea Porter Decorations, in Soho’s Greek Street in 1966. This soon became Thea Porter Couture as she realised that her imported kaftans were fashionable in their own right, rather than just fabric to be cut up for cushion covers, and began making up her own in mixed fabrics and antique trimmings. The little shop was an Aladdin’s cave filled with magical clothes, textiles and romantic lighting. It is said that the actress Elizabeth Taylor owned seven particularly sumptuous Porter kaftans, and no doubt was invited to Porter’s famous supper parties as well!

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Thea Porter’s kaftan of oriental patchwork

1970–75 Retromania111

Ethnic romance by Zandra Rhodes 1970

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Celebrities: Margaret Thatcher to Michael Jackson 1  Margaret Hilda Thatcher, later Baroness Thatcher, was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She evolved a personal style that was part royal, part nanny and part don’t-mess-with-me power dressing. This photo-portrait was taken before her style crystallized into the exalted leader image that she later adopted, but the neat shirtwaist dress and pussy-cat bow that still admitted a little vulnerability were soon overtaken by the navy work suits and rigidly styled hair that came with the prime-ministerial position. Though she stuck to the feminine touch of the pussy-cat bows. 2  Harris Glenn Milstead, also known by his stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer, drag queen and intimate of artist Andy Warhol who adopted a female drag persona for his music career; People magazine described him as the ‘Drag Queen of the Century’. After developing a name for himself as a female impersonator known for ‘trashy’ behaviour in his early John Waters films, Divine capitalized on this image for the rest of his short life. Here he is photographed in clinging silver with a modest veil that accentuates his wild make-up and bald head. 3  Agnetha Fältskog of the immensely successful Swedish pop group ABBA. Their glory years as a group were between 1972 and 1982. The world was re-enamoured of their songs when their music provided the soundtrack for the film Mamma Mia, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and other favourites. Here Agnetha wears a stars and stripes mini shorts outfit and high silver boots. 4  A young Michael Jackson in a beautifully tailored flared suit and boldly patterned shirt, his hair still a natural Afro. The outfit is finished with shades of tan high-heeled boots with moderate platforms. 5  Marc Bolan, born Mark Feld, seen here in full sooty-eyed make-up and a soft lilac dress apparently borrowed from his wife. He died in a car crash two weeks before his thirtieth birthday.

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Casualwear: Out of doors Three coats for the seventies: 1  A natural progression from the space-age geometry of the 1960s, this winter coat was still short but proclaims its period with the novel shape of the tailored collar and the multiple buttons. The girl wears the popular, not to say ubiquitous, skinny-rib polo-neck jumper, ribbed tights and knee-length squaretoed black suede boots. 2  The suburban version of the imperfectly clean embroidered goatskin worn by the better-off hippy. This cloth or suedette waisted knee-length coat is edged with wide bands of fur, usually fake. Fur-trimmed hoods were a popular addition. This girl wears slightly flared jersey trousers and square-toed boots. Her hair is a grown-out sixties bob. 3  1970s clothes could be very romantic, with long sweeping lines and softly tailored shapes. This long tweed coat was inspired by the film Dr Zhivago, starring Julie Christie, and is worn with widely-flared trousers in shades of plum and Vandyke brown, and topped with a fur Balaclava hat.

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Psychedelic Fashion 1  The 1970s ladies kaftan was a splendid invention. Nominally based on eastern male garments, it was adapted into a free-flowing long dress that became a staple of cruise-wear, beach cover-up, lounging house dressing and informal party dressing. Pretty and comfortable, its lack of structure (or waistline) made the kaftan a favourite of larger ladies. The Italian designer Emilio Pucci specialized in the brightly coloured semi-abstract prints that were well suited to this example. 2  The hippy version as seen on a New York street in winter. This young man wears his hair long and floppy, with a psychedelic print shirt (possibly the only new item that he is wearing), ripped and patched blue denim jeans, heavy work boots, and what looks like his mother’s old fur coat. As the animal rights movement drew attention to the cruelties of fur-farming, real fur ceased to be the acceptable status symbol it had once been, and the secondhand shops were flooded with the things. 3  Pop singer or music festival goer in colourful tie-dyed T-shirt. For a while this craft was everywhere. The undyed garments were twisted and tied up in such a way that the dye could only penetrate where the string wasn’t, and quite complex patterns could be created using multiple dye-baths for the different colours. 4  There was a mod revival in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, during which young men revisited the little grey tailored suits and Vespa motorbikes. Here the look is updated with a brightly patterned shirt and matching tie. 5  This wild print is from the early 1970s but could also be a hangover from the 1960s. You see these little print dresses in vintage stores sometimes, faded now but still with the defiant gaiety that made them so striking when they were first made. This example is being worn with matte white tights/pantyhose, square-toed shoes, and a smart Vidal Sassoon inspired haircut.

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Casualwear: From Tory Lady to Guru 1  In 1970 the Beatles went to India to seek enlightenment at the feet of the Maharishi, leader of the Spiritualist Regeneration Movement, after being introduced to him by George Harrison’s wife Patti. Along with many other westerners, disenchanted by materialism and the stranglehold of scientific rationalism, they were taught the secrets of transcendental meditation and the Oneness of All. George Harrison learned to play the sitar. The Maharishi himself wore the traditional flowing garments of the Indian guru or holy man; his followers designed garments for themselves using India-made shirts and kaftans that had become increasingly available in the west. 2 and 3  I remember many of the Beatles fans feeling rather betrayed when the embarrassingly named Fab Four outgrew their little matching suits and began to appear in ethnic garments garnished with flowers, worry beads and beards. Clean-cut and well-behaved compared with the pop stars that followed them, their need for spiritual growth was seen as a slap in the face of the culture that had produced them and proved conclusively that the sixties were definitely over. 4  It is hard to believe that this style is from the same year. This is a British Conservative woman MP in summer. She wears rigidly set bouffant hair, a touch of lipstick and powder, two rows of pearls, a straight sleeveless dress in a nice, bright print with a pussy-cat bow, a very hard handbag (for self defence?), tan tights and neat court shoes. She embodies everything that the Beatles were rejecting, and some seventeen years of the triumph of her and her kind is at hand.

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Hair and Accessories 1  There was a great revival of handcrafted macramé, tie-dying, beadcraft and, above all, crochet. The ability to mix many jewel-like colours creatively became a prized skill among the alternative communities and many people had a grandmother or auntie who could be persuaded to give up knitting pastel-toned baby blankets and concentrate on many-hued waistcoats and hats. 2  Tank top over tailored shirt blouse. Note how the corduroy flares are now brazenly zipped up the front, rather than demurely at the side. 3  Soft handbags in multi-coloured suede with shoulder straps. 4  Short gloves with a wrist strap. 5 Wigs made from nylon hair were used to cheer up your workaday hairstyle into something more luscious for evening. This one is styled in the fashionable layered ‘lion-cut’ look. 6  Strappy sandals in black patent, worn with machine lace flares. 7–9  Boots, shoes, clogs – all with solid heels and square toes.

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Menswear 1  Men’s suits did seem to look as if they were a size too small, which might be considered quite cute on the young. A pertly tailored single-breasted suit with narrow shoulders, top stitching and flares in maroon polyester mix is worn with a huge patterned tie. As in (2) and (4), the shirt has a big collar. 2  A narrow three-piece suit. Waistcoats (US vests) have become fashionable again. This model is given an air of seriousness by the moustache and the over-sized spectacles, and has, like all the other sketches on this page, big hair. 3  A sports jacket in tan tweed worn over the inevitable skinny-rib polo-neck (US turtle neck) sweater and flared trousers. Not all men wore flares; older men quite rightly steered clear of them for obvious reasons. They were a disaster on the short, but it was possible to buy platform-soled shoes and boots for men with 2–2½ inch heels, over which the flares were worn with just the little square toes peeping out, flatteringly giving extra height with the utmost discretion. There was, however, a small upsurge of ankle injuries among short men who had problems with the platform soles and fell off them when drunk. 4  The choirboy look, exemplified by Paul McCartney, was preferred at this time and was helped along by lots of floppy hair and the over-sized collars. Narrow shoulders accentuated the adolescent appearance and the tight patterned slipovers made the least of the boyish chest. This mock Fair Isle, sleeveless, round-neck slipover was in easy-wash Acrilan. 5  Anoraks tend to have a very sad image these days, being unfairly associated with train-spotters and ‘techies’, but they are such useful garments, warm, waterproof and inexpensive. This example was in navy proofed cotton poplin and had a quilted lining and fur-fabric collar. A yachting cap is worn on the shoulder-length hair.

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Maternity 1 This excellent dress was advertised as being ‘suitable before, during and after pregnancy’. Few women were willing to invest in a complete new wardrobe now that they were not condemned to bear dozens of babies, so maternity clothes needed to be practical as well as attractive. 2  The pretty, child-like smocks, here in white cotton and Indian lace, were perfect for pregnancy, even if they did make the mother-to-be look too young to be bearing children. Flared trousers came supplied with an elastic tummy panel to accommodate the bulge. 3  Andy Pandy or clown’s dungarees were an innovation that is still worn by the younger mum-to-be. The bulge is now beginning to be celebrated rather than hidden away. Here it is combined with a pretty long-sleeved blouse in a floral print lawn and a simple straw sun hat.

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7 1975–80 RISE OF THE NEW WOMAN In February 1975 Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the UK’s Conservative Party and in May 1979 she became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. She ruled the country, the Tory Party and her ministers with an obsessive, single-minded determination for twelve and a half years, doing as little as possible for the rights of other women. Intellectually and socially Mrs Thatcher was the exact opposite of the writer and lecturer Germaine Greer. Between them, they succeeded in polarizing Britain into two camps, each with its own distinct style of dress. In the late seventies Ms Greer’s faction was dominant. The standard response from the defensive male was to assume that Ms Greer and her sisters were manhating lesbians. In many revolutionary movements it is necessary for the pendulum to swing as far as it will go in the new direction, and a significant number of women did class men as the supreme enemy; they burnt their bras, ceased to shave their legs and went to bed with each other. No attitude went unquestioned, each item of apparel was considered for its political correctness. Any item that could be perceived as man-pleasing or designed to keep woman in her place was discarded, to be replaced by sexless dungarees and flat shoes. These committed women were easy objects of ridicule even by other women. For the many Englishwomen who declined to get involved with all these upheavals, the favourite shop was Laura Ashley. Mrs Ashley was one of the greatest of the so-called lifestyle designers; almost by default, for in her case the lifestyle came first and the clothes second. She began her fashion career designing simple printed cottons on her Welsh farmhouse table, going on to have her demure feminine clothes made up by local women and selling them from a single shop in the Fulham Road. As a committed Christian she felt that too much liberation led inevitably to sinful promiscuity, so she offered women and children a charming alternative aesthetic which evoked a sunlit pastoral idyll of an endless family country picnic. Coming as it did at a time of profound social unease, her ideas were immensely seductive and, thanks to the sound business sense of her husband, Major Bernard Ashley, the firm prospered and the shops multiplied. Long dresses for semi-formal and formal evening occasions were very popular in the late seventies. Every kind of ethnic influence was utilized and every magazine advertised its kaftan, muumuu or kimono as the latest solution for comfortable and glamorous dinner wear. Designers plundered books normally only used by theatre costumiers for new shapes inspired by Moroccan wedding garments or Ukrainian peasants. Cleaned up, sometimes made in synthetic fabrics and generally westernized, these garments were translated everywhere, from the highest couture to the most commonplace mailorder catalogue.

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Perhaps nothing expresses the great diversity of the decade more clearly than a list of the popular shows and films. They divided into escapism through nostalgia (Death in Venice, The Boyfriend), violence (Rollerball, Carrie and The Exorcist), and nostalgia and violence (Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather). Dance films such as Cabaret and Saturday Night Fever and shows such as A Chorus Line sent people rushing to the dance studios to learn how to do it themselves. The increasing fascination with other worlds was best expressed by Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As inflation grew and the dole queues lengthened, the cinema’s hopeful message of spiritual renewal struck a deep chord in an increasingly materialistic world.

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Formal Dress: Couture Frills and Fins 1  Janice Wainright designs a finale to seventies dressing, while prefiguring the Japanese influence of the early eighties. She called this a ‘pagoda’ dress, reflecting the way the stitching stiffens the hems of the antique-pleated silk and causes them to flip out as the layers spiral from yoke to ground. The square-cut yoke seems to be formed from pieces of Chinese embroidery – table mats, perhaps? The style begins to redefine the way women look, as it takes no notice of the conventional sexy bits but is not in the least aggressive. 2  The rise of Giorgio Armani from a brilliant man’s tailor to the most copied designer of the 1980s starts here. The suit is built and structured with military precision, a point of departure that would evolve and deconstruct during the next fifteen years. 3  Mermaid dress with finny sleeves by Thierry Mugler. Mugler’s instinct that women of the eighties didn’t want to look like ‘ladies’ any more proved to be triumphantly correct and this showy, slippery sequinned sheath points the way. The hair, borrowed from Mrs Frankenstein, is interesting.

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Formal Dress: Claude Montana 1 and 2  The eighties begin in 1979 with these designs by Claude Montana: a cheerful sailor suit for real life and an outrageous outfit inspired by futuristic Japanese armour for the unreal variety. One wonders how many of these black leather helmets actually sold; I could certainly use them in my next production of Attila, but for a business lunch in the neighbourhood bistro, I think not. These two ensembles are perfect examples of ‘cuspoid’ design in that they point the way that mainstream fashion will go. Buyers and fashion editors use their intuitive skill to pick the directional pieces out of the multitude of ideas thrown up by the couturiers. Very few women want to dress like a Japanese warrior but the shape is important. Both outfits have massive shoulders, achieved by shoulder pads unused since the 1940s, natural waistlines and narrow-hipped trousers – in other words an exact inversion of the 1970s silhouette. 3  This is what real women are still wearing in the evening. Green chiffon cut in circles is used over a slender shift for this softly pretty layered dress. The soppy seventies are about to be superseded by the aggressive eighties.

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Formal Dress: Various Designers 1  A home-made and designed dress made from the popular scarf prints made by Liberty of London in a fine wool challis. The dress pattern is a seventies classic with gently fitted bodice, sweeping bias cut skirt, and almost Edwardian sleeves with gathered tops drawn into tight, buttoned long cuffs. 2 A red tulle couture dress by Valentino from 1977 – his favourite red and the endless ruffles are synonymous with his romantic and ethereal work. It is quite a creation, spectacularly labour intensive, from the closely placed rows of stitching on the bolero and waistband to the yards, miles possibly, of ribbon-edged tulle frilling that make up the ruffled neck-line, little sleeves and long full skirt. I’ve not discussed the cost of couture dresses such as this, fashion houses being famously secretive, but one fashion writer suggests that a dress like this would be in the £70,000 bracket. 3  This is the sort of 1970s dress that can still be found in vintage stores and at on-line auctions. Many women owned such a dress at this time because it was wearable and flattering for informal dinner parties, opera premieres and cruise dressing. This example is in soft rayon jersey, the top brand at the time being the indestructible ‘Hurel Jersey’, which was both long-lasting and easy to pack. I can’t identify this dress as the itchy label has been unpicked. 4  A design by Claude Montana from 1979/80. In complete contrast to the preceding dresses, on every level this dramatic black ensemble points the way to the next decade. Gone are the sweeping lines and in come the wide shoulders and feisty stance that will characterize the 1980s. So, from the top, a headpiece with net, feathers and a black velvet mask, worn with a wide-shouldered tunic, belted into a wasp waist with a gilded black belt, gold decorations, soft ankle length pants, high heeled black suede pumps. Effective, startling, and very new.

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Occasion Wear: An Arty Wedding 1  The bride, who didn’t want to wear ‘fancy dress’, wears an ivory crêpe silk blouse and tussah silk gored skirt. The narrow-shouldered jacket was made from a Victorian cream silk shawl, with pale flowers and a long fringe. 2  The groom, a musician (which explains everything), defies convention by wearing a brown floral silk shirt, suede jacket and pale pinstripe flared trousers. It may be of interest that this bridegroom appears, aged three, in a very conventional Harris tweed coat on page 9. 3  As does his mother. Here she wears a matching coral pink jacket and sleeveless dress. Her hat is covered with white daisies and she wears a pearl necklace and light brown court shoes. 4  The father of the bride is in an elderly black morning coat and pleat-front pinstripe trousers, brought up to date by a brocade waistcoat and spotted tie. 5  Wedding guest. He wears a fashionable brown velvet suit with narrow, rather pointed shoulders and flared trousers, a cornflower blue silk shirt and floppy bow tie.

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Celebrities: Pop Singer, Artist and Groupies 1  Hippie-influenced summer wear. This girl wears a drawstring cheesecloth top, with bare midriff. Her long straight hair is tied with a long, fringed scarf in the same soft striped fabric as the full, gathered trousers. Her shoes are wedge-heeled sandals. 2  An observing artist wears owl-eye spectacles, yellow shirt and gaily striped tie. 3 A fan of the Osmonds, the Mormon family who became that unusual phenomenon, a successful Christian pop group. Donny, the oldest and the prettiest, inspired special devotion in pre-pubescent girls. This fan wears a home-crocheted bonnet-like hat, a suede shirt-jacket covered with badges and rosettes of the Beloved, a T-shirt printed with faces of the same, and, of course, flared denim jeans, with soft drawstring bag and laced platform shoes. 4  Androgyny rules. This pop star deliberately creates gender confusion by choosing traditionally feminine silks and satins in bright jewel colours and using a narrow-shouldered blouse with puffed sleeves to create a slim, unmanly torso and tight-to-the-knee hipster flares to show off the boyish buttocks. He would be wearing high-heeled square-toed zipped boots in patchworked leather complete the muchimitated look.

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Unwithered by age – in pink, 1977

1975–80 Rise of the New Woman 139

Seventies romance – Italian silk 1978

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Casualwear: Bill Gibb and Biba 1  In 1977 Bill Gibb was awarded the astonishing accolade of a retrospective exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall at the very young age of thirty-four. A year later he had to cease trading. New backers were found but Gibb was bankrupted again a few years later, and by 1988 he was dead of what, among creative people, has become chillingly known as ‘the usual’ – AIDS. This brilliant and much-loved designer was known for his gloriously coloured and intricately patterned knitwear and his extravagant evening and bridal wear. His occasion dresses were genuinely beautiful and original – made to a standard not seen since the Edwardian era, from where much of his inspiration came. They were naturally extremely expensive, but must have been so costly to produce that Gibb’s profit margins were too low for commercial survival. His knitwear was designed in collaboration with the superb colourist Kaffe Fassett. This ensemble was available in autumn shades or in denim blues and greys. Very desirable indeed. 2  Kimono top and harem pants in fine cream jersey. The use of well-mixed ethnic influences was a trademark of the seventies. The kimono is decorated with more geometric patterned braid. 3  Silky suit from Biba, in one of Celia Birtwell’s exquisite border prints. The slimming cut, with narrow shoulders and thighs and long flared sleeves and trousers, made girls look like very young rag dolls.

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Casualwear: Floaty Fabrics 1  This easy-shaped dress has semicircular sleeves and a long skirt gathered onto a raised lace-covered waistband. The style remained popular as nightwear. 2  The best-selling summer dress from UK chain store Marks & Spencer in 1977. It was made in white, caramel and coffee-coloured crinkle cotton cheesecloth, which, along with velvet, was the hippies’ favourite fabric. The drawstring top is shaped like a peasant blouse and the mid-calf length skirt is gathered in bands of increasing fullness, all cut perfectly straight. This girl wears a simple straw sun-hat and wedge-heel espadrilles, and carries her belongings in a coloured straw bag, hand-embroidered with raffia flowers. 3  High-waisted dress with grown-on short sleeves and open collar. It has an insertion of printed ‘folk’ embroidery. 4  Long, rather medieval dress for dining at home. Made in flowing crêpe, it is finished with machineembroidered neckline, sleeves and waistband. 5  Gypsy garments that would have been very surprising to most gypsies. The headscarf is tied peasantfashion at the nape of the neck over curly hair. The dress is of several different prints, often in soft cotton or viscose and trimmed with cord, ricrac braid and coloured ribbon. 6  This floaty evening dress was a joy for the larger woman; indeed, such garments are so comfortable and attractive that in various fabrics they are still a mainstay of the well-endowed or those who have a middle rather than a waist.

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Tailoring for Men and Women 1 and 2  The fashions of any decade seem to start a year or two ahead of the end of the previous ten years. The glossy magazines got bored with flopsy ethnic layering, and quite suddenly men started to look like conventionally tailored men again – and, from the evidence of these pictures sketched from a 1976 Vogue, so did the girls. Inspired by actresses Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo, designers began producing soft cashmere coats and man-tailored pants suits, which really were rather a relief after the endless floral and velvet bits and pieces of the earlier 1970s. 3  This Scottish artist wears a corduroy jacket and single-breasted collared waistcoat, much as artistic men did in the 1950s. The date is proclaimed by the longish hair and the tie-less shirt. 4 The Italian male never really became enthusiastic about embroidered waistcoats or velvet flares, always preferring the more virile look of a well-tailored suit. And once men decided that exploiting the traditional right-wing capitalism was the smart way to live, fashion dressed them for the part in doublebreasted suits and gangsterish overcoats.

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Accessories 1  Matching woolly hat, scarf and gloves in a colourful geometric-patterned knit. These were made rather expensively in beautifully coordinated Shetland wools or, more affordably, in man-made fibres. 2 There was a vogue for sensible brogue lace-up shoes, to go with all that homespun tweed and handmade knits. This example is rendered very un-sensible by the addition of a four inch (10 cm) heel. 3  Almost every shoe style received the high-wedge sole treatment. Here a brown suede running shoe is given a 3 inch (8 cm) heel in composition crêpe. 4  Hostess apron in checked cotton, edged and trimmed with contrasting colour. I think they were called ‘hostess’ because they were pretty enough to be revealed to guests, as distinct from the messy old thing in which you actually did the cooking. 5  Even bikini swimsuits could now be made in denim-look with the addition of a little Lycra. Simple bra top and brief shorts in white with top-stitching. 6  Kimono style house-coat in green and white sprigged polycotton, trimmed with red. 7  The world was amazed when, in the early nineties, Vivienne Westwood produced towering platform shoes – but they were not new. Here are the outrageous originals.

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Menswear: Including Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver 1  Robert de Niro plays Travis Bickle, an honourably discharged US Marine, a lonely and depressed man in New York, clearly suffering from some form of post traumatic stress from serving in the Vietnam war. He becomes a taxi driver to cope with chronic insomnia, driving passengers every night around the boroughs of New York City. Taxi Driver has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time; it combines extreme violence, unhappy sex, and ultimately a kind of redemptive heroism. De Niro wears strippeddown military gear in combat green, spectacles and a fierce Mohican haircut. 2  This outfit could be called catalogue couture, I suppose. These shades of tan and brown were typical of seventies dressing, and are here demonstrating a classic street ensemble. A random-pattern knit sleeveless pullover (home knitted?) is worn over a skinny brown polo-neck jumper, extra long flared bicoloured trousers, high heeled platform boots and fairly long, very clean hair. 3  Seventies tailoring at its most distinctive. This Harlem resident sports a window-pane check tan and yellow ochre suit. The nipped-in waist, wide lapels and flared pants, finished with the obligatory highheeled boots and rakish Fedora, make this a classic outfit of its time. 4  A Beatles-inspired suit with a Mandarin style stick-up collar is here worn with a turtle- or polo-necked sweater, pudding-basin, Beatles or mop-top haircut and, of course, high-heeled boots (not seen).

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Childrenswear All five of these kids are from catalogues of one sort or another, either conventional ready-to-wear or home crafted in either knitting or crochet. 1  Boy’s outfit in favourite 1970s shades of yellow, tan and brown. Our child wears a cheerful yellow polo-neck skinny jumper, orange/tan slipover, flared tan trousers tight over the thighs and flared from the knees down, finished with square-toed brown shoes and an Afro haircut. 2  A sporty-looking girl wears a hand appliquéd sweater decorated with sun and moon, sheep, cows and a row of ducks. Striped shorts or hot-pants, over-the-knee stripy socks and red and white trainers complete this quite individual outfit. 3  The spotted tights, shoes and presumably the stuffed dog are ready-made, but everything else is a home-made knitting project of some complexity. A gaily striped frilled cardigan is worn over a highwaisted fully fashioned woollen dress in lilac and two shades of blue; even the hair band and flowery rosette are handmade out of the left-over scraps of wool. 4  Another craft project, this time of crochet work. The smaller girl’s hooded coat is made in striped sections except for the pom-poms and flower-like motifs, which are constructed in circles and let into the body of the coat. Home-knitted leggings and soft boots complete the outfit. 5  A smart boys’ ensemble. A tan zippered onesie, so neat and tidy, is worn over a classic yellow shirt and brown loafer shoes.

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8 1980–85 SWING TO THE RIGHT

In 1980 the ex-actor Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. He and his wife Nancy spearheaded a lurch to the right, mirroring the activities of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. His policies contributed to the destruction of the social welfare system and greatly increased the gap between rich and poor. When it is fashionable to be rich, middle-aged and right-wing, the more adventurous style of the artistic liberal is not appreciated. Clothes became couture-led, traditionally glamorous and ostentatiously expensive. Shabby chic had no place in smart Republican society! The technological advances that accelerated during the 1980s, combined with political trends, brought great changes. To the horror of gently liberal parents, ambitious twenty-somethings took over the City and Wall Street, advertising and the banks, with one aim – to make large sums of money. Property became ever more expensive, with house prices in fashionable areas doubling every five years. Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals) took out enormous mortgages at usurious interest rates, and then paid for improvements and redecorating by credit card, which also charged high interest rates. It helped to be a DINKY (Dual Income No Kids Yet) to pay for this lifestyle. Urban life moved into fast forward mode, abetted by the computer, the telephone answering machine and the fax. Commodity brokers and share dealers rose early to catch news of the Tokyo stock market; metropolitan restaurants were full of executives starting their day with multiple power breakfasts; women took on management positions and jogged or worked out before going to the office, having made an appointment to dine with their husband in a smart multi-national restaurant. Yuppies dined out several times a week, since Mrs Yuppie had little time to cook. High-class convenience food, freshly prepared and ready to pop into the microwave oven, was expensive but time-saving. When our yuppie couple had any energy left over for procreation, their smart, well-oiled life suffered some tremendous shocks. Without a job the new mother could not afford to look after her child; the mortgage repayments were too high for one income and anyway, it was difficult enough for a woman to retain her place in the pecking order. Re-entering the job market after a child-rearing gap meant a drastic drop in status and earnings – so many women forced their softened bodies back into their black power suits and returned to work, in some cases guiltily, relying on substitute child carers to look after their offspring. It is true that the indigenous domestic servant class is a thing of the past, but the growing number of affluent family units in which the adults were out all day provoked a whole range of freelance operators who offered a bewildering range of household services to be paid for by the hour. A quick glance at the classified advertisements of a woman’s magazine gives some idea of the crafts and trades available. Alongside advertisements for cooks, party chefs and cleaners, were artisans of every kind who would

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stencil, sponge and rag roll walls or furniture, muralists to create fantasy landscapes in your dining room, makers of curtains, including swags and roman blinds, upholsterers, gardeners, people who would walk your dog, water the house plants, do your shopping, buy the Christmas presents, sort out your wardrobe – the list is endless, but the shift in work practices is clear. As full-time work became more and more difficult to obtain, many people took up these services as the only available option. In other words, either the woman or her partner employed a range of part-time professionals to organize their life or she stayed home and did the lot herself like a 1950s wife. The 1980s saw the spectre of AIDS spread across the west. The virus is thought to have originated, like humanity itself, in Central Africa, from where it may have spread by ‘sex tourists’ bringing it back with them to the west. The bath houses of San Francisco were the centre of an exuberant and flourishing gay culture, where transvestite roller skating nuns consorted with Californian beach boys in cut-off jeans, and media men who looked like Burt Reynolds and men from all the creative professions. By the end of the decade AIDS was one of the biggest killers of young men in America, and the small red ribbon worn on the lapel at all media functions became a universally acknowledged reminder of this grim fact.

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Formal Wear: American Fashion 1  Paris and Milan had haute couture and London led the way in street couture but it was the Americans who actually got it right. Following Claire McCardell and Bonnie Cashin in the forties and fifties, these brilliant and perceptive designers have produced relaxed and beautiful clothes that exactly fit the lifestyle of their customers. Their simplicity is such that copies and ‘rip-offs’ can be on the rails a fortnight after the trade shows. Not that this Halston evening ensemble could be copied in a hurry. The sumptuous sequinned chiffon involved weeks of work by some underpaid immigrant, but the pared-down supersimple shape is a true classic and could, indeed can, be worn successfully by any woman regardless of her age and shape. Halston’s speciality was slinky and very sexy Hollywood gowns, much worn to Oscar award ceremonies. 2  Oscar de la Renta, a giant of the East Coast social scene, is perhaps the most European of the great American designers, his name resting on his richly opulent women’s clothes. This 1983 black silk organza tiered dress with an embroidered faille bolero is inspired by flamenco dancers. 3 Perry Ellis, Geoffrey Beene, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren have become mainstays of the homedressmaker pattern books, as their good, simple shapes are easy to make well but surprisingly difficult to reproduce cheaply. Ellis has the clean-cut college boy look so admired by his countrymen and women and regarded with some suspicion by Europeans. His clothes are amazingly influential. This cropped red jacket and Oxford trousers, hat, scarf and spats in four different patterns is witty and very wearable. 4 A simple cocktail dress by John Anthony in 1981. Like Klein and Lauren, he is a minimalist who produces a sleek look for the top end of the ready-to-wear market. 5  Perry Ellis again; the directional suit of the eighties. Versions of this easy three-piece must be in every woman’s wardrobe, either as a suit or as separates. This version has no details at all, except unseen shoulder pads. The almost-ankle-length skirt, in this case knife-pleated, is the kindest hemline of all and, whatever Paris or London may say, sells more than any other; and the long unstructured jacket, though lovely on the skinny, is a gift to the better-endowed. 6  Another perfect classic look, by Klein, so straightforward that it can hardly be said to be designed at all. Although conceived for long-limbed American girls, this shirt jacket and long pleated skirt in linen chambray have become the mainstay of every chainstore from California to Berlin – what you wear when you don’t feel like wearing fashion!

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New looks from Japan by Issey Miyake

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Summer evening dress by Bill Blass 1984

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Formal Wear: The Japanese View This is the way twentieth-century fashion could have gone but didn’t. I well remember the consternation when the brilliant Japanese designers burst upon the couture scene. Their clothes were like nothing ever seen before, a complete reworking of western fashion seen through eyes brought up on origami and 3,000 years of the kimono. Journalists loved them for their originality but the influential buyers were nervous and called it ‘bag-lady’ fashion; with some reason, it must be said, for any mistake with the difficult asymmetric cut and over-sized proportions and conventional notions of well-bred tidiness went out of the window. 1  Matsuda. Western outfit designed on Japanese principles. The use of shapeless over-garments and rumpled leggings was not generally appealing. 2–5  Outfits by the eminently influential Yohji Yamamoto, born 1943. Trained in Japan in all aspects of the clothing industry and, like Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, he is in the forefront of that ‘new’ dressing which refuses to titillate by exposing the female form in a conventional way. His clothes confuse 15 years later just as much as they did at the time, but the concept of the unstructured garment had a huge influence on all those who disliked the eighties power suit, with its padded shoulders and revealing Lycra ‘body’ – the look that did define the mainstream (see page 163).

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Formal Dress: Couture including Yves St Laurent 1  If the Japanese designers were shocking eccentrics, the nervy Yves St Laurent is the designer who perhaps most exactly defines the main thrust of fashion. This ensemble became the most copied shape of the decade. The neat boxy jacket with its padded shoulders and straight knee-length skirt were the mainstay of every working woman’s wardrobe for years. It exactly filled the new, hard-edged, right-wing concept of Reagan’s America and Thatcher’s Britain. Rigid and uncomfortable as these suits were, they became a uniform, in much the same way as a man’s business suit. 2  Sonia Rykiel creates an equally influential alternative look in soft cashmere jersey. This two-piece is in powder blue, a colour not much used in haute couture; it is difficult to make it look dramatic but it is very much worn in ‘real life’. Shoulder pads become the trade mark of the decade; if you were not careful you could end up wearing three pairs, little ones in a blouse, larger in the jacket of your business suit and absolutely enormous in your greatcoat, making perfectly normal women look like top-heavy American footballers. 3  Jean-Louis Cherre created this rather theatrically furred and embroidered red cashmere coat. This Russian look was also much copied, in cheaper fabrics and fake fur.

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Business Suits The eighties was the decade when it was ‘cool’ to be right-wing. Ronald Reagan at least pretended to support the arts (as an ex-actor he could hardly do otherwise). 1  Women who held positions of power wore, and still wear, suits such as this. Apart from the strange Elizabethan shoulders with their pleated ‘head’ and stiffened epaulettes, the cut with its bound edges and not-too-tight straight skirt is simple neo-Chanel. The blouse with its floppy silk bow added a feminine touch, businesslike but not too threatening. Mrs Thatcher adopted versions of this style and it instantly became very threatening indeed. 2 and 3  Power-dressing for the New Woman or female yuppie. These uncompromising suits were worn by women who insisted on being taken seriously in the still overwhelmingly masculine worlds of business and the law. The idea was to play the game according to the old rules, so as not to give men any excuse to indulge in sexist or patronizing behaviour that any overtly feminine display of thigh or cleavage might induce. Therefore, for the office, hair is beautifully cut or, if long, tied back in a braid or chignon. The suit is rigidly tailored with square masculine shoulders in traditional ‘business’ colours of navy, charcoal grey and ever more black. A shirt or blouse is worn, often in white or cream. Skirts are straight and of varying length but getting shorter as the decade progresses. Most women under fifty wore opaque black tights and flat black shoes for work. Straight trousers became an acceptable alternative to the skirt but some professions insisted that women should not wear them.

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Englishmen and Yuppies Clothes for men in the 1980s expressed the right-wing political climate with great accuracy. The left-over hippies and rock-star wannabes either went underground and adopted New Age spiritual values or cut their hair, bought a suit, went to the gym and joined in with the real business of the eighties – making large sums of money. The gap between the haves and have-nots became wider than ever and the Young Urban Professional or yuppie was born. 1  The bomber jacket re-emerged as an all-purpose jacket, this time with fur fabric collar and footballer’s shoulder pads. Shirt collars shrank, seemingly overnight, and all those patterned flares were banished to the ever-increasing number of charity shops, to become objects of great hilarity among the young and – a decade later – desirable collectors’ items. 2  Towelling robe, after bath, after shower and after sport, replaced the traditional dressing gown for all but the most determinedly old-fashioned. 3  Short-sleeved plaid shirt worn over a blue T-shirt with ‘chino’ trousers that became the only acceptable summer alternative to jeans. Chinos were basic American army fatigues and brought a welcome change from all that blue denim. 4  The trainer – the shoe of the eighties, worn by men, women and children for all but formal occasions. Children bullied their parents until the desired brand was purchased or acceptable ‘rip-offs’ were acquired at the local market; the most popular brands were very expensive, and the tyranny of the trainer lasted until kids decided they were ready for Doc Marten boots. Trainers, though still ludicrously overdesigned and over-priced, then stopped being an all-purpose fashion garment and reverted to the sportsfield and the gym, before coming back into fashion in the new century. 5  Two-piece suit in lightweight wool tweed. Shoulders have small pads that increased in size throughout the decade, until finally they collapsed altogether. Here the narrow lapels and single button are reminiscent of late 1950s tailoring. Many men never wore suits at all now, but the yuppie in the City or in international banking needed to dress the part, in a good, sober navy or charcoal suit. 6  The rural and suburban version. Great Britain was overrun with olive green waxed cotton made by the old country clothing company of Barbour. The British landed gentry, all farmers, chaps who hunted, shot or merely drank in the outer suburbs – wore Barbour jackets, clean with shoes if you were just visiting, or absolutely filthy with wellies if you were the ‘real thing’.

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Underwear and Accessories 1 and 2  Underwired bras. Both have a plunge neckline to show off the cleavage and the one on the left has moulded cups edged with lace. Shoulder pads could be purchased separately should your new top be made without them; they were made from foam rubber and could be tucked under the bra straps. 3  Oversized T-shirts are the most comfortable garments to sleep in and many are sold especially for the purpose, often decorated with cartoon characters. 4  Bra-and-pants set in nylon and Lycra. The bra cups are pre-formed to give a smooth natural line under lightweight tops. Briefs became available in ever briefer shapes until, for the bold, they were little more than strippers’ thongs – perhaps to counteract the unisex clothes that went on top. 5 Shoes followed two distinct styles. High heels enjoyed a renaissance, in classic court or T-strap shapes. On the other hand, for casual wear comfortable shoes for women became smart as well as politically correct. 6 Wedge-heel sandal, worn in warm weather and sometimes as a house-shoe for those allergic to bedroom slippers. 7  Sandal based on a Roman or gladiator shoe. These look interesting with long skirts in Indian fabrics as an alternative to the seventies espadrille. 8  Serious walking shoes evolved with the comfort of trainers but in unpolished leather, often using two or three colours, for those who felt that sports shoes should only be used for sport. Shoes such as these have become immensely popular for country wear and, in more sophisticated colours or black, for women of a certain age for everyday non-office wear.

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Menswear 1  A black and white ensemble from an up-market men’s fashion catalogue such as J. Crew. A black and white print shirt of a striking design featuring hand-drawn mathematical symbols is worn with a white cotton jacket and trousers. The model wears the sleeves pushed up to ‘bracelet length’ in a way considered unthinkably un-gentlemanly a decade or two earlier. Ray-Ban sunglasses complete this smart summer look. 2  This man wears a well washed blue shirt with the top button open and a goatee beard. 3  One of singer Michael Jackson’s better known and much photographed stage outfits. This jacket and pants, (the top cut like a jeans jacket) looks as if it is made from silver foil, somewhere between the Mercury Space suit and faux silvered leather. His arms and legs are clad in plastic armour that could have come from some video game, or possibly a costume from Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical, Starlight Express. 4  I have been unable to find out whether this superb-looking chap is the owner or the chauffeur of the enormous vintage Bentley against which he is leaning (in my reference photograph). A bit casual for the chauffeur, perhaps, he is wearing a black yachting cap, Arran knit high-neck sweater and black, beautifully tailored trousers. 5  In complete contrast, this comes from a page of leisure-wear called ‘SoCal’ – a range of clothing that is ‘effortlessly cool and totally accessible’ says the advertisement. Laid-back Californian ensembles of patterned baggy pants and soft sweat-shirts or tops made of cotton jersey are aimed at off-duty surfers and their companions. The ‘mullet’ haircut, short on top and long at the back, was typical of the era.

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Childrenswear 1  This girl wears an all-purpose, unisex leisure suit of polycotton brushed jersey. In heavier weights such suits were worn for sports and play, and the less robust, more brightly coloured versions were for night wear. 2  Small boy’s suit. Top in red with white sleeves with some boyish logo on the chest and matching pants. His baseball cap advertises some favourite team or the latest pre-teen movie and on his feet are small expensive trainers. 3  Practical toddlers’ clothes were washable, cheerful and non-iron. When mother has no household help, endless small garments that need hand-laundering or ironing are simply unacceptable for all but the most special occasions. This little boy wears a polo-collared top, bib-and-brace dungarees and trainers – this time fastened with Velcro. 4  The craze during the early eighties was roller-skating and the mostly American-made skates had large plastic wheels bolted onto the rigid sole of the specially designed boot. Along with skate-boarding – and later roller-blading – this rather dangerous pastime spawned specialist shops that supplied knee and elbow pads, gloves and lightweight helmets for protection against the inevitable tumbles. 5  In 1984 it was the justifiably proud boast of our local state primary school that every pupil had been taught to swim by their eleventh birthday. As education became less adequately funded, especially in hard-pressed inner city areas, compulsory swimming was one of the first activities to be lost. Swimming is still an enormously popular pastime, however, and sensible, stretchy one-piece suits are the most acceptable wear. 6  Simple cotton jersey summer dress in red, blue and white. The vest-shaped top and gathered short skirt could hardly be less fussy, worn here with Lolita-style heart-shaped plastic sunglasses, canvas sandals and hair tied up with bright stretchy bands.

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9 1985–90 POWER DRESSING AND THE NEW MAN

If I have devoted an entire chapter to the aggressive yuppie culture, it is because, until the stock market crash of 1987, their frenetic energy made them disproportionately visible. In fact, black-clad designer executives were simply a noisy group which did indeed define the mainstream, but which was only one of a multitude of different style tribes, each with its own uniform and function. These tribes overlapped, shifted and interlocked, for many individuals belonged to more than one group, changing their image to suit the activity of the moment. A major influence on late twentieth-century fashion and anti-fashion has been Vivienne Westwood and her long-standing partner, Malcolm McLaren. Throughout the seventies, Westwood and McLaren took their inspiration from anarchic urban youth and turned it first into street style and, subsequently, into high fashion. To begin with, their clothes were based around leather and rubber fetishism, bondage and S&M. They invented punk dressing, which was disseminated by McLaren through his pop groups, especially the Sex Pistols. McLaren made the startling claim that music is an extension of fashion and should be sold as such. It is certainly true that each stylistic group has a symbiotic relationship with its preferred music; the former may easily be deduced from the latter, and vice versa. It is interesting to note that the nihilistic punks and the pushy yuppies were both in reaction to their parents’ generation, many of whom were our old friends the hippies. As the mainstream became ever more obsessed with power, personal wealth and selfish materialism, so the Age of Aquarius, prefigured in the sixties, now flowered in earnest with a rapidly growing interest in the things of the spirit. The many aspects of this movement can be found conveniently gathered under the roof of The Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit. There you will find stalls offering books on channelling, yoga and creative visualization; others selling crystals of every kind with instructions as to their special properties; homeopathic and herbal medicines, dispensed with the aid of a handheld pendulum; handmade meditation stools and CDs of Tibetan overtone chanting. Other cubicles contain practitioners of every kind of Eastern massage system, spiritual healers, or Kirlian photographers. Visiting speakers claim to be able to regress a room full of people back to an awareness of their past lives, and musicians practise ecstatic singing while accompanying themselves on assorted ethnic instruments. The whole experience, ranging from profoundly life-changing to the downright silly, is, in its various forms, an expression of what has come to be called the New Age.

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Right at the other end of the spiritual spectrum are the fundamentalists, such as born-again Christians and hardline Moslems. Although it is easy to be dismissive of simplistic belief systems, religious fundamentalism is a fast-growing force to be reckoned with. At its best it promotes secure old-fashioned values and a strong sense of community at a time when the divorce rate is soaring and the family is under threat.

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Formal Dress: Occasion Wear 1  Tailored cocktail or dinner dress in jewel-coloured moiré acetate taffeta. This dress is quite complicated with its criss-cross back detail, padded shoulders and flared basque. Such dresses were inspired by the look created for such actresses as Joan Collins in Dynasty. It didn’t originate from the Paris or Milan couturiers. However, it certainly touched a chord with many women because, unlike seventies evening wear, it was assertive, glitzy and ostentatiously glamorous, needing properly done make-up, high heels and tidy hair. 2  Straight crêpe dress with huge shoulders and dolman sleeves decorated with sequinned flowers. The hair is dressed in a fan-like arrangement. 3  An endlessly variable style that has never gone out of fashion: sleeveless top and soft pleat-top pants, worn with a straight jacket in a glamorous beaded or brocaded silk. 4  Beading and sequins became very popular owing to inexpensive imports from the Far East or, rather, western manufacturers took their designs to India or Thailand and had them made up by outworkers for a quarter of the cost. This dress in beaded chiffon hangs from a pleated yoke and is caught by a diamanté buckle on one hip. The full-circle georgette skirt has a flattering asymmetric hem. As the proportion of larger women grew, they at last demanded proper recognition as a fashion force. It was still difficult for them to find glamorous clothes but, for the first time since the days when women had their clothes made for them by dressmakers, it was at least possible. 5  Tailored cocktail suit in ribbed ottoman silk with jewelled buttons, shaped jacket and short straight skirt, which would be worn with black tights and black court shoes.

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Formal Dress: Couture 1  Carolina Herrera is a Venezuelan-American fashion designer known for ‘exceptional personal style’ and dressing First Ladies from Jacqueline Onassis to Michelle Obama. The New York Times cited her designs as ‘elegant and worldly without ever being fussy’. This formidably smart day ensemble is a witty take on the cashmere cardigan and matching dress beloved of society ladies since the 1950s. The goldcoloured top has balloon top sleeves and an almost Edwardian waist, and sits neatly over the ribbed silk dress. Nude tights and strappy sandals complete the look. 2  In the late 1980s Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré took over as chief designer for the then ailing House of Dior. Here Danish model Helena Christensen models a fitted, black-and-gold evening gown from a couture collection by House of Dior. It has a rigidly tailored stiff brocade bodice teamed with a black silk satin skirt. This version has a straight skirt with a centre front split, but there also exists a model with a draped skirt and brocade bustle-effect train. 3 Roberto Capucci is an Italian fashion designer. He created unusual, sculpted dresses in original materials, bewitching the fashion world. Capucci is considered one of the most important designers of the twentieth century and in his eighties is enjoying what is supposed to be his retirement, except that he is still much in demand as a teacher and mentor. In this dress the deceptively simple vest top gives way to a skirt that is an explosion of upside-down, ombre´d, scalloped organza pleats, with gimped edges (to keep them stiff) and, one imagines, held in place with a forest of swing-tacks to stop the pleats falling down.

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Formal Dress: Wedding 1  Weddings were almost the only occasion where it was permissible to forget current political correctness and look as feminine and romantic as possible. Young women who lived in jeans or black business suits appeared for the day in romantic confections of cream dupion silk, complete with wreaths of real flowers and long net veils. This bride’s quite restrained dress has a beaded bodice and silk shoulder bows. 2  Her bridesmaid wears a cotton voile dress by Liberty of London, trimmed with lace at neck, sleeves and hem. 3  A wedding guest wears a Laura Ashley styled summer dress, with pie-frill collar and puffed sleeves; her large straw hat is trimmed with a matching silk rose and a red handbag is carried at all times. 4  Specially for the occasion, and possibly under protest, this boy wears a shirt in blue and white Swiss lawn, a clip-on bow tie and white cotton trousers. 5  The principal male participants, that is the groom, best man and father of the bride, hire matching dove grey morning suits for the day and try not to look like a chorus line.

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Working Women 1  Black cloth coat with smart black straw hat trimmed with black Petersham ribbon; leather gloves and court shoes. Such an ensemble would be worn to a funeral or memorial service. Although the idea of formal mourning clothes has long gone, black is often still worn to the actual ceremony as a mark of respect. 2  Young women wear denim. This jacket is a version of the traditional jeans jacket, with an eighties touch in the shape of the dropped padded shoulders and shaped, extended yoke. It is worn with a tight white tank top, a wide leather belt and a denim skirt which has its fullness gathered into a shapely hip basque. 3  What real people wear is seldom fashionable in the conventional sense of the word. Fashion is usually inconvenient in some way but, occasionally, style and comfort do coincide, as in this long knitted cardigan suit. The jacket is in black and white dogtooth check and is trimmed with black edging. It has a matching short, straight skirt for ‘occasions’ but is worn here with a longish black pleated skirt and white roll-neck jumper. 4  This commanding figure is one of the persistent images of the eighties. The hair is coiffed in large, carefully fixed waves, set firm with lacquer. Her crisp white shirt is finished at the neck with a soft black ribbon bow. The broad-shouldered double-breasted jacket is cut like a man’s but in a pink and black check wool mix, and the short, straight skirt, sheer tights and suede court shoes are all black. 5  White shirt blouse trimmed with machine tucks and frilled broderie anglaise, here worn with a tight elastic belt and the new shaped trousers, pleated onto a hip yoke and cut fairly full over the hips but tapering at the ankles.

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Ecclesiastical The established Christian churches are undergoing great turmoil in the late twentieth century. The decline in numbers of churchgoers has, to some extent, been balanced by the irresistible rise in fundamentalist sects of all persuasions, interest in Eastern religions, and the outer reaches of New Age spirituality. 1  The traditional male parish priest in strict clerical garb may soon become an endangered species. This English parson wears his hair fairly long – both because he is quite young himself and to identify with the younger members of his flock – a single-breasted suit in black or grey with a traditional camel-coloured duffle coat, and a clerical collar for special occasions only. 2  Many nuns whose vocation called them to work in the community felt that their stylish black habits based on medieval widow’s weeds rendered them out of touch and élitist, inappropriate for their mission to the poor. It must have taken considerable courage to abandon – literally – the habit of your entire adult life, grow your hair and face Marks & Spencer’s again. One Order has a simple solution: anything from Oxfam, as long as it is blue. This nun has a simple short veil, a cross on a cord and sensible shoes. 3  The greatest change in the Anglican church has been the ordination of women, though in Britain this did not happen until after 1990, overcoming profound and sometimes vitriolic objections from traditionalists and fundamentalists. A woman priest wears vestments basically the same as those of a man, over any kind of dark day clothes. 4  Choir boy/girl. Even the great cathedral choirs are beginning to admit girls, though most are still boys, traditionally attired in a white starched ruff or Eton collar, dark-coloured cassock and white surplice. 5  Lay choristers range from the Gospel singers of the American South to numerous ladies in draughty English parish churches. The usual American uniform is a mid-calf-length open-sleeved robe loosely based on an academic gown, a detachable white collar and perhaps a soft square ‘Tudor’ cap. The English variety looks rather less tidy, does not have ‘big’ hair and wears less make-up.

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Casualwear: Eighties Street Style 1 and 2  Goths, like Dracula, have had remarkable staying power as a style tribe. While most young people look for amusement, there will always be a few who are more at ease with the stylish and romantic vision of a life in the shadow of death. The inspirations of Dracula, vampires and The Munsters have produced some remarkable images, driven by a strong mystical philosophy. The colour for clothes is black, black and more black; the fabrics are velvet, lace and leather, with corsets, silver jewellery and spiky heeled shoes or boots. Make-up for both sexes consists of white pancake skin, with theatrical black and purple eyes and lips. The black dyed hair is teased upwards as far as it will go (1) or gelled flat with a shaved or painted widow’s peak (2). This cult has great staying power. Ted Polhemus (see Bibliography) conjures the sweet image of a couple of Goths huddled protectively together in almost every village in England. Indeed, the pair we know used to huddle a great deal and were wont to spend summer nights encouraging their children to listen to the vibes of prehistoric burial chambers. 3  The word ‘punk’ was used by Shakespeare and is one of the many synonyms for prostitute. In North American slang it means inferior or worthless. If Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren did not invent the word, they are certainly credited with the invention of the style. Ted Polhemus feels that its true origins are American, and that it only reached Britain once its alien qualities were established. The punk’s belief system is essentially nihilistic, with the despairing cry of ‘No future!’ as its rallying call. Punks countered the love and tie-dyed hippie culture, which itself was a revolt against the previous generation. They were an all-too evocative expression of the economic stagnation and rising unemployment of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Visually the torn rag-bags of black leather, grubby T-shirts and faded denim with Doc Martens (DMs) and chains take second place to the extraordinary treatment of the hair. The scalp was often shaved except for a ‘Mohican’-style ridge running from brow to nape. This ridge would be bleached, dyed a bright rainbow colour, then gelled into a rigid fan that both startled and shocked the casual observer. Indeed, many punks relied on their fantastic appearance to beg from bewildered tourists.

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Summer Casuals 1  For ten years it was impossible to buy a woman’s top without shoulder pads. The overall silhouette was that of the American football player, an inverted triangle which, when combined with this casual summer style that appears to be based on that of an off-duty GI, was cross-dressing in all but name. The oversize jacket, embellished with storm flaps, pockets and assorted straps in khaki cotton, is worn with matching pants cut with a jeans-like basque but with pleats springing from the hip seam. The T-shirt has a logo on it; along with shoulder pads, it became quite difficult to buy leisure garments without some form of advertising slogan or emblem printed across the chest. 2  A vest or tank-top with cut-away back, only wearable by those with no breasts or who had ‘worked out’ so much that they had no need of a bra. Spiky urchin hair cut and chinos. 3  Oversized shirt of military cut, cinched into the waist with a wide elastic belt, matching straight mid-calf skirt with a slit up the back. Long, tumbling, fair-streaked hair. 4  Cotton summer dress with a wrap-over back and longish skirt of unpressed pleats from a dropped waist. 5  Baggy shorts were a popular summer alternative. The long length allowed people of all shapes and sizes to wear them, including many who would have looked better in a nice cotton skirt. A stretch-cotton vest is worn under a short-sleeved open shirt tied at the waist. 6 Oversized pink sweatshirt with shoulder pads, raglan sleeves and logo, worn with leggings and headband.

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Sports and Leisurewear 1  Skate-boarding was a huge international craze that quickly evolved a distinctive style of dress, for identity and for protection. Helmets were not always worn but did advertise that the wearer was capable of stunts involving somersaults. Guards for knees, elbows and wrists looked good and prevented too many sprains. Canvas ankle boots gave some support while remaining flexible. Otherwise the tops and brightly coloured baggy pants or cut-off jeans were standard street wear. 2  With the introduction of racing and mountain bikes, cycling stopped being simply a healthy, if sedate, way of getting about and became a Lycra-clad obsession, requiring a total outfit consisting of an aerodynamic fibreglass helmet capable of protecting the temples from a 30 mph fall on hard roads; a mask against pollution; top, undershirt and shorts made of nylon and stretch Lycra, covered with brand names; and special cycling shoes. 3  Going to the gym is the ultimate late-twentieth-century pastime and, naturally, requires a complete set of garments that are completely useless for anything else. I am told that the muscles are only useful for posing as well. 4 Hip hop ragamuffin, or off-duty skate-boarder, wears a baseball cap turned back to front, logodecorated T-shirt, oversize striped shirt, enormous drooping Joe Bloggs jeans and Caterpillar or Kickers suede work boots, accompanied by obligatory Walkman with glued-on headphones.

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Underwear and Accessories 1  A streamlined and beautiful ‘unitard’ in soft cotton jersey mixed with elastene to keep it in shape. It would make an attractive swimming costume, but has certain limitations as practical underwear for all but the most perfectly waxed and modestly endowed. 2  A hat, or more accurately ‘headpiece’, worn on Ladies Day at the Ascot races. The wearer has the elegant stance that only ladies (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) can achieve. If a hat can be described as ‘witty’ then this is it, because it is constructed entirely of recycled materials. It seems to be made of shredded cellophane, string and torn net stitched onto a simple base and decorated with flowers. I have been unable to trace the milliner, but if you told me it was Philip Treacy or David Schilling, I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Menswear 1  An Islamic teacher in Bradford, Yorkshire, wearing traditional dress. He wears a straight cut, seven button jacket in striped wool, probably made by local tailors in English cloth, over a draped cotton shirt, sometimes called a ‘dishdashah’ or ‘thobe’. He has a white cotton cap, or Taqiyah, leather sandals and a full beard. 2  Two formally dressed western partygoers at least half way through their celebrations. Their classically cut tuxedo double breasted evening suits could belong to any decade from the 1920s onwards. In this image, the matching crimson details, the waistcoat or vest, buttonhole flower, bow ties and cummerbund, as well as the cream suits, point to a choreographed event such as a smart wedding. 3  A Shia Muslim man from Iran in the traditional dress of an elder, or teacher. He also wears a thobe, this time undraped, covered with a black Kaftan or Jubbah. This term is applied to any straight unlined outer garment worn throughout the Near East. This man wears a large, intricately wrapped turban, black leather shoes and a long beard.

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Childrenswear 1  What used to be called a ‘Junior Miss’ fashion show, or US designer clothes for children. This neat ensemble is in top to toe red and white and consists of, from the top, red straw hat with a flipped up brim reminiscent of Leslie Caron’s costume from the film Gigi. High-waisted cotton sun dress in plain and spotted cotton, white frilled socks and red Mary Jane strapped shoes complete the look. 2  British boy wearing an imported silver jacket based on the famous performance costume worn by Michael Jackson (see p. 169). He also wears the standard uniform of the young of blue denim jeans, T-shirt and trainers. This is a very good example of how street fashion emerges from either couture or, in this case, a popular star’s wardrobe. 3 Cool kid in Harlem wears bright, six-sectioned butcher-boy cap worn stylishly to one side, and oversized sunglasses. Over-sized suspenders or braces hold up baggy jeans worn over a white singlet. 4  A little girl from Beijing, China, is dressed in a floral print shirt-smock that looks not unlike an oldfashioned pyjama jacket, well worn, and washed cotton pants and soft canvas shoes. Her hair is finished with a small top-knot tied with a ribbon bow. 5  A schoolgirl walks with her class in the streets of Jerusalem. The navy uniform dress has modest long sleeves, a knee-length skirt with a belt, and a very pretty collar that looks as if it could be made out of a piece of vintage lace. She wears it with her track-suit bottoms, one suspects for warmth and practicality rather than as a fashion statement, and white ankle socks and black strapped shoes. Her hair has been braided and tied up in two bunches with lilac ribbon.

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10 1990–95 PLURALISM

In order to clarify what I perceived as the major trends of the 1980s, it was inevitable that my concentration on the mainstream should cause me to neglect the tributaries. The 1990s are characterized by such a tangled swirling mass of side streams, backwaters and new springs, that if the mainstream exists at all it is very difficult to see. This chapter will therefore take the form of a list of social groups, of necessity incomplete but hopefully giving some idea of what seems to be going on.

Old Money The more aristocratic a person considers herself, the less interested she is in the more extreme designerfashions. The glittering excesses of Versace or Lacroix are considered dreadfully vulgar and, if she has even heard of Vivienne Westwood or Jean-Paul Gaultier, she will think their ideas simply silly. Her taste and style have hardly changed for fifteen years, since the days of investment dressing in classic clothes, occasionally enlivened by genuine vintage garments, and sumptuous ball gowns by safe designers such as Katherine Walker or Bellville Sassoon. It is quite possible that the upper-class man’s clothes haven’t changed either, for good tailoring lasts and newness for its own sake is still undesirable. The English gentleman has always tended towards the scruffy and, with reduced expendable income, he may now even be a little down at heel.

New Money and Media Stars – The Glitterati This group includes film stars, rich industrialists and almost everyone who has appeared in Hello! magazine. They exercise an influence on the style of the era because it is new money that buys the expensive designer clothes from the collections of New York, Paris or Milan. As the Hollywood award ceremony is the ultimate social event for these people, it is hardly surprising that the favoured look is one of sexy display, owing much to exposed and unsupported breasts, clinging chiffon and as much glitter as possible. Hair is nearly always blonde, skilfully highlighted, tights are pale and shoes merely minimal straps with high heels. Mae West would have felt completely at home, if confused by the lack of adequate corsetry. In their need to defy the effects of ageing, many women, and an increasing number of men, undergo extensive cosmetic surgery backed up by a rigorous diet and a personal trainer. It must be said that as long as the overstretched wind-tunnel effect is avoided, many women in their fifties and early sixties look quite amazing.

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Ladies Who Lunch Mainly the wealthy wives of business and media tycoons, much concerned with fundraising for charity and the arts. Their favourite designers range from Valentino and Armani to Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta.

The Suit and the Working Girl A very large group with a number of splinter groups. Men have returned to traditional sartorial values in order to progress along their chosen career path. A high proportion of businessmen who work in the metropolitan centres are expected to wear conventional suits to the office. Suits are compulsory in banking, real estate offices, accounting, sales, the law and corporation boardrooms. Professional women also wear suits. The immense shoulder pads of the eighties have disappeared but neat skirt and trouser suits, usually in black, are seen in executive offices everywhere. Favoured designs are the diffusion ranges of Armani and Jil Sander, supplemented by clothes from Max Mara, Norma Kamali, Donna Karan, or Nicole Farhi, plus carefully selected chain-store buys.

Youth When not subscribing to one of the most extreme style tribes, most young people dress fairly conventionally, in a unisex mix of jeans, T-shirts, blouson jackets and heavy-soled work boots. Most boys wear their hair very short, most girls keep their hair quite long and look after it well. It is said that, although children as young as thirteen experiment with soft drugs as a matter of course, this generation is very responsible in its attitude to unprotected sex. Virginity is even considered quite cool. The fear of AIDS has had its effect. As a result, routine sexual display through everyday clothes is remarkable for its absence.

Street Style I shall not attempt to compete with Ted Polhemus here, and will merely repeat his list of nineties style tribes to give some idea of the diversity involved: Goths, New Romantics, Perus, Psychobillies, Ragamuffins, Rastafarians, New Age Travellers (who are nineties hippies), Ravers, Acid Jazzers, Indie Kids, Cuties, Grunge Girls, Technos and Cyber Punks. I could go on – Leather Queens, Trannies (transvestites), Diesel Dykes and Lipstic Lesbians, Jocks, Hooray Henrys and Sloanes. The tribes are instantly recognizable to themselves and to each other, their multifarious uniforms conferring the reassurance of belonging in an increasingly fragmented world.

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Formal Dress: High Fashion in the USA 1 Armani in Atlanta. Perfect long-line brocade jacket with double lettuce-edge chiffon skirt. Wealthy American women dress up far more than their British counterparts, and West Coast and especially Texan women wear more expensive sparkly clothes than anyone else. 2  Jackie O-style sleeveless dress and tailored jacket by Ralph Lauren. A bit dull for Los Angeles but popular in New York and London. 3  Showy black slip dress with lace insertions by Calvin Klein. This dress is considered too vulgar for Southern ladies but is much liked in New York and Los Angeles.

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Celebrities 1  Very grand American evening dress. A pink panné velvet cardigan is worn here with an 1870s-inspired enormous pink and black silk bustle skirt and big blonde hair. 2  Any one of the dresses on this page is grand and glittery enough to attend the Oscar ceremony, neatly demonstrating the polarization of late twentieth-century fashion. This strapless shadow striped silk chiffon dress has an intricately draped top mounted on a firmly boned bodice, and a gathered skirt. 3  The classic awards ceremony dress has hardly changed since Mae West wiggled into shot trussed into champagne sequins, with blonde hair and the highest heels she could stand up in. Actress Tippi Hedren wears a fairly restrained version in sea-green beaded chiffon with its halter neckline cleverly cut to accommodate the firm corsetry but the skirt slashed to the thigh to reveal a still beautiful leg. 4  I have tried to avoid a judgemental tone in these pages, but the idea behind this particular outfit quite eludes me. It was worn to a ‘themed’ costume ball in Hollywood but seems to have three quite separate themes. An exquisitely embroidered cream and gold corset is worn with a tight split turquoise skirt. The lady’s modesty is preserved with a golden silk organza jacket with split kimono-like sleeves, the whole thing topped with an expertly dressed chignon and shod with nude tights and leopard-print stiletto heels. 5  Another classic ‘full dress’ look. A long iridescent sequinned gown with tiny shoulder straps and a fitted waist looks modern because of the tumbling high-lit coppery hair and the well-exercised body beneath. The vast stole adds casual glamour.

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Formal Wear: Three Suits and a Sweaterset 1  Yves St Laurent. Copies by every manufacturer from Harrods’ own to most of the high street chains. The jacket is tailored as carefully as a Savile Row suit and the short straight skirt makes it the inevitable formal daywear for many fashion-conscious women. 2 John Galliano. A cleverly cut jacket, based on a nineteenth-century corset pattern, redefines the glamour of the New Look for the nineties. This is one of Galliano’s best-selling suits, which at approximately £2,500/$3,750 says much for its sexy appeal. The suit is made in small-check black and white fine wool worsted, and is worn without a shirt. 3  Armani’s unstructured alternative. It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Georgio Armani on late twentieth-century fashion. His unstructured, beautifully made suits are high on the wish-lists of all sorts of women. He works with the fabric technicians of Italy and Switzerland to produce state-of-theart, mostly man-made materials of such subtlety and distinction that, although manufacturers from Los Angeles to Hong Kong shamelessly copy his timeless shapes, none of them comes anywhere near the genuine article. 4  The nineties version of a fifties favourite; the twin or sweaterset, popular in 1995–6 in a range of citrus or pastel colours; it is worn here with a short, bias-cut viscose satin skirt, reminiscent of the flower print slip dresses of the thirties. As has often been said, all fashion is retro, if you look hard enough.

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Casualwear: Urban Cowboys Much twentieth-century fashion owes its origin to functional work-wear. This hardly comes as a surprise, since clothes suitable for hard physical work are of necessity simple, hardwearing and devoid of superfluous decoration; in short, classic. The great American cowboy has had an influence on fashion as far-reaching as his contribution to the movie industry. Western clothing has taken two distinct forms. The first relates to the cowboy’s mythic position in the American psyche: he and his female partner are potent symbols of the pioneer spirit, with its visions of liberty, equality and the other Constitutional values. If Laura Ashley costumed the nostalgic images of an English rural Arcadia, then Ralph Lauren, with his ruffled denim and hand-crafted leather, has performed the same magic for America. The second influence could perhaps be described as the show-biz version; the ‘rhinestone-cowboy’, sanitized Hollywood Western stars such as Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, serenaded their faithful horses wearing particoloured shirts, fringed suede jackets, and piped jeans tucked into expensive Mexican boots, providing inspiration for a multitude of cowboy wannabes. The singers of Country and Western music are especially inventive, wearing flamboyant costumes so sequinned and befringed that even the ironic Versace designer-cowboy is not more ostentatious.

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Casualwear: Street Clothes 1  I thought this was an example of grunge but I am told it is ‘cutie’. The ladies of Atlanta, indeed anyone over thirty, would be appalled by this image. Warm-weather functional clothes were always a bit of a problem. Here a cotton, high-waisted tank-top dress is worn over a vest (tank top). The girl carries an ‘ethnic’ cloth bag and wears a woven friendship bracelet, round dark glasses, the inevitable black DMs and bare legs. 2  A couple of revellers from a Shampoo Planet Club event. She has done her bleached hair in foilwrapped sections, her black sheath dress (vinyl? bin liner?) is held up by a studded collar, and her mittens are made from what looks like black socks. He has dyed his spiky hair scarlet to match his T-shirt and velvet hipster trousers. I think the cropped fun-fur jacket must belong to his friend. 3  How much more extreme can one get? A shaven head was once a badge of ultimate shame, reserved for concentration camp victims and wartime collaborators. This is really how to upset your mother: a scalp blue with cold and all-over five o’clock shadow combined with multiple earrings, nose-studs and, most painful of all, an eyebrow ring. 4  London Rastafarian, Brixton-style. An over-sized crochet hat controls the long dreadlocks. 5  A popular no-fashion look for the young when not wearing jeans. Calf-length button-through dress in flower-sprigged viscose worn over a brief T-shirt and probably black boots or canvas shoes. 6 Young man in a gay bar. He wears a black paramilitary beret, several silver earrings in one ear, studded bulldog collar, black nylon jacket with sleeves cut off, a tattoo, tight frayed denim jeans and would be wearing combat boots.

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Casualwear: Mail Order A page of casual wear from UK-based Littlewoods home shopping catalogue. Such a catalogue is an excellent indicator of what the majority of people actually wear, as distinct from what the glossy magazine editors think they wear. 1  Crop top in sweatshirt fabric, worn with cotton mix drawstring shorts. This has to be as cheap and simple a solution to sports and beach dressing as can be imagined. 2  Hooded and zipped unisex sports top in the same fleecy fabric as the comfortable jogging pants. It is worn over a vest or body and with canvas shoes or trainers. These are easy natural clothes that require no thought, grooming or care in selection, relying for their appeal entirely on the freshness and condition of the wearer’s face and body. 3  Another crop top, this time in pink-coloured knitted viscose, worn with simple drawstring pants in an Indian print cotton. Note the ‘cross-cultural’ hair. The wearer has some American Indian blood and has done her long hair in tiny beaded braids, more usually associated with African hairstyles. 4  Little knitted top in polycotton with unturned hems made frilly by stretching the fabric as it is passed through the overlocker, thus making a decorative virtue out of a potential mistake. A cotton sun hat and denim jeans skirt finish this useful ensemble. 5  Long gelled hair is scraped back into a pony tail. Small round sunglasses are worn with the crucial nineties’ accessory, the mobile phone. Her T-shirt is nylon with Lycra to ensure a shrunken fit; her short pleated skirt is red and white striped polyester. 6  A teenage uniform of padded nylon zippered jacket, V-neck sweater and baggy jeans.

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Dressy black suit for the nineties 1991

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Mrs Steer and her granddaughter 1994

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Underwear 1  Most women prefer not to go bra-less but this strange hybrid garment will provide some support. It is an all-in-one nylon under-body or teddy, wired under the bust and poppered under the crotch. Though it has a certain sexy charm on its own, it is uncomfortable and inconvenient to wear. 2  Set in denim marl cotton and Lycra – cool and functional, if deliberately downbeat. The bra is efficiently uplifting in the Wonderbra style, but the panties look like old-fashioned games knickers to me – though it would be comforting to know that you can have your cleavage and be politically correct. 3  The breasts that remain after all that working out and dieting often need more tactful support than they did before, hence the need for the specially designed sports bra. This one has a ‘racing’ back, air vents, wide, comfortable straps and elastic under the bust. You still bounce, though. Lycra and cotton kneelength shorts were originally designed for competition cyclists but are now seen everywhere for sports and leisure wear. 4  The night-shirt has become an object for all kinds of marketing exercises. This one in pink and yellow confines itself to teddy bears, but they can be found advertising anything from baseball teams to Winniethe-Pooh. 5  The obsession with fitness has spawned whole stores devoted to exercise clothing. Here a pink capsleeved, thong-back body is worn with toning striped leggings. 6  One-piece swimsuit with a famous logo woven across its chest. Note the very high-cut leg and the modest tank-top straps.

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Shoes 1  Moccasins with the popular 1995 clumpy heel. Shoes for women are polarized between delicate, strappy shoes for occasion wear and heavy-duty functionalism for everything else. These moccasin styles are offered in every material from black patent to faux snakeskin with a see-through plastic sole and heel. 2  Simple court shoes with a pretty low heel, in black, navy or taupe, are worn by women who wish to look neat and feminine in the workplace and for semi-formal day wear. 3  High heels are back for dressy occasions; for some, they never went away. This example with flattering, slightly waisted heel and crossed straps is worn to ‘feminize’ a serious suit or to finish the look of a black cocktail dress. Pale tights are fashionable but many women persist in the belief that black is more flattering. 4  Built-up canvas shoes, an inexpensive and popular option for the young. This version is offered in red Lurex, as well as the season’s colours. 5  The eight-hole work boot by Doc Marten defines mid-nineties urban Britain. These everlasting, oversized, comfortable boots are seen everywhere in black with jeans or opaque black tights and are as ubiquitous and as genuinely unisex as jeans. They can also be found in colours or tartans, even in leather printed with sparkly holograms. 6  Knee-high laced boot with a solid medium-height heel; it looks good with skirts of any length but is sometimes seen with leggings or stretch jeans. 7  The walking sandal with heavy moulded composition soles and carefully placed wide fabric straps is one of the few footwear developments of the nineties. Comfortable sandals, once known rudely as ‘Jesus creepers’ and worn principally by earnest moralists or middle-aged bohemians, are now a serious warm-weather option for both sexes – and if not exactly fashionable, are nevertheless extremely popular. 8  This much-copied laced moccasin by Timberland in green and brown waxed leather is widely worn as a casual shoe. 9  Another Doc Marten shoe, much worn by school children with or without the integral steel toe-cap. They are not glamorous but at least the young now have beautifully straight toes and mothers approve because they never wear out. 10 A rather peculiar earth shoe with crepe sole and unfinished hide upper. With its square toe and primitive styling, it could be peasant footwear from almost any period.

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Menswear 1  It is not really true that all men in the mid nineties look as if they are dressed as lumberjacks but, out of doors, men who don’t wear the middle-class outer uniform of Barbour jacket, tweeds and wellies, certainly try. This carefully designed all-season weather coat has a fleecy zip-in body warmer for winter, a hood concealed in the collar, and is wind- and waterproof. Originally designed for serious mountaineers, such garments have infiltrated all levels of society and can even be seen over city suits on the streets of London and New York. This chap wears a ‘granddad’ shirt, jeans and serious, two- or even three-tone suede and leather walking boots. 2  The alternative weather-coat for those who dislike the class affiliations of green waxed Barbour jackets and who feel that anoraks of any description, however over-designed, are for nerds: the Australian ‘horse rustler’s favourite’ called Drizabone has a shoulder-cape, warm check lining and a split pleat in the back to fit neatly over your horse’s rump. It is usually made in brown waxed cotton. 3  The designer option: black glasses, tie-less shirt, belt, slacks and shoes, here worn with a beautifully tailored light grey jacket. The medium length hair is gelled back.

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Childrenswear We can hardly imagine clothing of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without the sturdy cotton fabric called ‘denim’. Denim originates from the cotton mills of Nîmes and was known originally as ‘serge de Nîmes’, with a distinctive diagonal weave; it is now made all over the world, especially in the USA and India. Denim was originally dyed with a dye produced from the plant Indigofera tinctoria (related to woad) but most denim today is dyed with synthetic indigo dye. As well as the ubiquitous blue jeans, denim of various weights proved ideal for the manufacture of robust children’s clothing, tough enough to be handed down, if not through generations, at least to younger brothers and sisters. The boy wears overalls, or dungarees, made by OshKosh B’Gosh, a popular firm which is still going strong; and the girl wears a pinafore or jumper dress in the same fabric, from a children’s wear catalogue. They both wear T-shirts, and the girl has a frilled petticoat.

1990–95 Pluralism219

Kids in denim

11 1995–2000 REVIVALS AND CASUAL CHIC During the second half of the 1990s revivals came along with ever increasing speed. For instance, 1996 saw a vigorous revival of the 1960s Jackie Kennedy/Audrey Hepburn look. What was unusual this time around was that the little sleeveless shifts and matching coats, the button-up cardigans and pale shoes were almost identical to the day clothes that the original followers of the style have never stopped wearing for formal occasions. The glossy magazines make them look quite different from the sixties originals, with wilder hair and mismatched accessories. The late nineties’ look is that of a bleached super-waif with a chemically-induced hangover, the inevitable reaction to the eighties’ super-fit bronzed Californian body-builder. Smart shoppers will often have found a sixties original in a charity shop or vintage clothing store, combining new and old with great aplomb. A number of trends emerged and fizzled out during the nineties, especially the long expected return of the maxi skirt. Vogue magazine announced that ‘It’s goodbye to the way we were in the Eighties; the long skirt is heralding a whole new way of dressing.’ Design company Ghost produced a whole collection in 1999 using long pastel colour dresses in the company’s signature soft georgette, but it didn’t take on. Fashion photographers and magazine editors were more interested in developing the hard-sex, bodycon shapes that took us through the millennium, and few fashionistas welcomed an opposing concept of femininity. 1996 was the era of ‘Geek Chic’, as expressed most strongly by Italian designer Miuccia Prada. A Vogue editorial stated that purple Crimplene slacks and shirts in shower-curtain print nylon, worn with plaid A-line miniskirts, Hush Puppie shoes and a plastic lunch box for a bag is cool. These ironic clothes are intentionally ‘off ’. In the late 1990s some women, especially in the UK, started to wear dresses over their jeans. The dress was usually a little printed number in cotton or viscose and was often purchased in a thrift shop. The addition of denim jeans and trainers or boots toughened up the look and brought it up to date. 1  Swimwear by Hermès. Three bold colours are combined in this one shouldered swimsuit. It may have left the wearer with distinctly odd tan marks. 2  Easy pieces by Emporio Armani. 3  Ghost dresses scarcely needed catwalk shows, for 20 years they were everywhere. Ghost became known for its distinctive use of viscose fabrics which, if shrunk and dyed, developed a crinkled texture similar to vintage crepe. Not only could the fabrics be made in various weights and sizes, the clinging garments made from them were easy to wear, easy to care for, and could be worn by women of all ages and shapes.

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4  Husband and wife team Clements Ribeiro discover pattern. A see-through floral muslin peasant blouse is here combined with silk trousers in a stronger toning pattern, giving a young and casual feel. 5  An unexpectedly sweet print moment from the usually monotone Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. The sandwashed silk vest is printed in a smudgy floral, computer generated print.

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Couture by Comme de Garcons, Lawrence Steele and John Galliano 1997

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Patchwork couture and formal featuring a masked headpiece by Thierry Mugler, a dress by Valentino, a heart-shaped “fascinator”, a Jean Paul Gaultier body suit and a dress by Versace

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Yamamoto and Gaultier 1  I love this wonderfully original dress by Yohji Yamamoto made in white silk and wool mix satin; the twisted fabric is wound into shoulder straps, flower corsage and draped train. An elegant long dress with a décolletage, it relies not on darts or cuts but on a method of twisting and wrapping the fabric that follow the contours of the body. It is a typical example of his work, showcasing his extraordinary skills in both dressmaking and origami. The twist of fabric around the body is reminiscent of a designer’s unfinished process of draping on a dress form. 2  Jean Paul Gaultier, born 24 April 1952, is a French haute couture and pret-á-porter fashion designer. Gaultier was the creative director of Hermès from 2003 to 2010. He never received formal training as a designer but is entirely self-taught, seeking out and sending sketches to famous couturiers at an early age. Pierre Cardin was impressed by his talent and hired him as an assistant in 1970. At 62 he is still considered an ‘enfant terrible’ in the somewhat stuffy world of traditional haute couture. This scarlet corset dress, though initially considered outrageous, is made of Lycra/spandex and stretch satin. It has actually proved to be a bestseller for the company; tremendously flattering, pulling a woman in at the waist and pushing her breasts up to a perky, circle-stitched display. What’s not to like? 3  This has to be Yohji Yamamoto again, here casting his ironic eye on the classic grey business suit. This version is several suits in one: pant-suit, neat skirt, an asymmetric jacket, with one side long, the other short, all beautifully cut and put together in two patterns of fine grey worsted. The model completes the look with a neat bobbed haircut and flat moccasin shoes. I wonder if you would get a job anywhere but in the rag-trade in such an ensemble? It’s possibly too witty, too subversive to make the average company director feel at ease!

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Formal Dress: Men’s Couture 1  Not quite couture illustration, more high end catalogue look in Esquire men’s style magazine as an example of the new casual look. This country style, or at least urban thoughts of the countryside style, was beginning to take the place of all those narrow black suits and hard-edged bankers’ outfits. The whole ensemble is soft and comfortable with an unstructured cord jacket, possibly hand-knit high-neck sweater worn over white cotton jeans and, rather surprisingly, formal dark brown laced boots. 2  This outfit by Gold is described as a ‘deconstructed linen mix blazer with draw-string waistband cotton trousers’ (deconstructed is fashion-speak for unstructured, i.e. without pads or interfacing). By 1995 both men and women were wearing their shoes without socks, at least on the catwalk. 3  Dolce & Gabbana also shows hand knitting, this time in an oversize cherry red sweater made in mohair or angora yarn. The model wears it with boot-cut, slightly flared beige trousers and pointed suede laced shoes. There is a great difference in men’s haircuts on this page, from almost shoulder length, to lacquered stick up quiff via a conventional short back and sides artfully ruffled by the stylist with a little gel.

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Celebrities: Including Nelson Mandela and The Spice Girls 1  Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, commonly known as Mother Teresa, was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and missionary of Albanian origin who lived for most of her life in India caring for the poorest of the poor. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 building hospices to care for victims of AIDS and leprosy and tuberculosis. She wears the habit of the order which is based on the cheapest possible version of Indian dress, the sari, made in spotless (we hope) white cotton bordered with blue, traditionally known as the colours of the Virgin Mary. 2  Throughout the 1990s, the girl band The Spice Girls were phenomenally successful, having five consecutive number 1 hit singles. These two drawn here are Melanie Brown (also called Mel B) who was given the nickname Scary Spice because of her outrageous, ‘in-your-face’ attitude, Leeds accent, throaty laugh, pierced tongue and manner of dress; here she wears a two piece in clinging silver leather, with her voluminously curly Afro hair. Emma Bunton, or Baby Spice, was the youngest of the group; she styled her long blonde hair in pigtails, wore baby-doll dresses and had a supposedly innocent smile. Here she wears a white tennis dress, child’s white socks and Union Jack trainers with very high platform soles. 3  In September 2015 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth will become the longest reigning British monarch of all time, overtaking even Queen Victoria. The Queen must have an almost endless wardrobe of beautifully made, embellished and embroidered dresses for her many state appearances. She has worn dresses designed for her by Norman Hartnell, Hardy Amies, Ian Thomas, Stewart Parvin and others, now coordinated by designer Angela Kelly, who is the Queen’s personal assistant and senior dresser. ‘The Queen is not interested in high fashion,’ observes one couturier, ‘but she is very interested in her clothes and is very particular. Her Majesty is acutely aware of how invasive the press are – her clothes are part of her armour.’ In this meeting with Nelson Mandela she wears a gold embroidered cream satin dress, and her sash matches the emerald necklace and brooch. 4  Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and icon who served as the first black president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He is here seen with Queen Elizabeth on a state visit. He has mostly abandoned formal dress for these occasions (he’s allowed to) in favour of fine shirt jackets decorated with African embroidery. And why wouldn’t he?

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Sportswear 1 Professional American tennis player, Venus Williams is a seven-time Grand Slam title winner. A towering presence on the court and in life. She, together with her sister Serena have inspired a generation of players of all ethnicities. She is wearing a classic white tennis dress. Wearing white at Wimbledon has long been a matter of tradition, not stipulation, but since 2010 this requirement has been strictly enforced as more and more tennis dress designers tried to make their work stand out by adding pops of colour. White clothing for strenuous sports grew out of the practical issue of how to deal with sweat – white is the only colour that can safely be boiled to clean it. 2  A Muslim woman football player. Soccer’s rule-makers have lifted a controversial ban on headscarves, clearing the way for Muslim women to compete in international matches. This highlights the question about gender inequality in sport. The writer of the ‘myfellowamerican’ blog says, ‘If a religion dictates that women dress a certain way, isn’t it our duty to find a way to allow them to do so?’. Here a player of the Iranian team braves the disapproval of some by playing at all, but has found a modest way of dressing that makes it possible, wearing a Velcro fastened hijab and long loose team top and pants with conventional football boots. 3  Basketball. How does Vince Carter of the Raptors actually do this – holding the ball under his leading leg in mid leap? His match clothing is the traditional singlet and shorts in his team’s colours, with absorbent white ankle socks and red trainers with spring heels. The only missing garments are the expected basket-ballers’ knee supports from all that leaping. But then, Mr Carter is very young. 4  Baseball. It seems as if baseball clothing has hardly changed in silhouette for half a century. Here Sammy Sosa hits a home run. He is wearing a blue Chicago Cubs sweatshirt, flexible long breeches, baseball boots, which are basically high-top trainers, and any number of protective and supportive items. These include a helmet with ear-guards, gloves with wrist supports, ankle braces of different heights and what looks like a knee bandage under his breeches.

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Clubbers in black and white 1995

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Girl and boy waifs in the citrus colours for geeks 1996

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Underwear and Accessories 1  Singer Grace Jones in bondage underwear with garden party hat, a look designed for her by her expartner, Jean-Paul Goude. 2  Fun maternity sweatshirt, with the baby peeping out of the tummy section! This is worn with pink jogging bottoms and striped Ugg style boots. 3  Classic white men’s underpants by Calvin Klein. 4  Princess Di, or Diana Princess of Wales, in a pretty strawberry pink silk maternity dress and matching hat. She is here described as a ‘fashion victim’, which seems a little unfair. 5  Silk-knit vest and shorts from Patra, the English catalogue of thermal underwear.

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Menswear 1 This sketch is based on the singer and entertainer, Alice Cooper. Known for his social and witty persona offstage The Rolling Stone Album Guide has called him the world’s most ‘beloved heavy metal entertainer’, who has been described as the artist who ‘first introduced horror imagery to rock ’n’ roll, posing with snakes and covering his face with full vampire make-up’. Here he wears top to toe black leather, silver jewellery, black lipstick, bare chest and tinted reading glasses. 2  One of a group of Californian teens, this boy wears a multi-coloured cap with goggles attached, tiedyed hippie T-shirt, striped pedal pusher trousers and trainers. 3  A cobweb knit jumper designed by Raf Simons for his fall collection at the end of the decade. It’s really difficult to make something as deconstructed as this; how on earth did the makers stop it falling to pieces altogether? 4  A charming mixture of serious student and bohemian chic. The model wears a collarless, black, longline coat with a striped skinny sweater, artistic camouflage-patterned loose trousers, partly unlaced heavy black boots and two pairs of glasses.

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Childrenswear: Kids and Teens Children’s clothes change surprisingly slowly compared with adult fashion; you would be hard put to accurately date any of these sketches, which are all taken from street or home photographs. 1  Going to school in winter. This girl, all in pink, has just been dropped off at her school, well equipped for whatever the day might bring. She has a woolly hat with a pom-pom, warm padded anorak worn over a lilac cord pinafore-dress, and spotty blouse. She has her track suit bottoms on against the cold, and trainers. A pink school rucksack with books and packed lunch completes the ensemble. 2  A boy in summer. He wears a T-shirt with a bold lion’s head printed on it, well-worn cotton shorts and low top trainers done up with Velcro. 3  A small girl waters her garden in a print pinafore dress, worn over an under- or T-shirt, and striped rubber boots. The boots may be new, but many small children’s clothes are hand-me-downs from older siblings or parents’ friends who have kids a little bit older and are delighted to give out-grown garments to a good home. Practical recycling, you could call it. 4  Teenage boy. He wears an oversize military style bomber jacket, printed football shirt much faded from repeated washes, denim jeans, torn whether by fashion or by accident is hard to tell, and red hightop trainers. And headphones for his iPod. 5  A teenage fashion statement, seen on the London Underground. This girl wears a smart black felt hat, her dungaree style pant-suit is over a crisp white shirt, bare legs, pierced leather cowboy boots and a neat canvas and leather shoulder bag. Her headphones are worn round her neck, with her smartphone kept in her pocket.

1995–2000 Revivals and Casual Chic 239

12 2000–2005 TRANSITION AND COMPLEXITY In the new millennium, increasing globalization influenced the decade’s clothing trends, with rapidly changing styles drawing from a wide range of sources. It would be much easier for fashion historians if changes in style coincided neatly with each decade so that we can then define each decade by its dominant look or shape. So how much more convenient would it be if it offered a clear dividing point at the start of a new century? Unfortunately, this is not at all the case, and even writers on fashion trends describe those of the millennium (the noughties?) as rather a mish-mash. Here are some definitions of the era – which only go to show that it is almost impossible to define clear trends from the many strands that were visible. In the UK this period saw the rise of ‘chav’ style, a pejorative term used to describe an apparently showy ‘lower class’ person wearing fake designer sportswear, accompanied by some form of flashy gold jewellery otherwise known as ‘bling‘. Denim became hugely popular again, with almost all forms of it being distressed. Clothing was in other cases more conventionally ‘sexy’, so there were a lot of miniskirts, shorts, hip hop influenced trousers, Daisy Duke’s tiny, fitted denim shorts, polo shirts and tank tops in fluorescent colours. Furthermore, eco-friendly and ethical clothing, such as recycled fashions (usually called ‘vintage’ to distinguish it from the merely old), were prominent in the decade. In the early 2000s, many mid and late 1990s fashions remained fashionable around the globe, while simultaneously introducing newer trends. So the 2000s did not have one dominant style; they revived clothes from other decades while trying to make sense of an ever more complex scene. Perhaps we could summarize this period as an uncertain time of transition where people were looking around for a big new idea that was yet to emerge.

2000–2005 Transition and Complexity 241

Artist Grayson Perry as his alter ego, Claire, in an outfit created by fashion students at Central St. Martins

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Formal Dress: Couture, Designing Outside the Box 1 Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy goes Medieval. Sometimes dress designers step right outside their accustomed boxes and come up with something unexpected. The model’s platinum blonde hair is frizzed to breaking point (I rather hope the fluffy part is a wig), making a pre-Raphaelite halo which glows in the light. Her dress is purest golden jersey that with its high neck, long sleeves and circle skirt complete with train could have stepped from a Gothic cathedral. 2 Designer Anne Valerie Hash also having a romantic moment. She is best known for tough, if deconstructed, mannish tailoring, but here presents a loose and drifty three piece in washed crepe de chine and open weave silk for the bolero that manages to look both ethereal and edgy. 3  This collection by John Galliano for Dior really is in questionable taste. He has called it ‘The Homeless Collection’ – and it comes complete with newspaper print fabric, vast bucket hat, crotch high split and laced skirt, and assorted carefully placed ‘scars’. 4  Giorgio Armani is best known for his lightweight classic tailoring, but here we see a very romantic layered lace dress. It is constructed of four layers of finest silk lace that looks antique and seems to be suspended entirely on the narrow scooped neck band. I suppose the fabric is so light in weight that it doesn’t really hang so much as rest lightly against the body! 5  Lastly on this page is a grandly formal dress and stole by Valentino. Eschewing his favourite red for pure gold Chinese silk brocade, this model makes an entrance that would get the paparazzi going on any red carpet, or even the famous Met Ball. The dress takes something from the construction that was typical of a century ago, with a boned strapless top with rigid midriff section, straight long skirt with a short train, and a ruched bow at the front that turns itself into an Edwardian bustle at the back. The matching stole is also fastened at the back. Rigidly scraped back hair and 6 inch long earrings complete the outfit.

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Classic gold embroidered dinner jacket for Versace Man as seen in London’s Bond Street Emorium

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The new comfortable, inspired by Versace and Christopher Kane. Sheer pleated maxi skirt, op-art print crop-top and comfy pool sliders

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Power Dressing in Politics 1 A classic male politician’s look for this time: the suit will be made in fine quality navy or charcoal worsted cloth, usually single breasted, sometimes with an almost invisible stripe, and plain trousers, not too tight. Some individuality can be expressed in the choice of shirt, socks and tie, but over-bright colours and prints of any kind tend to be avoided by male politicians across the political spectrum, from Barack Obama to British Members of Parliament. White shirts with narrow stripes and blue or club ties are favoured, and brown shoes are never worn with navy. 2  And then there is head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde. Here she wears one of her work suits, a tailored knee length frock coat jacket with narrow trousers. Her short, distinctive white hair is echoed by a crisp white open neck shirt. Black hose and black low heeled pumps and the whole look is crisp and business-like. 3  Women politicians also follow a certain uniformity of dress code. I used Angela Merkel as a point of departure for the typical lady politician’s suit, but it could just as easily have been Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (variation – three piece with matching waistcoat) or powerful women in other fields such as Pamela Joseph, voted the sixth most powerful woman in American banking (variation – suit jacket over matching, probably sleeveless, dress). Frau Merkel tends to stick to the same type of suit but has had hers made up in a variety of colours.

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Casual Wear: Advanced Eccentric Many older women challenge old-fashioned stereotypes from previous decades about what colours and garments are appropriate for their age group (such as skirt suits in dark colours), and don more colourful garments with a variety of silhouettes. With more models over 60 appearing in the fashion shoots featured in magazines, dress for senior citizens is becoming more diverse. Three of the five sketches (1, 3 and 4) on this page are inspired by images from the blog written by photographer and journalist Ari Seth Cohen, who roams the streets of New York looking for the most stylish and creative older folks. Sketch 2 is a lady who lives in a Wiltshire village in the UK, who has an unmatched collection of vintage pieces and is never seen with the same hair-do twice. 1  This lady dons blue jersey, with a blue and white Chinese cap, knee-length tunic, ankle length trousers and short matching cardigan. The addition of boots rather than espadrilles would cover any daytime occasion in style and comfort. 2  A recycled vintage walking outfit culled from many decades, including a long 70s patchwork skirt, cut devoré fur-trimmed jacket which is timeless, 80s frilled blouse, and her hair wound up with an Indian silk scarf. 3  Lynn Dell Cohen, in her 80s, with an orange and red colour-way and the high turban inspired hat (one of her less towering creations). Ms Cohen’s red tunic and asymmetric skirt are combined with a striped kaftan coat and suede boots. She says ‘I think it’s more about personal style than fashion per se. I think most of us have had our wardrobes for years. We’re not looking for brands or to shop, but we’re just trying to self-express and be who we are to the world.’ 4  Deborah Rappaport says ‘I’ve been a recycler forever, I used to teach it, I did my masters degree in it.’ Here she goes one further and wears a hand-painted jacket of bright, Mondrian inspired patches with a matching silk bow-tied scarf, a hat of felt twists, orange watch-strap and huge acrylic rings, one in each of the colours on her jacket. 5  Camila Batmanghelidjh is best known as the founder and chief executive of Kids Company, a charity providing practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children and young people in the UK. She is almost as well known for the vibrancy and originality of her wardrobe. Her own creations are home-made from all the brightest scraps she can find in Brixton and Peckham street markets (both districts in South London), sewn together from her own fabric box.

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Underwear and Accessories The shape and construction of underwear has not changed a great deal from season to season in the twenty-first century. This is certainly the case with four out of the five sketches on this page. 1  Black warm vest, probably marketed as ‘thermal’, i.e. underwear designed to retain body heat in cold temperatures. This vest is made of fine gauge jersey, brushed on the inside, for both comfort and warmth. The lace trim is pretty enough to wear the vest as a visible camisole if wanted. 2  The couture version as spotted in Vogue magazine with slivers of sheer nylon and satin appliqué. 3  Simple sport or T-shirt bra and knicker set. The bra is moulded spandex/Lycra and therefore has no seams to show, the pants are of clean white jersey, or if of an artificial fibre, will have a cotton gusset for comfort. 4 This is an equally simple option, sometimes called a tankini top worn with plain briefs. Here it is displayed without a bra, but variations can include integral under-wires, or would be worn with a bra underneath. 5 A strapless lightly padded bra in a shade of dark pink. This classic shape can be worn with any strapless dress or top, or added straps for extra support.

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Menswear 1  Here a grey-haired model strides out in a Yohji Yamamoto great black leather caped coat that would be suitable for all sorts of occasions from putting on over a suit for the office to wear as in this sketch, with jeans and big boots for walking the dog. 2  A playful take on a men’s suit by John Galliano, described as ‘an imposing checkered snakeskin zoot suit’. Zoots were tailored oversized with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. They became popular among the African American, Mexican American and Italian American communities during the 1940s, indeed apparently sparking riots because they used too much cloth (see page 23). 3  A classic Giorgio Armani piece, this collarless suit is pared of all superfluous detail, even the usual collar. The bare feet worn with black shoes add a modern touch.

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Childrenswear and New Age Travellers These sketches are based on images from a book of beautiful photographs of the travelling community by Iain McKell, a renowned fashion and social documentary photographer. He has compiled a series of compelling images, The New Gypsies, which depict both the physical and emotional life of a modern traveller community living in the outskirts of a technology-driven society. The British horse-drawn travellers usually live in decorated caravans, to ‘tread more lightly on the earth’ and share a desire for freedom from the trappings of contemporary life, often moving between the many music and green festivals up and down the land. Clothes often come from charity and thrift shops, sparked with net fairy and fancy-dress costumes or vintage menswear found on stalls at such festivals, home-made bead jewellery and carved bone decorations. 1 12 year old boy, who wears a rather stylish collection of hand-me-downs, including an Indian braid headband, plaid waistcoat, torn tie-dyed T-shirt, loose striped women’s trousers in Indian cotton, assorted beads, an old belt and bare feet. 2  A girl of about the same age wears a patched hand-knit jumper, probably home-made from wool, a black skirt appliquéd with red and green ribbons over a net petticoat, very torn, shredded tights worn over flowered under-leggings tucked into slightly too big black boots. 3  This man has what look like Neolithic bone knives stuck in his coachman’s hat. He has an old black hunting jacket (originally very well made in thorn-proof twill; these garments last for generations), a bare chest with a string vest underneath, hand wrought copper jewellery, and long hair. 4 The younger, almost Punk version. He wears a grey hoodie, a green-dyed Mohican haircut, with multiple piercings and some facial tattoos in Saxon linear patterns.

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13 2005–PRESENT EFFORTLESS AND EASY Clothing is often seen as a way of communicating values to do with the self, cultural values and social identity, and although this is not a book about politics, some social history has a place because fashion, to state the obvious, reflects society with surprising accuracy. World news of escalating violence in the Middle East and parts of Africa is increasingly miserable, the state of the planet with toxic carbon emissions and climate change is deeply worrying, and the divide between the capitalist haves and the many have-nots becomes ever wider. It is perhaps not surprising that many simply shut their eyes to all this reality and concentrate solely on the ephemeral charms of social media. The beautifully made, seriously expensive clothes of the couture houses, and Hollywood ‘Red Carpet’ displays of ‘celebs’ in their borrowed designer gowns, could well be on a different planet to the everyday one that most people live on. But such display is great to watch, and the world would be a much duller place without it. From 2005–10, ‘fashion’ carried on in the manner we have come to expect, with bodyconscious dresses and towering high heels, interspersed with retro moments of revivals from the last century. However, in the last couple of years a significant change has taken/is taking place. To paraphrase an article about London Fashion Week 2014 by Guardian writer Jess Cartner-Morley, ‘showing off is over, low-key dressing is in … there is a new no-fuss look on the catwalk – easy care sports fabrics, nononsense primary colours, practical rucksacks and flat shoes’. Today’s buzz words are ‘fresh, effortless and easy’. Whether this change actually has anything to do with the global situation, or whether it is simply another example of fashion’s cyclical nature, I can’t say – we won’t know for a while yet. By 2012 I started to notice that the knee-length girly dress over jeans mentioned in the introduction to Chapter 11 was beginning to morph into a tunic or smock to be worn over cotton trousers of various types, rather in the manner of the Indian Salwar Kameez. Of course this is an immensely flattering and useful combination, but it exists completely under the fashion radar, so to speak. Also, although by 2012 or so tunic length tops and jumpers were beginning to appear in high street shops, the main source of supply was the catalogue. With the asymmetric hems and softly shaped trousers, we could call this way of dressing the new layering.

2005–Present Effortless and Easy 257

Kim Kardashian in Lanvin at the 2014 Met Costume Institute Gala. Lupita Nyong’o in a red version of Gucci dress she wore at the 2013 Screen Actors’ Guild Awards

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Sarah Jessica Parker in Oscar de la Renta at the 2014 Met Costume Institute Gala

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Weddings: An Indianapolis-based couple (top) and Kate Moss’ wedding to Jamie Hince

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Celebrities: Suzy Menkes, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus 1  Vogue International Editor Suzy Menkes is possibly the best-known fashion journalist in the world. After 25 years commenting on fashion for the International Herald Tribune, Ms. Menkes now writes exclusively for Vogue online, covering fashion worldwide. She is almost as famous for her stiffened quiff of hair as she is for her penetrating articles on all aspects of fashion. Not surprisingly she has collected a vast and eclectic wardrobe of designer garments, of which this coat-dress by Ossie Clark must be something of a personal favourite as it appears quite frequently in photographs of the lady. 2  Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, known as Beyoncé, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. In this illustration she wears a leather costume consisting of black leather micro-shorts or hot-pants and a streamlined studded leather corset. High gladiator sandals complete her look. 3  Miley Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus), another American singer, actress, and songwriter. Here she is wearing head to toe black leather, in a popular model of a biker jacket, decorated with many studs, a bandeau top underneath, knee-length leather shorts and high strappy black sandals.

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Casualwear: Scandinavian Bohemian For those who prefer a bohemian approach to dress, Scandinavian brands have been extremely influential. The Danish brands of Masai and Noa Noa are available now in the UK and the Swedish designer Gudrun Sjöden, whose clothes feature on this page, has shops in Scandinavia (of course), Germany, the UK and New York as well as a well-established on-line shop. Sjöden insists on making her clothes in the most ecologically sound way, treating her work-force fairly, and generally running as ‘green’ a company as possible. 1  Perhaps less brightly coloured than usual, this cool ensemble is otherwise typical of the designer’s approach, consisting of a shirt jacket in woven striped cotton, based on an artist’s smock, with good sized pockets and good quality buttons. It is worn over a striped top from her Basics range, and with linen mix trousers, also with pockets. Flower patterned shoes are made specially in Portugal, and the cream smartphone pouch is a finishing touch. The model pictured here had an earlier career as a catwalk model in the 1970s, and is now over 70. Hence the long white hair. 2  An over-shirt and jersey top are worn over a two-tiered cotton skirt in shades of red and soft purple; the shawl in a signature flower pattern is in toning colours, as are the striped leggings and ankle boots. 3  Another typical outfit of an embroidered waistcoat worn over a patterned tunic with long wide-legged culottes, flat green suede strap shoes and striped socks.

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Street Style: Japanese Teens The style phenomenon among urban Japanese teens demonstrated here is really quite extraordinary. These illustrations take their inspiration from the work of photographer Pat Lyttle, seasoned street fashion photographer and author of the book Japanese Street Style. The kids have invented many ‘style tribes’ that help to define what is going on on the streets of Tokyo and Osaka. They include many groups based on the idea of Lolita, including Classical, Gothic, Punk, Elegant Gothic, Sweet and even Male Lolita. The style has nothing whatever to do with the abused heroine of the eponymous Nabokov novel, it is performance art in its purest form. 1  Coordinated shades of coffee and cream. The dress is made of crushed muslin and vintage pierced lace or broderie anglaise, with many handkerchief points and a complicated neck ruffle. She wears a distressed leather bomber jacket, smart two-tone lace-up shoes, white socks and carries a leather satchel. 2 A girl dressed to impress in full-on Decora Style. So, from the top – a red woolly hat perches on a frizzled hairdo decorated with coloured ribbons, pink streaks and small ornaments. Her patched, tiedyed and hand-painted pinafore dress goes over a bright green T-shirt, spotted leggings and mismatched fluorescent socks, which are finished with high top trainers, with the tops turned down to show the bright green linings. As if that wasn’t cute enough (and we need to understand that here ‘cute’ is an aim, not a criticism), she completes her costume with ribbons, feathery wristbands, pink smartphone pouch, beads and a small teddy bear.

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Extreme Camo: From Weddings to Sportswear 1  This garment is advertised as ‘the ultra light Ghillie, extreme concealment jacket and pants. By using synthetic string instead of traditional burlap, we have created a suit weighing 3½ lbs that is scentless, hand-washable, non-allergenic and mildew resistant, all backed with bug-proof mesh.’ 2 How to keep warm while maintaining your odour-eradicating, bug-free status. A complete suit of balaclava, sweatshirt and leggings all in computer-printed softest fleece made from ‘silver-coated X-static anti-bacterial yarn’. 3  The camouflage printed wedding finery of Reality Show personality Mama June Shannon, when she married ‘Sugar Bear’ Thompson, the father of her daughters Alanna aka Honey Boo Boo, Pumpkin and Chubbs. The pattern has been applied to bridal weight satin, accessorised with orange under-skirts, floral decorations and menswear. I came across the fascinating catalogue from which I have taken inspiration for the drawings on this page when I was researching garments in which to dress the fairies in a stage production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for which we had decided that the somewhat malevolent fairies were abandoned wood-sprites. I had to reject everything except the beautifully tree-printed leggings as being too bulky for stage use.

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Underwear The average bra size for women has increased over the last 20 years, in the UK from a size 34B to a 34DD. It took a long time for underwear manufacturers to catch up with this trend, but now they have, including the firm of Bravissimo, which has a number of shops in the UK and has inspired the underwear illustrations on this page. 1  Bridal basque or corselette with suspenders and detachable straps. This typically comes in white for use under structured wedding gowns, but versions are also available in shades such as red, nude and black. 2  A bikini, with a properly sized top made exactly like a bra, but with a less domestic fastening and fewer frills, and brief bikini bottoms tied at the side. This idea of making a bikini top with the same technical approach and expertise that goes into making bras is still relatively unusual. 3  Now you can even be supported while you sleep. This is a vest or tank-top made with hidden support, usually an elastic sling or shelf of some kind to offer gentle support. Ordinary pyjama trousers are offered as well, here in diagonally checked cotton.

Shoes Whilst very high heels feature on the catwalk and red carpet, there is also a definite trend towards greater freedom and comfort, which I discussed further in the Foreword – the future of female footwear looks interesting indeed! 4  These extreme heeled suede shoes, on sale with online seller ASOS, priced at £25. With their fairly heavy heel and platform sole they have become something of a classic. The platform means that they look higher than they actually are, so they are therefore more comfortable than… 5  These bejewelled shoes, which look a little like hooves and are designed so that the wearer appears to be virtually ‘en pointe’ like a ballet dancer. They were part of Alexander McQueen’s Summer 2010 collection, and the heels are an excruciating 10 inches high. 6 Karl Lagerfeld’s beautifully decorated trainers. By making these subversive flat trainers extremely expensive in couture materials, Lagerfeld created the new object of desire among fashionistas. 7  The new comfort flat, finely made black leather sandals.

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Menswear: Couture Goes Casual 1  This outfit by Topman Design is a hybrid of the 1970s and the 90s, with tight, flared, over-long jeans, chunky dark glasses, and a 70s shaggy wig. The stripy top is reminiscent of gent’s knitting patterns from the 1950s in soft jersey and is worn over a plain blue T-shirt top. 2  Here is a modern take on another retro look, that of the bohemian artist. The model’s shaggy 70s hair and full beard is something not commonly seen in fashion circles for more than 30 years. He wears a cotton coat made from over-dyed furnishing chintz by Dries van Noten, a linen T-shirt by Acne and trousers by Prada. Ankles are bare, at least until the cold weather starts, and the boots are black. 3  Another offering from the Topman Design show for Summer 2015: daisy print towelling shirt and loose shorts. 4  Sometimes simple and casual is just what is wanted - this model from the Crew catalogue for 2014 has a simple tan suede bomber jacket, grey marl T-shirt, neat blue trousers and blue suede laced shoes. 5  And now for something completely different, at least in fashion – young designer Craig Green crosses the influence of Yohji Yamamoto with the pyjama-like shapes of Karate uniforms and comes up with this striking white, lightly quilted cotton suit. The split seams, asymmetric cut and waving ties give it a theatrical air, I could easily see this providing the inspiration for a set of theatre costumes. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, perhaps, instead of togas, or possibly King Lear. 6  ‘The 90s are still here’, says a fashion journalist from UK newspaper, The Guardian. This offering from Moschino features smiley faces and primary colours. Assorted international flags appear to have been cut up to make the baggy pants and sweatshirt top (tied round the hips). The heavy black boots make an oddly inflexible base for the loose and comfortable shapes on top.

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Childrenswear 1  Orthodox Jewish boy. Some rabbis view any innovations and modifications within Jewish law and customs with extreme care, and observers and scholars refer to this form of Judaism as Haredi Judaism. The male costume is virtually unchanged since the middle of the nineteenth century and is worn in public at all times by boys over three years old, when the child’s hair is first cut, shaved all over except for the ringlets that are worn over the ears. The yarmulke cap, black felted hat, frock coat and black trousers are also laid down by unchanging tradition. 2  A competitor from the US reality show called Toddlers and Tiaras, which explores the strange world of infant beauty pageants. These little girls, some as young as three years old, are paraded in full makeup, bouffant hairdos and frilly dresses in imitation of the more old-fashioned adult versions. 3  To quote the charity War Child: ‘“Child soldier”. Some words don’t belong together.’ It’s bad enough that children’s lives are torn apart by wars they didn’t start. But when they’re forced into fighting in the conflict themselves, it causes psychological and physical damage that can often never be repaired. 4  A boy wearing a jersey sweatshirt with an eagle motif printed on it, rolled up cotton pants and red high-top sneakers. 5  A Nigerian girl walks to school. She wears a home-made uniform of pale green cotton, a headscarf, here tied behind her head, tunic dress and a calf length skirt. I suspect it was ankle length a while ago, but children grow so fast. She has flip-flop type sandals and carries lunch and school books in a canvas bag.

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POSTSCRIPT On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-storey commercial garment factory, collapsed in Savar, a suburb of the capital of Bangladesh with a death toll of 1,129. This disaster is blamed on the greed of the global garment manufacturers who will stop at nothing to maximize their profits, insisting that workers carried on even after cracks had been found in the building. A growing number of companies produce clothes along ethical lines, but many of the cheap mass-market brands do nothing of the sort. It’s worth knowing the true cost of our cheap clothes. Let us say that you buy a top for $25 from a mass fashion store. Most retailers add 50 per cent plus tax to the wholesale price, and if you then subtract the hidden costs of advertising, transport, factory overheads, agents, cutters, fabric and so forth from the wholesale price, according to research done by the Ethical Fashion Forum, the garment maker is likely to get just 2 per cent, or 50 cents per garment! As I write this in autumn 2014 it is clear that a significant shape shift is underway on Planet Fashion. That faultless reader of the zeitgeist, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, sent all 65 of his young models scampering around the revolving double staircase that was the set in flat decorated trainers worn with everything from office suits to formal evening dresses. This provoked gasps from the assembled audience as such a radical, almost shocking spectacle unfolded. It is an old fashion adage that women should dress from the shoes up, and it does seem that you can tell much that you need to know about where fashion is by studying the shoes. For decades stylish dressing has been defined by the wearing of high-heeled shoes, from 6 inch heeled stilettos with ‘occasion wear’ to neat black court shoes with slightly more modest heels for power dressing in the office. This is a style that has blown in from the street. Ever since vertiginous heels came into vogue some decades ago, many girls and women have faced the fact that there was no way you could walk to work through street and subway and work all day in such uncomfortable footwear, a fact that gave rise to the habit of going to work wearing running shoes and changing into your power shoes on reaching the office. Of course many women wore comfortable shoes as a matter of course, including the elderly, those whose work entailed standing all day, and any situation where easy activity was more important than fashion, but seemingly quite suddenly in 2014 comfort has become high fashion. The oddly named ‘pool sliders’, trainers in a multitude of fabrics, Birkenstock sandals and other ‘off duty’ styles are suddenly acceptable as fashionable footwear. The other leisure garments that many wear when not on show, such as slouchy jeans, ‘Dad trainers’, marl sweatshirts and so on are suddenly being offered up as the newest thing. Highmaintenance lady dressing, with the heels, the hair extensions and the body-con bandage dress, begins to look dated. I can’t help feeling that this casual comfort dressing may be resisted on at least two fronts. Can you imagine the Kardashians letting the tortured grooming slip, even if such things are the fashion in Europe? Also, what about ‘power dressing’? Women in commerce, politics and other conventional business activities depend on dressing to fit in with their besuited male colleagues, and the protective armour provided by charcoal skirt suit, tights and high heeled court shoes might not dissolve just because the fashion press says so. What we have at the moment, in the place of the more expected excesses of designer fashion, is the rise of Normcore, a unisex fashion trend characterized by unpretentious, average-looking clothing, consciously chosen to look undistinguished – except, frequently, for a highly visible designer label to impart prestige. Normcore clothes include everyday items of casual wear such as T-shirts, hoodies, short-sleeved shirts, jeans and chino pants, and simple one-piece dresses. It seems that the latest trend in fashion is un-fashion. In other words, what people wear when they are not wearing fashion, but now, for a season or two – they are.

GLOSSARY angora  (1) Hair of angora goat, used in making mohair. (2) Hair of angora rabbit used as a very soft knitting wool for women’s sweaters. appliqué  French for ‘applied’ or ‘laid on’; decoration in the form of embroidery, cut-out motif or contrasting fabrics stitched onto a base fabric. atelier  French for studio or work shop; a designer’s work-room where designs are created and made up. bandanna  (1) Hindu word for a dyeing process. (2) A large patterned handkerchief worn round the head or neck. bandeau  Narrow band worn around the head. Barbour jacket  English country weather-coat made from waterproof waxed cotton. basque  A short flared piece of fabric attached to the bodice at the waist (cf. peplum); a short-skirted jacket. bateau neck  Boat-shaped, slightly curved neckline. batik  Method of applying dyed designs to fabric by successive coatings of the fabric with wax, so that with each dipping only the uncovered parts take the dye. batwing sleeve  Long sleeve with an armhole cut to the waist and narrow at the wrist. bias cut  Fabric cut at 45 degrees to the selvedge. This causes the garment to hang in a very fluid and graceful way. block  (1) A mould used to make and shape a hat. (2) An original card pattern cut without seam allowances. boater  Flat straw hat with a straight brim and ribbon trim, originally worn by both sexes in the summer during the early years of the twentieth century. bodice  The part of a dress from the shoulder to the waist. bolero  Short jacket worn open in the front, finishing above the waist. bowler hat  Formal man’s hat in stiffened black felt with a domed crown and narrow curled brim, popular with English ‘city gents’. braces  Suspenders (US). braid  (1) Narrow strip of flat tape for trimming and binding. (2) In US, a plait of hair. brocade  Jaquard weave fabric with all-over raised pattern often incorporating foliage or flowers. broderie anglaise  Embroidery of small, often floral patterns punched or cut, then oversewn. Normally of white cotton and used as a border or frill on lingerie. buckram  Loosely-woven cotton heavily starched with glue size, used for stiffening garments and hats. calico  Plain woven cotton originally from Calicut, India. Manufactured in various weights, calico is used to make trial versions of complex garments so as not to waste expensive fabric. camisole  Light under-bodice with straight-cut top on narrow shoulder straps. cap sleeve  Short grown-on sleeve just covering the top of the arm. cardigan  Loose knitted jacket, supposedly named after Lord Cardigan. cashmere  Soft luxurious cloth made from the under-hair of Himalayan goats.

Chantilly lace  Bobbin lace with a fine background and designs outlined with silk thread. cheese cloth  Thin, unsized, slightly crinkly cotton, much used for ethnic tops and skirts. chemise  Loose shirt-like undergarment or shift, now more commonly a straight unbelted dress in soft material. chenille  Silk, cotton or rayon fabric with a tufted velvet-like pile woven in fine ridges (from the French word for caterpillar). chiffon  Transparent floaty fabric woven from silk, rayon or polyester. choker  Short necklace or fitted collar that clasps the neck like a dog collar. classic  Clothing that remains stylish because of its essential simplicity; not owing anything to passing trends. cloche  A close-fitting bell-shaped hat. coat-dress  Tailored front-fastening dress made in the style of a lightweight coat. cocktail dress  Short semi-formal evening dress, designed to be worn during the cocktail hour. coiffure  Arrangement of the hair, usually elaborate. corduroy, cord  Cotton or polycotton cutpile fabric with variable width ribbing. corsage  A bouquet of real or artificial flowers worn as decoration at shoulder, breast or waist. corset  Figure-moulding, supportive undergarment, stiffened with steel, whalebone or (nowadays) plastic strips. Originally fastened with laces; they gave period costume its distinctive shape. corselette  Modern lightweight corset-like undergarment, usually made from nylon lace, satin and elastic. costume jewellery  Jewellery made from non-precious metals and stones, usually more ostentatious than the real thing, and comparatively inexpensive. couture  French for dressmaking; now used to mean the top or made-to-measure end of the fashion spectrum. couturier  A top international fashion designer. cravat  A shaped silky scarf worn folded about the neck instead of a tie. crepe  Material woven so that the surface resembles the skin of an orange; usually having a pleasing matte bloom, made from silk, wool, rayon or polyester. crushed velvet  Heat and pressure treated so that the surface is irregular and distressed. Cuban heel  Medium chunky, slightly tapering heel, as seen on cowboy boots. culottes  Very flared trousers cut to fall together to give the appearance of a skirt. cut  The way in which a garment is shaped, how it hangs. décolleté  Low-cut neckline exposing the shoulder and upper part of the breasts, usually a bodice style for evening wear. dirndl  Full, straight-cut skirt gathered onto a waistband. dolman sleeve  Sleeve with a deep armhole, and gathered at the wrist; cut in one piece with the body. Donegal tweed  Homespun slubbed wool cloth originally woven by Irish crofters.

276GLOSSARY

double-breasted  Type of front for a coat or jacket, which overlaps sufficiently to allow for two rows of buttons. drape  (1) To hang fabric in loose folds. (2) To create a dress on the body or stand using this method. dummy  Model or dress-form used to work on the unfinished garment or to display the completed one. duster coat  Lightweight unlined wrap coat. Empire line  Named after the fashions of the Empress Josephine; a high-waisted line with the skirt falling straight from immediately below the bust. ensemble  Used to describe a complete outfit. espadrille  Rope-soled shoe with a canvas upper, for casual summer wear. Eton collar  A high, slightly flared, turned down stiff collar. eyelet  Small hole or perforation edged with stitching or a small metal reinforcement; used as decoration or, when threaded with a cord, as a method of fastening. facing  Visible lining for those parts of a garment that are turned outward in wear, such as lapels and collars. Fair Isle  Traditional knitwear patterned with small multicoloured geometric designs, named from the Scottish island. fedora  Wide-brimmed, soft felt hat with a crease running from the front to the back of the crown, as worn by Hollywood gangsters. felt  Non-woven fabric formed by treating fibres with heat and pressure, much used for hats, and occasionally for decorative cut and appliqué work. filigree  Very delicate, open, lace-like fabric. finish  (1) The surface of fabric after treatment such as embossing, napping or glazing. (2) The standard of workmanship in a garment. flannel  Soft wool fabric with a slight nap. flannelette  Soft brushed cotton fabric used to make nightwear. flounce  A gathered frill sewn onto a garment, found mostly on underskirts. gabardine  Twilled, worsted coating used for raincoats, uniforms, or riding habits. gilet  French for waistcoat or decorated vest. gingham  Lightweight cotton woven into checks, usually in a single colour and white. girdle  Elasticized undergarment worn to flatten the tummy and buttocks. godet  Triangular segment of cloth set into a skirt or sleeve to create fullness. gore  Flared section of fabric, narrow at the waist and wide at the hem, to create shapely skirts without excess fabric at the waist. grain  The direction of warp and woof threads in a woven fabric. Most garments are cut ‘on the straight’ (of the grain) so that they hang properly and don’t drop out of shape. Fabric cut ‘on the bias’ is more fluid and clingy, as seen in the romantic, floppy dresses of the 1930s. grown-on  Sleeves, collars etc. cut in one with main garment. gusset  Triangular or diamond-shaped piece of fabric let into a garment to adjust the fit or give extra ease to a tight armhole. halter neckline  Strap around the neck attached to the front of the bodice to support a low-backed dress. harem pants  Full, draped trousers gathered to fit at the ankle.

Harris tweed  Soft but exceptionally hardwearing wool tweed originally woven on the island of Harris on the west coast of Scotland. haute couture  High fashion, always made to measure. hobble skirt  Long skirt, narrow at the ankles, which restricts walking. houndstooth check  Small pattern of broken checks. jabot  Frilled or pleated piece of fabric attached to the front of the neckline, often trimmed with lace. jerkin  Long-line vest or waistcoat, usually cut straight or only semi-fitted. jersey  (1) Plain knit, finely ribbed fabric with some elasticity, made from cotton, silk, wool, etc. (2) Unstructured pullover made from jersey fabric, or knitted. jodhpurs  Trousers cut full over the thighs but fitting tightly from knee to ankle. Originally worn for horse riding as less formal alternative to breeches and knee-high boots. kaftan  The kaftan is a garment of Moroccan origin. It was traditionally a long, loose unstructured coat-like gown worn by both men and women, which could be as simple as a cotton nightgown or embellished with the richest of embroidery for court wear. In the west, fashions of the late 1960s and the 1970s often drew from ethnic styles, including kaftans. In boldly patterned cottons or silk they were much favoured as informal at home or cruise wear, especially by larger ladies, owing to their flattering unstructured shape. kapok  Fibre from the silk-cotton tree, used as padding in quilted garments; now usually replaced by polyester wadding. knickerbockers  Full-cut trousers or breeches fastened at the knee. knife pleats  Narrow pleats, often permanently pressed; popular for school uniform skirts. lace  Can be hand- or machine-made, narrow for trimming or wide for making a complete garment. There are many different types of machine-made lace, but it normally consists of a net base decorated with embroidery in silk, cotton or lurex. lamé  Fabric made from metallic threads. leotard  Tight-fitting ‘body’ or all-in-one, made from cotton or nylon and Lycra, worn mostly by dancers. loafer  Casual slip-on shoe with a low heel, based on the moccasin of the native American. Loden  Overcoat cut to fall loosely from a shoulder yoke, made in dark green or charcoal Loden cloth, a thick waterproof woollen fabric. Lurex  Trade name for a glittery yarn made by coating aluminium foil with coloured plastic film. Lycra  Trade name for a durable stretchy man-made fibre. It is mixed with a wide variety of other yarns to add shapeliness without complex seaming. macramé  A fringe or trimming made from knotted string or soft cotton yarn. mandarin collar  Narrow straight collar that stands up from the fitted neckline of a jacket or dress. moccasin  Heel-less shoe made from a single piece of leather gathered on top of the foot. model  (1) A person who displays clothes by posing for photographers, journalists and potential customers. (2) A garment which serves as a pattern or sample. (3) A high-quality designer garment made to order in limited quantities, and carrying the designer’s label.

GLOSSARY277

moleskin  Heavy cotton brushed to a suede-like finish, used to make men’s work clothes. needlecord  Fine-rib corduroy. negligée  A decorative full-length dressing robe. nylon  A synthetic yarn or fabric made from coal; it is washable, elastic and easily dyed. opera cloak  A full-length evening cloak. Oxford  A low-cut man’s shoe with front-laced fastening. Oxford bags  Very wide men’s trousers, with the fullness pleated into the waistband. Panama hat  Man’s fedora-shaped hat made from fine foldable straw from Panama. panné velvet  Velvet rendered smooth and shiny by pressing all the fibres in the same direction. pea-jacket  Loose double-breasted jacket based on those traditionally worn by fishermen. pedal-pushers  Trousers ending just below the knee, suitable for cycling. pencil skirt  A narrow straight skirt. peplum  A ruffle extending from the waist seam to hip level. Peter Pan collar  A soft turn-down collar with rounded ends. petticoat  Woman’s underskirt or slip, often trimmed with lace or frills. picture hat  Lady’s wide-brimmed straw hat, often trimmed with ribbons and flowers. plus-fours  Wide-cut knickerbockers, fastening at the knee with a four-inch over-fold. polo-neck  A collar style consisting of a tube of fabric rolled to the required height. polo shirt  Short-sleeved sport shirt in knitted jersey. prêt-à-porter  Ready to wear. pyjamas  Loose unstructured lounging suit, originally for beach or sleep wear. raffia  Straw made from palm fibre, used to make and decorate summer hats and bags. raglan sleeve  A deep-cut sleeve with the armhole extending to the neckline. raw silk  Rough silk fabric made from the outer cocoons of the silk-worm. rayon  Man-made fabric manufactured from processed cellulose. ricrac  Coloured zig-zag braid used to decorate gypsystyle clothes. roll collar  Similar to the polo neck, but made to stand away from the neck. rompers  All-in-one child’s garment, consisting of a bib top attached to short bloused knickers. sack  A dress cut straight from shoulder to hem, designed to fit where it touches; usually knee length. sarong  Wide, brightly printed length of cotton that is wound round the body to make a simple ankle-length skirt. sash  An ornamental band or scarf, worn round head, shoulders, or more usually, waist. sequin  A small metal disc of any colour used for decoration of evening clothes. The pailleté is the same thing in any shape other than circular. shawl collar  One-piece, usually grown-on, unnotched collar. sheath  A straight, tight-fitting dress. shift  A straight shirt or blouse-like dress (originally an undergarment). shirtwaister  A dress cut like an elongated shirt, with a tightly belted waist.

singlet  Sleeveless, low-necked sport shirt; tank top (US). slacks  Loosely fitting, pleat-front trousers. slip  A simple petticoat worn to improve the hang of a dress. sloppy Joe  Oversized slip-on sweater or jumper. smock  Originally a shepherd’s work garment, cut like an oversized shirt and gathered onto a yoke. smocking  A form of decoration where the evenly gathered fabric is overstitched in a traditional series of patterns. sneaker  A casual canvas rubber-soled shoe with central front lacing. sombrero  A straw hat with a high crown and a very wide brim. sou’wester  A waterproof fisherman’s hat, with the brim wider at the back than at the front. stiletto heel  A very pointed high heel like a stiletto dagger. stole  A long wide evening scarf used as shoulder wrap. swagger coat  A coat cut to hang in a bold flare from the shoulders. sweater  A knitted pullover top. sweatshirt  A casual knitted cotton-mix top, often fleeced, with a round neck and long sleeves. terry cloth  Towelling fabric. tie-dye  A method of creating dyed patterns by pleating and twisting the fabric, then tying it at intervals so tightly that the dye cannot penetrate the tied bits. train  An extended panel, usually of a wedding dress, that trails behind the wearer. trench coat  A generously cut weather-coat with many flaps and pockets, belted at the waist. T-shirt  Sport or undershirt, usually made from cotton jersey. turtle neck  High-fitted neckline for jumpers or pullovers; another name for roll- or polo-neck. twinset  (US sweater set) A short-sleeved fitted sweater worn with matching button-through cardigan. velour  Woven, knit or felted fabric having a thick velvet pile. vest  (1) singlet or undergarment (UK). (2) American name for waistcoat. waistcoat  English for US vest. The waistcoat or vest is a sleeveless waist-length garment with a vee neck, sometimes with a collar, and buttoned down the front. Originally made as part of a man’s tailored three-piece suit, the fronts would be made in the same fabric as the jacket and trousers, with a lighter weight cloth to form the back, and normally lined throughout. Variations are made in contrasting fabrics, a cosy wool for formal riding clothes, or brocade for evening wear. wedge heel  Solid heel made as a continuation of the sole. wellington boots  Originally a type of thigh boot cut down to knee level at the back, presumably for greater comfort when on a horse. Now a calf-covering, one-piece rubber boot. winceyette  Soft brushed cotton fabric used for nightwear. windbreaker/windcheater  Outdoor jacket made of proofed cotton or wool and having an elasticized hemband at the waist or hip. yoke  A fitted shoulder-piece from which the rest of the garment hangs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Battersby, Michael and Ariane (1977). Fashion, the Mirror of History. London: Columbus Books. Beaton, Cecil (1988). The Royal Portraits. London: Thames & Hudson. Clancy, Deirdre (2014). Designing Costume for Stage and Screen. Batsford. Corner, Frances (2014). Why Fashion Matters. London: Thames & Hudson. Drake, Nicholas (1987). The Fifties in Vogue. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Fashion Is… (2014). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute. Fukai, Akiko, and Tamami Suoh (1999). Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th Century. The Collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute. Taschen Publishing. Harrison, Martin (1994). Parkinson’s Photographs, 1935 to 1990. London: Conran Octopus. Hess, Megan (2014). The Dress: 100 Iconic Moments in Fashion. Melbourne and London: Hardie Grant Books. Howell, Georgina (1991). In Vogue: Seventy-five Years of Style. London: Conde Nast/Century. Koda, Harold (2010). 100 Dresses: The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Laver, James (1969). Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. London: Thames & Hudson. Lyttle, Pat (2012). Japanese Street Style. London: A & C Black. Nunn, Joan (1984). Fashion in Costume, 1200-1980. London: The Herbert Press. Nylon Magazine (2010). Street View: The new Nylon book of global style. Universe Publishing. McDowell, Colin (1984). McDowell’s Directory of 20th-Century Fashion. London: Muller. Oman, Joanne (1992). Everyday Fashions of the Forties: as Pictured in Sears Catalogues. New York: Dover Books. Pictorial History of the 20th Century (1989). London: Hamlyn. Polhemus, Ted (1994). Streetstyle. New York: Thames & Hudson. Poli, Doretta Davanzo (1988). Maternity Fashion. Italy: Zanfi Editori. Rubenstein, Hal (2011). 100 Unforgettable Dresses. Harper Design. Steer, Deirdre Clancy (2009). The 1980s and 1990s. Costume & Fashion Source Books series. London: Chelsea House Publishing. Tozer, Jane, and Sarah Levitt (1983). Fabric of Society, Laura Ashley Publications. Yapp, Nick (ed.) (2000). 1950s: The Hulton Getty Picture Collection. Also 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Konemann.

Other References This is where the list of references becomes far more haphazard. I found inspiring and useful images in a wide variety of publications, including more obvious sources such as the fashion magazines like Vogue, Harpers and Marie Claire, also gossip magazines such as Hello, OK, Heat, and so forth. Retail catalogues are endlessly useful for ‘everyday’ clothing; in particular I would like to mention Boden, Lands End, Cotton Traders, underwear from Bravissimo and Victoria’s Secret, Scandinavian Bohemian chic from Gudrun Sjöden and the eye-opening hunting catalogue from Cabelas. And then there are images trawled from the internet, found through Google, Pinterest and the like. Please note that I am not in the business of exact copies, with a little book of drawings I hardly could be, but I use the pictures I find as an inspiring point of departure.

INDEX Page numbers in italic indicate figures. ABBA 112, 113 Acne 270, 271 AIDS 140, 153, 197 Alexandra, Princess 48 A-line 24 Amies, Hardy 4, 228 Anglican church 182, 183 animal rights movement 116 Anthony, John 154, 155 Armani, Giorgio 128, 129, 197, 198, 199, 202, 203, 242, 243, 252, 253 arts, visual 65 Ashley, Laura 108, 109, 126, 178, 179, 204 babygro 102, 103 Baker, Caroll 76 Balenciaga, Cristóbal 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 84, 85 Balmain, Pierre 10, 11, 24, 30, 31, 48, 49 Bangladesh factory disaster 274 Bannister, Roger 54, 55 Barbour 164, 165, 216 Bardot, Brigitte 68, 69 baseball clothes 230, 231 basketball clothes 230, 231 Batmanghelidjh, Camila 248, 249 Bazaar 45 Beatles 64, 100, 118, 119 Beaton, Cecil 48 beats 45, 56, 57, 82 Beene, Geoffrey 154 Bellville Sassoon 106, 196 Beyoncé 260, 261 Biba 105, 140, 141 bikers 42, 43 Birtwell, Celia 106, 107, 140, 141 Blass, Bill 157, 197 bohemians 38, 39, 45, 56, 57, 64, 236, 237, 262, 263, 270, 271 Bolan, Marc 112, 113 Boy Scouts 80, 81 Brando, Marlon 42 Bratby, John 50, 51 Bravissimo 268, 269 bridesmaids 80, 81, 178, 179 Brixton, London 60 brothel creepers 20, 21 Brown, Melanie 228, 229 Bunny Girls 68, 69 Bunton, Emma 228, 229 camouflage-style clothes 266, 267 Capucci, Roberto 176, 177 Cardin, Pierre 224 Carnaby Street, London 100 Carter, Vince 230, 231 Cartner-Morley, Jess 256 Cashin, Bonnie 154 Chanel 68, 221, 274 Chelsea Set 45 Cherre, Jean-Louis 160, 161 child soldier 272, 273 choir boys/girls 182, 183

Christensen, Helena 176, 177 Christian church 182, 183 Clark, Ossie 106, 107, 260, 261 Clements Ribeiro 221 Cohen, Ari Seth 248 Cohen, Lynn Dell 248, 249 Cold War 64 Collins, Joan 174 Comme des Garçons 158, 222 Connolly, Sybil 84, 85 Conran, Terence 105 contraceptive pill 64, 82–3 Cooper, Alice 236, 237 Cosí 62 cosmetic surgery 196 Country and Western style 204, 205 Courrèges, André 64, 84, 86, 87, 96, 97 cowboy style 50, 204, 205 Crew catalogue 270, 271 crochet 120 Crombie 42, 43 cuties 206, 207 cycling clothes 188, 189 Cyrus, Miley 260, 261 Dalí, Salvador 68, 69 Davis, Bette 12, 13 Davis, Miles 50, 51 Decora Style 264, 265 decorative revival 105 de la Renta, Oscar 154, 155, 197, 258 denim 218, 219, 240 de Niro, Robert 148, 149 Dessès, Jean 28, 29 Diana, Princess of Wales 234, 235 Dior, Christian 5, 6, 7, 14, 24, 30, 31, 46, 47 Doc Martens 164, 184, 206, 207, 214, 215 Dolce & Gabbana 226, 227 Drizabone 216, 217 drugs 64, 82, 197 ecclesiastical clothes 182, 183 eco-friendly clothing 240 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 20 Elizabeth, Queen of England 228, 229 Ellis, Perry 154, 155 Emporio Armani 220, 221 Envol 24, 30, 31 ethical clothing 240 Ethical Fashion Forum 274 ethnic influences 83, 108, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118, 119, 126, 140, 141 exercise clothes 188, 189, 212, 213 Fältskog, Agnetha 112, 113 Farhi, Nicole 197 Fassett, Kaffe 140, 141 feminism 82–3, 104, 126 Ferré, Gianfranco 176, 177 Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit 172 folkies 56, 57, 82 football, woman’s 230, 231

Friedan, Betty 104 fur coats 36, 116, 117 Galitzine, Princess 88, 89 Galliano, John 202, 203, 222, 242, 243, 252, 253 Garbo, Greta 144 Gaultier, Jean-Paul 196 Gaultier, Jean Paul 223, 224, 225 gay men 64, 100, 101, 153, 206, 207 Geek Chic 220, 233 Gernreich, Rudi 86, 87 Ghost 220 Gibb, Bill 140, 141 Givenchy, Hubert de 24, 68, 69, 84 Gold 226, 227 Goths 184, 185 Goude, Jean-Paul 234, 235 Graves, Robert 60, 61 Green, Craig 270, 271 Greer, Germaine 104, 126 Grès, Madame 84, 85 Griffe, Jacques 46, 47 grunge 2, 206 Guardian 256, 270 Gucci 257 Habitat 105 Haley, Bill 44 Halston 154, 155 Harper’s Bazaar 2 Harrison, George 118 Harrison, Patti 118 Harris tweed 8, 9 Hartnell, Norman 12, 13, 28, 29, 228 Hash, Anne Valerie 242, 243 haute couture 1–2 Hayworth, Rita 12, 13 Head, Edith 12, 13 Hedren, Tippi 200, 201 Heffner, Hugh 68, 69 Hello! 196 Hepburn, Audrey 220 Hepburn, Katherine 144 Hermès 220, 221, 224 Herrera, Carolina 176, 177 high fashion 1–2 Hince, Jamie 259 hippies 82, 83, 93, 100, 101, 116, 117 Hockney, David 96 home dressmaking 80, 81 homosexuality 64; see also gay men hot pants 82 Hulanicki, Barbara 88 Hurel Jersey 108, 109, 132, 133 Jackson, Michael 112, 113, 168, 169, 194 Jaeger 26, 27 James, Charles 28, 29 Japanese influences 128, 130, 140, 141, 156, 158, 159 Japanese teenagers 264, 265 Johnson, Celia 12, 13

280INDEX

Jones, Grace 234, 235 Judaism 272 kaftans 108, 110, 116, 117, 126 Kamali, Norma 197 Kameez, Salwar 256 Kane, Christopher 245 Karan, Donna 197 Kardashian, Kim 257 Kawakubo, Rei 158 Kelly, Angela 228 Kennedy, Jackie 68, 69, 176, 177, 220 Kennedy, John F. 64 Kerouac, Jack 56 Kids Company 248 kimonos 140, 141, 158 King, Martin Luther 64 King’s Road, London 45 Klein, Calvin 154, 155, 198, 199, 234, 235 Lachasse 10, 11 Lacroix, Christian 196 Lagarde, Christine 246, 247 Lagerfeld, Karl 221, 268, 269, 274 Lanvin 257 Lauren, Ralph 50, 154, 198, 199, 204 Laver, James 4 Lesage 28, 29 Liberty 105, 106, 107, 132, 133, 178, 179 Lillywhites 74 Little Below the Knee Club 5 Littlewoods Catalogue 208, 209 Lolita 264 Louis, Jean 12, 13 Lycra 1 Lyttle, Pat 264 McCardell, Claire 4, 52, 53, 154 McCartney, Paul 122 McDowell, Colin 84 McKell, Iain 254 McLaren, Malcolm 172, 184 Macmillan, Harold 64 McQueen, Alexander 268, 269 Macy’s 74 Maharishi 118, 119 Mandela, Nelson 228, 229 Mara, Max 197 Marion 46, 47 Marks & Spencer 142, 143 maternity clothes 36, 37, 62, 63, 124, 125, 234, 235 Menkes, Suzy 260, 261 Merkel, Angela 246 Miller, Arthur 50, 51 Milstead, Harris Glenn 112, 113 miniskirts 52, 64, 82, 86, 87 Miyake, Issey 156 Mods 100, 101, 116, 117 Molyneux, Edward 4 Montana, Claude 130, 131, 132, 133 Morris, William 105 Morton, Digby 10, 11 Moschino 270, 271 Moss, Kate 259 Mugler, Thierry 128, 129, 223 Muir, Jean 108, 109 Muslims 192, 193, 230, 231 Neville, Bernard 106, 107 New Age 164, 172, 254, 255 New Look, The 5, 6, 7, 14, 25, 52, 202

Nigerian clothes 272, 273 Niven, David 12, 13 Normcore 274 nuns 182, 183, 228, 229 Nyong’o, Lupita 257 Obama, Michelle 176 Onassis, Jackie 68, 69, 176, 177, 220 Orthodox Jewish clothes 272, 273 Osborne, John 45 Oscar award ceremonies 154, 200, 201 OshKosh B’Gosh 218, 219 Osmonds 136 Owens, Jesse 68, 69 Parker, Sarah Jessica 258 Parkinson, Norman 34, 35, 66, 67 Parvin, Stewart 228 Patra 234, 235 Perfecto 42 permanent waving 40, 41 Perry, Grayson 241 Polhemus, Ted 2, 56, 184, 197 politicians 90, 91, 246, 247; see also Thatcher, Margaret Porter, Thea 106, 108, 110 Prada 270, 271 Prada, Miuccia 220 Presley, Elvis 50, 51 Princess line 24, 30, 31 psychedelics 82, 116, 117 Pucci, Emilio 116, 117 punk 172, 184, 185, 254, 255 Quant, Mary 45, 82, 96, 97 Queen 66, 67 Rabanne, Paco 64, 86 Ramsay, Alf 60, 61 Rana Plaza, Bangladesh 274 Rappaport, Deborah 248, 249 Rastafarians 206, 207 rationing, postwar 4, 5, 22 Reagan, Ronald 152, 162 recycled fashions 240 religious fundamentalism 173 revivals 116, 117, 120, 220, 240 Rhinestone Cowboy style 50, 204 Rhodes, Zandra 111 riding clothes 16, 17 rock ’n’ roll 44, 50 Rogers, Roy 204 roller-skating 170, 171 Rolling Stones 83, 100 Rooney, Mickey 12, 13 Rouff, Maggie 10, 11 Rousseff, Dilma 246 Royal Court Theatre 45 Rykiel, Sonia 160, 161 Sac 24 St Laurent, Yves 160, 161, 202, 203 Sander, Jil 197 Sassoon, Vidal 72, 73, 86, 96, 97 Savile Row 56, 60, 61 Scandinavia 262, 263 Schiaparelli, Elsa 28 school uniforms 54, 55 Sears Catalog 6, 7, 10, 11 Sex Pistols 172 Shannon, Mama June 266, 267 shoulder pads 130, 160, 166, 167, 186

Simons, Raf 236, 237 Sjöden, Gudrun 262, 263 skate-boarding 170, 188, 189 ski wear 74, 75 Sloppy Joe 38, 39 Sosa, Sammy 230, 231 Space Age 64, 83 Spice Girls 228, 229 Stanley, Louis 4 Start-Rite shoes 8, 9 Steele, Lawrence 222 Stein, Gertrude 48 style tribes 2, 50, 172, 197, 264 Taylor, Elizabeth 108 Teddy boys 25, 56, 57 teenagers: fifties 24, 25, 44–5, 52, 53, 56, 57; sixties 71, 82; eighties 184, 185, 188, 189; nineties 197, 206, 207, 236, 237, 238, 239; 21st century 264, 265 tennis wear 16, 17, 20, 74, 75, 230, 231 Teresa of Calcutta (Mother) 228, 229 Terylene 78, 79 Thatcher, Margaret 112, 113, 126, 152, 162 Thomas, Ian 228 tie-dying 116, 117 Timberland 214, 215 Tinling, Teddy 74, 75 Tisci, Riccardo 242, 243 Toddlers and Tiaras 272, 273 Toklas, Alice B. 48 Topman Design 270, 271 trainers 164, 165, 268, 269, 274 Trapeze line 24, 46, 47 travellers 254, 255 Tulip line 24 Twiggy 98 Ungaro, Emanuel 84 uniforms, children’s 54, 55, 80, 81 Utility Scheme 4 Valentino 132, 133, 197, 223, 242, 243 Vanity Fair 80, 81 van Noten, Dries 270, 271 Vaughan Williams, Ralph 50, 51 Versace, Gianni 196, 204, 223, 244, 245 Vietnam War 82 visual arts 65 Vogue 2, 44, 65, 80, 81, 83, 92, 104, 144, 145, 220, 250, 251, 260 Wainright, Janice 128, 129 Walker, Katherine 196 West, Mae 200 Westwood, Vivienne 30, 146, 172, 184, 196 wigs 120, 121 Williams, Venus 230, 231 Wimbledon 230 Windsmoor 26, 27 Women & Beauty 26, 27 working women 24, 25, 152–3, 162, 163, 180, 181, 197, 210, 274 Wright, Frank Lloyd 60, 61 Yamamoto, Yohji 158, 159, 224, 225, 252, 253 youth culture see teenagers Yuppies 152, 162, 164, 172 Zoot suits 22, 23, 252, 253