60 W hether it’s superlashed Twiggy in Mary Quant’s PVC creations, or kids streaming up and down Carnaby Street, pick any image from the Sixties and you will see in it the essence of British fashion: the point where popular culture, street style and creative vision collide. The post-war economic boom ushered in high employment, disposable income and a loosening of social mores. The weekend was what teenagers lived for and the opportunity to spend cash on trendy gear in their new, local fashion boutique. Frustrated at not being able to buy youthful clothes in department stores, a new generation of art-school graduates – textiles students, in particular – designed their own. To satisfy the huge demand for their creations, they were soon collaborating with traditional clothing manufacturers to produce fashionable, affordable clothes that would change the way we dressed for ever. Not only was British high-street style established, it knocked Paris’s steadfast haute-couture crown into a snooked Union Jack hat.
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION
Mary captures the mood Forever associated with inventing the miniskirt, Mary Quant deserves wider recognition for the sexiness she injected into the ready-towear arena. With pleated minidresses, shifts with zips highlighting erogenous zones and daring new fabrics such as PVC, Quant cut loose from the buttoned-up austerity that had, until the Sixties, underpinned British clothing. Her designs were distilled in gentle humour — an approach that reflected the happy-golucky mood of the times. She reintroduced traditional suiting and fabrics such as tweed and wool to the younger generation as playful pinstriped pinafores, for instance, or sassy fitted waistcoats. But while the nudge-nudgewink-wink sauciness of Quant’s designs made them hugely popular with a generation of youths at liberty to spend — and do — as they pleased, Quant’s status as one of the seminal figures in the history of fashion should be considered in a more serious light. A socially aware, businesssavvy design visionary, Quant set the benchmark for generations of British fashion talent, not least by putting pioneering home-grown style at the heart of the international fashion map.
Snapper happy Once asked to describe her famously skinny frame, Twiggy — the model otherwise known as Lesley Hornby — responded, “It’s not what you’d call a figure, is it?†And so the fashion model as we know it was born. While The Beatles were the face of British music, Twiggy, with her huge doe eyes, boyish hairdo and casual approach, summed up the British fashion scene. Shimmering with youthful energy, not only did her coltish physique allow clothes to be seen as designers envisaged them being worn, she photographed beautifully too. And a new breed of swaggering photographers, such as David Bailey and Terence Donovan, ushered in a new era of fashion imagery, paving the way for today’s narrative-driven “fashion stories†— and the photographer as celebrity. As Bailey’s fame grew, so did his ability to attract top models, and he struck up a relationship with Jean (“the Shrimpâ€) Shrimpton. Bailey also had a close association with the US model Penelope Tree, whose almond-shaped eyes, magnified with lashings of thick black mascara and false lashes, epitomised the exaggerated make-up looks of the day.
Mary Quant measures a model
Ossie Clark, the true original Mick Jagger wore some, Marianne Faithfull was a fan and Liza Minnelli possibly picked up her Ossie Clark designs at a fashionable New York store. By the mid-Sixties, anyone who was someone wore Ossie Clark. A true original, Clark, a Liverpudlian who gained a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in 1962, is one of the most enduring figures of the British fashion scene. Working with his wife, the textile designer Celia Birtwell, Clark, an expert tailor, had an instinctive feel for the fabrics, cuts and styles that could best accentuate a woman’s shape. Floaty crêpe or chiffon dresses, blouses and trousers made his name. Combined with Birtwell’s unique illustrative motifs, drawn from nature but imbued with a pop-art sensibility, the romantic designs were quite unlike anything seen before. Clark’s first collection was photographed by Vogue three months after he graduated. He and Birtwell later joined fellow designer Alice Pollock at her Chelsea boutique Quorum, where they sold their designs. But, devoid of business nous, Clark could not keep up his exclusive fashion line and eventually struck a deal with the manufacturer Radley. This involved adapting his original designs so they could be produced for the mass market at commercially viable prices. And so everyone who wore them became someone. While these dresses and coats still retained the marks of classic Ossie Clark — great shape and cut, décolletage, Birtwell prints — the designer was disenchanted at not being able to use top-quality fabrics and having to forgo much of the detailing that set him apart, such as embroidery and beading. However, the commercial arrangement eventually allowed him to continue designing his mainline collections, and Ossie Clark fashion shows were as renowned as his starry clientele. In fact, Clark and Birtwell’s arty approach, which featured models in his latest pieces dancing down catwalks to the pumping pop sounds of the day — in place of conservative clothing shows in
One of Clark’s romantic designs smart showrooms — pioneered the dramatic fashion-show format around which the international catwalk collections still revolve. Ossie Clark died in 1996. Nevertheless, the recent revival of the Ossie Clark brand (with the Israeli designer Avsh Alom Gur at the helm) attests to the enduring fondness the design world still holds for him and his work. And the designer lives on for ever in his friend David Hockney’s 1970 painting Mr and Mrs Ossie Clark and Percy, now hailed as one of the most visited and popular British works of art of all time.
Ossie Clark
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH The Daily Telegraph Saturday, November 1, 2008 telegraph.co.uk /gordonsgin In association with
The tapestry of our lives W hat we wear reflects the society in which we live. Hence, the British style and pop explosions that shook the world in the Sixties mirrored a new, carefree and affluent post-war era. Young people no longer looked to their elders for sartorial guidance but had the freedo
60 W hether it’s superlashed Twiggy in Mary Quant’s PVC creations, or kids streaming up and down Carnaby Street, pick any image from the Sixties and you will see in it the essence of British fashion: the point where popular culture, street style and creative vision collide. The post-war economic
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION Twiggy Michael Fish and, from top right, Carnaby Street and Granny Takes A Trip The march of the mods The “mod†or “modernist†style of the Sixties was adopted by newly fashion-obsessed young men who wanted to emulate stylish Europeans, such
70 A s the Seventies dawned, the naive exuberance of Sixties fashion transformed into a “designer†scene. Teenagers who had fuelled the style revolution were a little older, wiser and more sophisticated in their choices. Rock stars such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan sported flamboyant get-ups wi
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION Happy hippies at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival; right, Tommy Nutter Suited and booted The hippy style of US bands such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Mamas & the Papas, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane had made its mark on British fashio
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80 T he Eighties was the decade in which we discovered designer labels and power dressing – big shoulders, huge hair and sexy skirt suits. Women’s Lib paid off for a generation of young women who began to tap, in some cases thrust, a stiletto through the glass ceiling. An upturn in economic grow
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION Naomi sashays in New British fashions required a fresh face. Along came Naomi Campbell from Streatham, south London, who began modelling as a teenager and is still going rather too strong two decades later. Beautiful, British and black, with a great bo
90 W ith interest rates about to reach eye-watering levels, recession creeping in and a Gulf War on the horizon, the glam, opulent fashions of the Eighties seemed to date overnight. As if keen to separate itself from the “loadsamoney†excesses of the previous decade, the fashion world entered a
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION Sartorial shock and awe Born in the East End and trained in Savile Row, Alexander McQueen heralded a new era of Cool Britannia with his tough-edged tailoring style, which made fashion headlines in the Nineties. Beginning where Vivienne Westwood’s ear
00 M ilan, Paris and New York may still be the key commercial centres of the global fashion industry but, when it comes to new ideas and visionary thinking, British design talent is, as ever, in pole position. Currently at the helm are the two Scottish designers, Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunde
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH FASHION Christopher Kane Kane is most able At 26, Christopher Kane is the undoubted current star of British fashion. The Motherwellborn, Central Saint Martinstrained fashion designer rates everything from Tippex to Crocodile Dundee as inspiration. His designs
