Sixties Fashion

No one who remembers Britain in the 1950s, when the Festival of Britain on London's South Bank was celebrated and rationing was ended and, for the first time in more than ten years, its streets and shop fronts were illuminated at night, could have imagined that, ten years later, the capital would be the centre of the Swinging Sixties. Bankrupted by two world wars (and Britain has only just finished repaying its huge loan from the USA that enabled post-war reconstruction to take place), it seemed that the country was still dominated by a rigid class system that determined not only people's place in society but where they lived and worked, and the kinds of clothes they wore. It was a system whose roots went back to the industrialisation of the 18th and 19th centuries, while the two wars and the depression that had followed in the 1920s, and the austerity that had been imposed in the 1940s, also led to the self-discipline and stoicism that enabled Britain to stand alone against fascism until America entered the war in 1942. But how things changed after the war!

The exhibition 'Sixties Fashion' at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London is a reminder that, for a small number of young men and women, most of whom lived in London, the decade will be remembered not for the photographs taken then but for what they wore. This was a time when neither Paris nor clothes manufacturers determined fashion but, instead, this was done by the small boutiques that proliferated along the Kings Road and in Carnaby Street. There, accompanied by music associated with the Twist, which had replaced rock 'n' roll, young women (and often their young children) decked themselves out in kaftans or in outfits that owed much to (imagined?) harems in Arabia and Turkey (or, disconcertingly, in outfits that asked, 'Is anyone for tennis?'), while young men might be dressed as hussars, or refugees from the Russian Revolution - or even as American cowboys! It was, in fact, 'a super charade of happy happenings - or one big fancy dress ball', as a British television programme commented at the time; and, indeed, London's position as the world's Swinging City was confirmed by Time magazine's issue dated 15 April 1966 that said:

In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene. This spring, as never before in modern times, London is switched on. Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds (girls) and beatles, buzzing with mini cars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement.

Even the Italians, arguably leaders in design since the end of the Second World War, were amazed, as shown by Ettore Sottsass's photographs of London's boutiques that were published by Domus under the title, Memoires di Pana Montata, in January 1967.

Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that the Swinging Sixties applied to a small number of people who shopped in boutiques that were often owned by fashion designers such as Mary Quant and John Stephen. Most of Britain's population were only beginning to wake up to the possibilities of packaged holidays in Spain or owning their own car, while Britain's industries - especially those making ships and cars - had not yet experienced the strikes and foreign competition that debilitated them in the 1970s. Thus the Swinging Sixties that most people experienced were seen through television, including the relatively new commercial stations, newspapers and magazines - and especially the newspaper's colour supplements.

In the V&A's exhibition, Sixties fashion is displayed in a series of cases that examine designers and boutiques throughout the decade. The scene is set by photographs of Carnaby Street where Ian Grey and his wife, owners of Gear dressed as a Pearly King and Queen (a cockney institution) while they collected money for Oxfam! The photographs show a confusion of periods and styles that was typical of the setting for Sixties fashion, as were the technical innovations demonstrated by disposable paper dresses in garish reds and greens - or in polka dots - that sometimes had matching bags, and dresses in PVC.

The beginning of the decade also included a Pussy Galore dress (named after the James Bond film Goldfinger), a very simple pinafore dress by Mary Quant in light brown wool with a 'V' applied in black braid around the neck and (dated a bit later) the Lord John military-style trench coat in belted denim that imitated the fashion success achieved by John Stephen. Stephen's stock included denim shirts, T-shirts, moccasin shoes and reefer jackets that were quite well made and sold for reasonable prices. Also in this section is a man's shirt made out of the Union Jack. American visitors to London at the time were surprised (and perhaps horrified) by the way in which the UK's national flag could be used for shirts and even carrier (tote) bags.

The diverse and perhaps disconcerting sources for Sixties fashion continue to be made clear in the showcases that follow. A shop called Take Six shows a black suit and a frock coat that were worn by a cabaret and puppet-show group called The International Minipops, while at another shop called Granny Takes A Trip, you could have bought a jacket and trousers in light brown cotton that looked as if they came out of a dressing-up box. Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell designed coats in light brown printed cotton velvet decorated with both floral and geometric patterns, and a display of hats shows many that were cloche shaped and printed in zebra or geometrical patterns. Other cloche hats were made in printed nylon decorated with gold leather, or in black leather decorated with pink suede. And for men there was a suit with a Nehru collar made in lustrous cream silk woven with a design of chrysanthemums by Rupert Lycett Green of Blades, and a suit in American corduroy printed in narrow vertical stripes of red, brown, green and black from Mr Fish.

The many different sources continued to be demonstrated by Mary Quant's Alice dress (inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland) made in crepe with a frilled collar and cuffs, a Bri-Nylon Mondrian-inspired dress by Yves Saint Laurent, and a dress made out of multicoloured plastic and metal circles by Paco Rabanne. There is also a stunning dress made in gold paper and sequins that was designed by Leonard Joseph for Princess Stanislaus Radziwill. Although some of these demonstrate the international dimension (and the social cachet) achieved as the result of following London's Swinging Sixties, the city remained predominant because of its boutiques, its hairdressers (such as Vidal Sassoon) and the talent that continued to pour out of the Royal College of Art. Among the boutiques were Mary Quant's Bazaar and Barbara Hulanicki's Biba, one of whose locations was in the former grand art deco department store, Derry & Toms. There, Biba became renowned for its Rainbow Room bar where you might find the celebrated model, Twiggy, draped langorously over an enormous sofa, her long legs a reminder of the revolution in fashion that had been started by Mary Quant's mini skirt when worn by Jean Shrimpton in 1965.

However, the V&A exhibition shows that well-established designers also played their part in the Swinging Sixties. Thus, Worth is represented by a red silk taffeta dress and a black lace dress, Courrèges by his white, space-age outfit worn with flat, white boots, Hardy Amies by his 'Polar Flight' suit in red mohair, and John Cavanagh by a black, grey and white check dress and a jacket in Egyptian cotton and silk. Even Norman Hartnell, designer to the royal family, is represented by a pin-tucked grey silk dress and coat that look both regal and luxurious. Curiously, what is missing from this section in the exhibition is any mention of Bernat Klein, who revolutionised the tweed industry in the Scottish Borders with his bright colours (replacing the drab browns and greens) and mohair fabrics. He designed clothes for Princess Margaret.

The Swinging Sixties, of course, were not confined to radical changes in fashion. Some of the exterior and interior designs of the boutiques and their window displays were outrageous, and this free spirit in design was also applied to such things as logos (Biba's is especially memorable), carrier bags and advertising, much of it being echoed in the record sleeves of the time - most notably by Peter Blake's design for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967. It was also the decade that saw the rise of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the production of films such as Darling and Billy Liar, and the work of photographers such as David Bailey, Brian Duffy and Terence Donovan (Bailey being celebrated in Antonioni's film Blow Up). Little did any of them know that, in the decade that was to follow, the fourfold rise in the price of oil that led to 27% inflation in 1972-73 would bring everything to a stop. And even in today's affluent, consumer society, London remains devoid of the visual excitement that made the Swinging Sixties so memorable.

'Sixties Fashion' continues at the V&A until 28 February 2007. Swinging Sixties, a book that accompanies the exhibition, is edited by Christopher Breward, David Gilbert and Jenny Lister, and is published by V&A Publications, London and distributed in the US by Harry N Abrams Inc, New York, price £19.95 (USA $35.00).

Richard Carr was features editor of DESIGN magazine in London during most of the Swinging Sixties.

Richard Carr