EPILOGUE: SLIPPING INTO THE SIXTIES
It is rare that the styles of one decade switch abruptly into the next. Many of the defining looks for the 1960s first originated in the 1950s. The most significant influence was that of youth, as the children and babies of the war and post-war years grew up and began asserting their independence and opinions, demanding the right to live their own lives as they saw fit. The teenager was someone to pay attention to, and canny manufacturers offered clothes, music and merchandise aimed directly towards this newly emerging consumer market, with its own tastes and wishes. While couturiers such as Dior always offered designs specifically for younger women, and Heim had had a separate ‘Jeunes Filles’ line since 1936, these high-end garments were beyond the reach of the majority. Few manufacturers until the 1950s saw a need to cater specifically to the teenage girl or twenty-something woman until it became apparent that, as a rule, she did not appreciate vaguely childish frocks and miniature adult garments being presented as ‘teenage fashion’. Instead, she demanded clothes designed for her actual age – not ten years younger, nor twenty years older.
‘Teenage fashions’ of 1954, as advertised by the Yorkshire company Heatonex. Although marketed for teenagers, there is little to distinguish the little sugar-pink suit from styles for mothers and even smart grandmothers. The only real indicator of the wearer’s youth appears to be that she has been permitted to go out without hat and gloves.
Young men also looked for something to bridge the gap between the child’s short trousers and their fathers’ clothes. Many developed their own personal style. As usual, they looked for inspiration from those role models presented as smart. In the opening years of the decade, a small group of elegant men introduced a new line of suit, cut very slim, with narrow trouser legs, and an expensively tailored jacket with a dark velvet collar. This was described as New Edwardian, due to its echoes of the styles of Edward VII’s reign fifty years previously. Within a few years, however, the style had been roundly claimed by young working-class men, who swaggered about in exaggeratedly narrow trousers and velvet-collared jackets, their hair grown long and combed back in greased quiffs, some even sporting sideburns. The original New Edwardians saw their look subverted into one of the most notorious youth looks of the decade – that of the Teddy Boys, or ‘Teds’ – synonymous with a less than positive image of tough, aggressive troublemakers. Teddy Girls wore similarly styled jackets and quiff hairstyles, but with slacks or skirts.
Neil ‘Bunny’ Roger is shown here wearing one of the original New Edwardian suits in 1951. Bunny Roger had a vast, expensively tailored wardrobe and was considered one of the smartest men in London.
As popular music increasingly gripped the nation, designers and manufacturers took note of which individual performers and groups had the biggest fan bases. In 1957, Teddy Tinling, better known for his Wimbledon tennis outfits, created a ‘Tommy Steele Jive Fashion’ line squarely aimed at the London-born singer’s teenage fans. Steele’s photograph and facsimile autograph appeared on dresses, T-shirts and heart-shaped pockets on jeans. His photos were even incorporated into plastic jewellery. The idea of celebrity-branding was to be developed even further in the following decade, not least with the floods of Beatles-emblazoned garments and merchandise seen in the mid-1960s.
While not necessarily fans, youths were more likely to copy the clothes worn by male heart-throbs to try to attract female attention. One distinctive look was that of James Dean in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, released soon after the actor’s premature death. His white T-shirt, jeans and red zip-fronted jacket were easily imitated. Due to the American influence, jeans were increasingly a practical, hard-wearing, young option for everyday informal wear by both sexes. Although iconic Levi’s were rarely seen in the United Kingdom until the late 1950s, Lee Cooper had been manufacturing casual jeans in Britain since 1946. Women’s jeans had side or rear zippers, as the fly fastening was not yet a unisex detail.
The housecoat modelled on this 1957 magazine cover was part of a collection of pop-music themed clothing especially designed for teenagers by Teddy Tinling. The alligators on the print reference the hit song ‘See You Later Alligator.’
For young women, Audrey Hepburn’s style was particularly inspiring. Barbara Hulanicki, who later founded the inimitable 1960s boutique Biba, recalled that, as an art student in mid-1950s Brighton, Hepburn’s simple tops with slim cropped trousers or full cotton skirts, flat ballet pumps and hoop earrings were widely worn. In the film Funny Face (1957), Hepburn played Jo, a bookshop assistant in ‘anti-fashion’ tweedy tunics and opaque tights who was transformed into a Givenchy-clad fashion model. Despite this, Jo still demonstrated intellectual independence by visiting a bohemian café in black jersey, leggings and flat slippers – a look which so informed the day-to-day style of independent-thinking young people such as Hulanicki’s classmates.
Jeans and white T-shirts were a young man’s informal everyday look popularised by the example of film stars such as James Dean and Marlon Brando. While this 1954 photograph shows an American teenager, the look was worn across the Western world.
Despite Dior and others consciously catering to younger clients, the clean, fresh, easy-to-wear philosophy of young design proved difficult for established Paris couturiers to tap into. At a time when the couturier’s ideal client was tall and statuesque, the five-foot-one-inch Marie-Louise Carven broke new ground when she launched her couture house in 1945 to offer fresh, light clothes designed specifically for petite young women like herself. Two other notable exceptions were Hubert de Givenchy, who, aged twenty-five, opened his couture house in 1952, and Yves Saint Laurent who, at twenty-one, stepped into his mentor’s shoes following Christian Dior’s sudden death in 1957. While Carven and Givenchy were both restrained and tactful, Saint Laurent caused shockwaves by explicitly referencing youth styles in his Dior collections despite the disapproval of his bosses, the press and many older clients. After the shock of the 1960 ‘Beat’ collection featuring leather jackets (albeit in mink-trimmed crocodile), black sweaters and knee boots inspired by Parisian art students, Dior replaced him with Marc Bohan, who designed for their London branch. Saint Laurent subsequently won damages for breach of contract, and launched his own successful couture house in January 1962.
The conspicuously youthful styles worn by actors such as James Dean (seen here in Rebel Without a Cause) were easily copied and had huge influence on young people’s style.
In late 1955, an independent boutique opened on the King’s Road in London that would redefine boutiques and change the face of shopping. Called Bazaar, its proprietor, 21-year-old Mary Quant, deliberately targeted the hitherto-neglected daughters of the women who traditionally shopped at madam shops and couture establishments. So successful was Quant at tapping into the young market that a second branch opened two years later, and the term ‘boutique’ became synonymous with youth. Quant herself became the poster child of the rapidly emerging London youth fashion movement, particularly after she began designing and making many of Bazaar’s clothes herself after struggling to find ideally young-looking stock. Innocently unaware of wholesaling at first, she bought her fabrics full-price from Harrods and, from her front room, ran up simple tunics, lounging pyjamas and sleeveless dresses designed to be worn over turtleneck sweaters. Bazaar also stocked quirky accessories such as little white plastic collars to enliven black dresses.
This soft brown wool dress was created by Mary Quant for Bazaar, c.1960. Its high funnel neck, large buttons and extreme simplicity made it perfect for the young, modern woman to wear into the next decade.
Bazaar soon gained the first of many rivals, when a young Norwegian émigré, Kiki Byrne opened a boutique on Sloane Street, later moving into nearby King’s Road premises. Barbara Hulanicki recalled how exciting it was to discover Byrne making exactly the kind of incredibly simple, superb quality clothing she and her friends longed for, but had found nearly impossible to track down. Byrne and Quant were among the first of a wave of young London-based designers emerging at this time, including future stalwarts of the 1960s Boutique Movement such as John Bates, Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin, and Jean Muir who at that time was helping the British clothing brand Jaeger develop its ‘Young Jaeger’ line.
In the following decade, fashion and lifestyle commentators acted as if the madness of the 1960s happened almost overnight. Looking more objectively, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that much of what happened to shake up fashion in the Sixties had been seeded in the previous decade. The Fifties, probably unfairly, went down in popular memory as staid, frightfully fuddy-duddy and rather frumpy, as the teenagers and twenty-somethings of the Sixties got caught up in what was happening more immediately and compared it unfavourably with the preceding decade. However, popular culture in the Fifties was quick to accept modern designs and to embrace the latest technological developments. This was an attitude without which the legendary adventurousness of the Sixties might not have happened.