Barbara wears halter top and pleated skirt by Mary Quant, £23 for the rigout, and shoes by Chelsea Cobbler. He wears intarsia sweater by Ballantyne.
Nice girls are turning a cold shoulder on some of the best looking men around. Perfectly enchanting girls, like Twiggy, who flashes her famous shoulder blades at Christopher Gable through her sleeveless, backless The Boy Friend costumes. And who can forget Lauren Bacall and lngrid Bergman acting with their backs turned on Bogie in all those Late Late Show films. Now you can make some of the best exit lines in the backless—and fairly frontless—cIothes previewed here. lt’s clear that fashion is on the side of the female female in clothes that show off a nice warm back and allow plenty of MANoeuvring room. Putting the Back-to-Basics through their paces in many of the pictures are Barbara Trentham and Gary Myers, a couple of Cosmo people to watch. Blonde, brainy Barbara with the 1,000-watt smile will soon be seen in her first film, opposite Shirley MacLaine. called, if you can believe it, The Possession of Joel Delaney, and Aussie Gary is tall, dark and one of television’s busiest tough guys. Together they show that a cold shoulder never turned a good man off…
Scanned from the very first UK edition of Cosmopolitan, March 1972. Photographs by Norman Eales.
Paulene wears chamois leather blouse and pleated skirt by Jean Muir, £46 and £31.50
Paulene Stone in a robe from Browns, £20
Barbara wears dress by Early Bird, £7. Gary’s sweater is by Harold Ingram, £3.30
Barbara wears dress by Mary Quant, £15
Barbara wears strappy crepe dress by Medusa, £9.95
Barbara wears dress by Tsaritsa, £29. Shoes by Mary Quant.
When both ladies turn up in identical tank tops scooped low, a man scarcely knows where to put his eyes. Dark Janni and tawny Kari-Anne [sic] fill out backless sweaters by Stirling Cooper, £2.95. Janni’s red jersey trousers are £9.60, also by Stirling Cooper. Yellow satin jeans by Medusa, £17.91.
Liz Eggleston 
Love the looks, but a sunken shower? That’s just asking for trouble.
Peter Hinwood played Rocky in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
How fantastic is Paulene’s haircut? Love Gary’s gray tux and boots combo, too. Ooh and that turtleneck dress with the red tights.
I could do with an invigorating neckline meself! I love the Early Bird frock…wish you could still get one for seven quid.x
Thank you so much for a lovely blog.
Miss Selfridge..Biba..Early Bird & Stirling Cooper among others…I never realised these brands of my late mother’s clothes from her shopping trips to London in her teens had such a colourful past. So glad my siblings and I didn’t give them away & pity I’m too tall to get into them now.
Best wishes
Jeanne
Seeing these photos makes me like the idea of having men as background accessories in fashion shoots. Less souless than woman in front of studio backdrop photos. Less distracting than catwalk or on-the-street photos.
These clothes were not cheap. 15 pounds in 1972 would be about $86 in 2016.