Inspirational Editorials: James Dean Rides Again

1970s, Boston-151, british boutique movement, charles jourdan, countdown, david montgomery, Henry Lehr, Herbert Johnson, Inspirational Images, Kansai Yamamoto, miss selfridge, mr freedom, The Westerner, vanity fair, Vintage Editorials, Wild Mustang Co., yves saint laurent

Jacket by Mr Freedom. Jeans by Male for The Pant House. Shoes at St Laurent, Rive Gauche.

Jeans, reclaimed from the bobby-soxer era, are back. True-blue jeans, given the Fifties treatment, rolled up to mid calf, revealing thick white socks and canvas sneakers, or totteringi high heels, clamped to the ankle with straps. It’s back to popcorn-and-ponytails, with angora sweater and beads or floppy blouses with belts, and shirts knotted self-consciously under Marilyn Monroe bosoms. It’s all fizz and fun and bubble-gum, just like High School kids used to be before politics and pollution, wars and recessions, drugs and permissiveness overwhelmed them.

Photographed by David Montgomery at Battersea Fun Fair and inside Mr Freedom.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vanity Fair, July 1971

Photographed by the jukebox at Mr Freedom. Jacket by Kansai Yamamoto for Boston-151. Denim jeans from Countdown. Green and pink leather shoes by Yamamoto for Boston-151. Badges from Mr Freedom

Jacket by Henry Lehr at Miss Selfridge. Canvas boots at The Westerner. Denim jeans at The Westerner. Handkerchief at Herbert Johnson.

Blouse from Boston-151. Belt from St Laurent. Denim jeans by Wild Mustang Co. White leather shoes by Charles Jourdan.

Inspirational Images: Renate Zatsch in Antony Price

1970s, antony price, british boutique movement, Inspirational Images, mild sauce, norman eales, Renate Zatsch

Photographed by Norman Eales

“If you are not wearing jeans you must be over thirty,” says Renate Zatsch twenty-five-year-old German cover girl in her Dietrich accent. “Jeans are a way of life, who doesn’t wear them?” says her boyfriend Michael Calderon. Renate likes jeans that fit. These white cotton pop jeans are seamed ove rthe bottom to fit like flypaper, and the off the shoulder blouse is bursting out all over. “It’s a gas,” says Renate. Jeans and blouse £7 each by Anthony [sic] Price. His jeans £7.50, sweater £18 at Browns.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Cosmopolitan, May 1972

I love you Pinky…

1970s, biba, british boutique movement, jean varon, john bates, website listings, yves saint laurent

Never again will I take movement for granted. About ten days ago, while I was running around preparing to meet up with the gorgeous Laurakitty and then doll myself up for the preview of the new Biba exhibition at Brighton Museum, I managed to ram my foot into my ever-present suitcase. Hard. So hard, in fact, that my pinky toe on my left foot was newly positioned at a right angle.

Of course I could have concocted a taller, more glamorous story about how I had tripped over the hem of my Ossie Clark dress (you know I run around in them all day, right?) or had tumbled from the stratospheric heights of my Terry de Havilland shoes (same as the Ossies, always in them…always…). Sadly, I was barefoot and the reality was painful and distinctly unglamorous. I managed to reset it myself (not quite sure how, I just moved it, not painful until the shock wore off…) and have been flat-bound and hobbling like a hobbly thing ever since. I have been told four to six weeks recovery time, in which I am unable to wear any of my nice shoes and have to keep pinky strapped up to its neighbour. There ensued much swearing and sulking when I realised that Biba (and, a few days later, the Festival of Vintage in Epsom) was definitely out of the question.

Unlike Tara, I have not been fighting thugs and solving crimes from the sofa. But I have been posed rather like this most of the time…

Sympathy (and tea and biscuits) are always welcome, but I mainly wanted to explain my slight absence from the blogging thing. I have been going stir crazy with boredom, but blogging seemed to be the last thing on my mind. Hard to get too excited about frocks and other fripperies when you are banished to the land of trainers and a very strange new walking style.

I am now just about able to get up the stairs to the studio, so slowness in frock dispatchery should be reduced. And there are some fine, fine things to be seen. New listings include Biba jackets, John Bates dresses and Yves Saint Laurent shoes, amongst many other things.

Far From the Madding Crowd

1970s, Ann Reeves, biba, british boutique movement, bus stop, Inspirational Images, irvine sellars, jeff banks, John Carter, lee bender, miss selfridge, mr freedom, peter robinson, petticoat magazine, topshop

Left to right: Dress, Jeff Banks, £9.90, P.R’s Top Shop. Dress, Ann Reeves, £9.25, Miss Selfridge,

Soft country girl dresses falling just below the knee in dark flowery prints ready for autumn, great for now. Looking sweet and old-fashioned with padded shoulders, sweetheart necklines or rever collars and cuffs – and all they really need is you and some romantic thoughts!

Very David Hamilton/Sarah Moon influenced shoot by John Carter. Scanned from Petticoat, July 1973.

Left to right: Beige dress, Jeff Banks, £9.90, Lady Tramp SW3. Mr Freedom hat, £2.50. Cream dress, Bus Stop, £9.95.

Left to right: Floral dress, Jeff Banks, £15.90, Irvine Sellars, sizal hat £2.50 from Biba. Black print dress, Ann Reeves, £9, Miss Selfridge.

Biba and Beyond: Barbara in Brighton

1970s, barbara hulanicki, biba, brian duffy, brighton, british boutique movement, Inspirational Images, Studio

Biba models, c1973, photographed by Brian Duffy © Duffy Archives.

Excitement is building for the upcoming Biba and Beyond exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, which I have already blogged about here, helped by Visit Brighton‘s fascinating short documentary video about Barbara Hulanicki.

The exhibition will be celebrating the Biba look and lifestyle, so much admired and coveted forty-odd years later, but also looking at Barbara’s career beyond her most famous creation. I’m certainly looking forward to more coverage of her illustration and interior design work.

Left:- Barbara Hulanicki in 1969 © Neil Libbert. Right:- Photograph Tessa Hallmann © Royal Pavilion & Museums

If any of you are visiting specifically for the exhibition, don’t forget that you are welcome to pop in to my new studio to say hello, browse the rail (yes, there’s Biba!) and have a cuppa. Just email me a bit in advance so I can make sure I’m there, armed with tea and biscuits…

Trouser Suit, c1971

Tighten your belts – Conspicuous waist

1950s, 1970s, biba, british boutique movement, dorothee bis, Escalade, Eva Sereny, Fiona Lewis, Inspirational Images, sunday times magazine

Sweater by Biba and belt by Fenwicks

One of my favourite fashion shoots of, ooh, forever, I have no idea why I have only just got round to scanning it in. This look appeals to me more and more every time I look at it. Part of what I love about the Seventies is the way they were influenced by the styles of earlier eras, and yet the result is always so perfectly Seventies and, inexplicably, preferable to the original. Speaking for myself, anyway…

Photographed by Eva Sereny. Scanned from The Sunday Times Magazine, October 1972

“At the Paris winter collections no-one seemed to have any scruples about cribbing from the Fifties. However, Dorothée Bis, one of the most influential ready-to-wear designers, did it better than anybody else because the clothes managed to look far sexier than they ever did at the time. Big baggy men’s department sweaters; jackets and coats, swagger-backed or lumberjack style, in cloth or fake fur; tight skirts hobbled over seamed lurex tights – in fact, everything that could be worn with a waspie belt like the one shown here, giving more shape tot he shapely and hope to the straight. On the cover and on these pages actress Fiona Lewis shows how she wears waist-clinchers.”

Sweater and belt from Biba

Sweater is model’s own, belt from Biba

Waspie from Escalade

Waspie and felt skirt by Biba

Vintage Adverts: We’ve got cotton denim all buttoned up

1970s, british boutique movement, flair magazine, Inspirational Images, jean varon, john bates, Vintage Adverts

Scanned from Flair, June 1970

Why have I never found this Varon dress?

Inspirational Images: Clothes to get you back in his arms

1970s, Barbara Trentham, british boutique movement, chelsea cobbler, cosmopolitan, Deirdre McSharry, Early Bird, harold ingram, Inspirational Images, jean muir, kari ann muller, mary quant, medusa, norman eales, paulene stone, stirling cooper, Tsaritsa, Vintage Editorials

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.

Biba and Beyond: A question for Barbara

1960s, 1970s, barbara hulanicki, biba, brighton, british boutique movement

I was delighted to be asked to submit a question for Barbara Hulanicki, as part of Visit Brighton‘s series of promotional videos for the upcoming Biba exhibition at Brighton Museum in September. I decided to go out on a geeky limb and ask about the Biba ‘couture’ range which I blogged about in February of last year.

Thanks to Jo-ann Fortune at Visit Brighton and to Barbara herself. The exhibition opens on the 22nd of September and I am very much looking forward to seeing it, no doubt decked out in my Biba finery. I will, of course, be blogging about it once it has opened, so stay tuned!