Christine McVie in Thea Porter

british boutique movement, christine mcvie, fleetwood mac, personal collection, seventies fashion, stevie nicks, thea porter

I’m usually all about the Stevie Nicks. I have a fabulous skirt (in severe danger of falling apart at the seams, quite literally) which is identical to one she had. As identical as a patchwork skirt can be. And it’s safe to say, she is one of my biggest style icons. And I was going to do a post about her today. And then I spotted these two photos in the folder and remembered I had spotted that Christine McVie is wearing a gypsy Thea Porter dress, but didn’t blog about it at the time (for some weird reason).

It can’t have been fun being photographed next to Stevie most of the time, so it’s nice to see a rare moment where she outshines her.

I have one Thea Porter gypsy dress which, despite never having found occasion to wear, I cannot bring myself to sell (the skirt is very sheer and, clearly, I will never find a suitably hemmed petticoat to go underneath….). I rather like the fact that mine is a monochrome (aside from the gold silk waist panel), but it doesn’t stop me slightly lusting after the coloured ones as well.

Twiggy: more than a keyword….

british boutique movement, celebrity boutiques, sixties, twiggy, website listings

Twiggy’s own label was a brief, beautiful contribution to the world of the British Boutique Movement. Click here to see my previous blog about it. The pieces are rare enough, but it can often be hard to find them online when her name has become merely a ‘keyword’ for the masses of unlabelled minis and hacked off maxis floating around in vintage land.

However, Vintage-a-Peel always seeks to bring clarity to the vintage world, so I don’t use such keywords. Except now I have an actual Twiggy dress for sale, so I can. Hurrah! Stunning striped cotton mini with blue satin buttons down the front to match the blue satin ribbon around the waistline. I love the tiny, ever-so-sweet detail of the top button though, which is covered to match the fabric of the dress. It’s even lined in cotton; a detail which would simply never occur to anyone nowadays (and is far nicer than supposedly high-end designer pieces even from the Sixties!). Wearable and so sweet, but also immensely rare and collectable.

Now listed over at Vintage-a-Peel

Around the Bender

barbara hulanicki, biba, book reviews, british boutique movement, bus stop, kate moss, lee bender, seventies fashion, topshop

Ok so, I totally failed to take any photos from Friday night’s Lee Bender talk at the V&A. Mr Brownwindsor also failed to take any photos. My friends Daniel and David also failed to take any photos.

Conclusion: We were all in a daze.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that Mr Brownwindsor was sitting there chatting to Sylvia Ayton and I utterly failed to ask her to sign my Boutique book, which was sitting in my bag.

Conclusion: I’m useless.

However, I did get Lee Bender to sign my copy of her new book. And she recognised my nudey lady blouse immediately. Hurrah! Geek heaven…

I’m generally a bit squeaky and shy when it comes to asking questions in front of a huge audience of people. I can talk to a much admired designer up close and where only they witness my idiocy. But, after much cajoling beforehand, I realised I simply had to ask the question I’d been dying to ask since I wrote this blog [almost exactly] three years ago.

“How do you feel about being copied yourself* these days? Particularly with the Kate Moss for Topshop…..” I think I might have trailed off at this point because a look of thunder crossed her face. I squeaked inwardly, fearing I may have offended. But it turned out that she was just registering her anger at exactly the same thing that I had been angry about. She mentioned having seen a blog about it; I exclaimed that it was my blog, my dress. “Aha! I thought you looked familiar!”.

*She had spoken about her own experiences of taking inspiration from vintage pieces.

Tea dresses. So good. So widely copied.

Terrifyingly fabulous when you realise your idols actually see what you write about them. I had the same stomach flip when John Bates said he had seen my website. I often forget, and I ramble on about them in the same way I would ramble on about Ossie Clark, knowing full well I can’t offend him.

Anyway, the talk itself was great. Albeit not quite sufficient for a complete geek like me. Certain people (mainly my boyfriend) keep having to gently but firmly remind me that of course I’m not going to be satisfied with whatever book/documentary/q&a session I’m witnessing. I already know most of what they’re talking about. I’m seeking the finer details. Dates, times, people, evidence. Sadly, it’s the lot of the fashion historian.

Which is also my problem with the new Bus Stop book. On balance, I would say it’s definitely worth owning (the more I look at it, the less I see the flaws). And mine holds greater importance now it’s actually got her dedication inside. But it’s not the most gorgeously produced book in the world, the design/layout leaves a lot to be desired, and it’s a crying shame that it will probably be the only one we’ll see on Lee and her work.

A typical page.

The problem is limited resources. She didn’t keep anything (by her own admission – you should have heard the gasps when she mentioned donating things to charity a few years back) so mostly it is filled with her illustrations. Which are very lovely. But I’m a geek. And I need information laid out in timeline form, or at least vaguely timeline-ish, and I need dates on photos. I need better quality scans of photos. But again, I am being pernickety because quite a few of the magazine photos within are from magazines I already own and could scan myself (and clean them up a bit in photoshop).

There was limited research going on, and many things slipped under the radar. Par exemple…

: It’s…… 1.) Sarah Jane’s Andy Pandy dungarees!

2.) Joanna Lumley's outfit from The New Avengers promotional photocall.

Oh yes. If books were produced by Miss Peelpants, they’d probably be the geekiest books in the world. But I’m not even being THAT geeky really. There are photos of Joan Collins and Barbara Bach in Bus Stop gear, presumably because those were the only ones they thought they had evidence of.

Also, there are so many Bus Stop fanatics and collectors out there; any of us would have been happy to have had our garments photographed professionally I’m sure.

My favourite part of the evening, weirdly, was the slight hint of anti-Bibaness. Which might surprise you, because I really do love Biba and Barbara Hulanicki and clearly am never afraid to express this through my blog and website. But I’m not unaware of her flaws. And I’m also starting to get a bit bored with the Biba dominance in coverage of the era.

As Lee herself, and others I chatted to afterwards, pointed out; Bus Stop clothes were made for women. Women with boobs and a bum. Barbara was designing for women with legs up to their armpits and no boobs. I don’t have the most generous bosom in the world, but Biba squishes me out in all directions sometimes. I appreciate the boldness of that as a design decision (the flagrant “if you’re not this shape, tough, you’ll wear the clothes and hope they make you look that shape” attitude) but it doesn’t always work when you need your clothes to work. Which is why I’m always wittering on about Lee Bender making wearable gear; she just WAS.

The actual rivalry with Biba was touched on, she told a brief story about both her and Barbara ending up in the same Kensington restaurant one night and being kept well apart by their companions, but this just made me even more sad. Biba gets two or three books, glossily and hard-backedly dedicated to the high altar of art deco fabulousness. Bus Stop will probably only ever get this one, making it look like the ‘also-ran’ it never was. But I’m immensely glad it even exists, quite frankly.

Someone (preferably not Topshop, although they owe her big time) needs to give Lee Bender the opportunity to design a new range of clothes. Hulanicki’s range for Topshop was such a crushing disappointment; I would dearly love to see someone who REALLY wants to do it, and isn’t just ‘phoning it in’, making a huge success with fresh, wearable designs and an understanding of women’s bodies.

Get Wetter in Brighton

1960s, brighton, british boutique movement, Inspirational Images, mary quant, petticoat magazine, Vintage Editorials

Oh how I would love to have some of these outfits (and some ‘Kinky Kaps’) for running around on Brighton beach…especially given the appalling weather lately!

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Petticoat, January, 1967.

Who’s Wearing What: Penelope Tree

british boutique movement, david bailey, Foale and Tuffin, mary quant, ossie clark, penelope tree, petticoat magazine, sixties

I adore Penelope Tree; her hair, make-up, style, the fact that she still looks amazing (without having had surgery…at least that’s what it looks like), the fact that she survived being with Bailey, the fact she doesn’t feel the need to whore herself around for fame and fortune…..

I particularly love this article from the June 14th 1969 issue of Petticoat magazine.

In New York Penelope Tree is a top fashion model. You can’t open American Vogue or Harpers without seeing her dripping furs, jewellery. In England she’s more well-known for being Bailey’s Bird. What sort of clothes does she wear to please herself?

I got off to a good start by losing my pencil, every time I delived in my bag to find it I got butted in the bottom by Smudge, Penelope’s enormous English sheep dog. “And he’s still only a puppy,” she said apologetically, whacking him. I gave up looking, and she handed me a pencil. We sat either end of a vast black leather Chesterfield, surrounded by ‘naive’ paintings, Mickey Mouse and stone sculptures of sorts.

“I go six months without ever buying clothes, because I hate it more than anything else. I think I’m going to get all paranoic in the shop, specially Department Stores, I think I’m going to throw-up or something. I’ve been buying clothes for myself since I was 12 years old and it still gets me. When I do see something I like, I usually buy a lot. This dress, I bought at Maryon about a year ago. I liked it so much I bought three.”

She was wearing a full-length, green cotton dress, sprigged with tiny daisies, topped with a short black velvet vest, “a bit from a Tuffin and Foale trouser suit, I think” and thick brown brogue boots.

Apart from looking very individual and super, she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a trail-blazing Western film. “I refuse to spend a lot of money on clothes, I’d rather spend it on paintings. I haven’t got much money; you know I don’t earn any money in this country at all, and anyway clothes aren’t made well enough. The most I’ve ever spent on one garment is an Ossie Clark Snakeskin coat.”

“To the ground?” I queried.

“Oh yes, short clothes look terrible now, one is always inhibited about the way one sits, walks and runs down the street. I like to forget about what I’m wearing, not worrying about – are my knickers showing. It’s all right if you don’t worry, but I’ve been conditioned to worry about it.”

I sat there worrying if my knickers were showing, and feeling very butch in my short skirt.

With that, David Bailey walked in, bumping into a bounding Smudge, who rushed over to give a friendly lick.

“Bailey do you know Suzie?” Penelope introduced us and we exchanged sickly smiles. I always feel about two year old, being called Suzie, and surnames only always have a ‘God’ like ring to them. Bailey put on a record and we all listened in silence to Brute Force and his four letter word song. “That’s why it can’t be released,” Bailey explained.

I broke the magic by asking Penelope if she liked French clothes. “I hate French clothes, I hate the principle of the couturier. I used to love Yves St. Laurent clothes, only he started giving out this black thing and being in mourning for Vietnam. I think it’s the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard of, he doesn’t do anything about Vietnam, but make money out of it. Black’s okay if you have a figure problem. English clothes were wonderful five years ago, now they’re terrible and very expensive. Ossie Clark is the only revolutionary now, he makes pretty clothes, only they’re not particularly well made.”

“Can I quote that?” I interjected.

“Oh yes, I’ve told him so. Marshall McLuham says: ‘Fashion is a product of mass media, presenting ourselves as a showcase’. I think clothes just need to be comfortable. My wardrobe’s full of bits and pieces, I hate to throw anything away, I always think they’ll go with something. I really only wear about five things.”

I’d read she wore masses of make-up, literally painting it on every morning, but she hardly had any on.

“Oh sometimes I wear gobbs and gobbs, it just depends how depressed I feel in the morning. I think Mary Quant is best, but really best of all is stolen make-up, not stolen really but borrowed. Somebody else’s is always better than yours.

“I’m always amazed that all the individual, successful people ‘do their own thing.'” Penelope even cuts her own hair…”unless someone offers to trim it while I’m modelling”. I asked her why she wasn’t modelling in this country and she mumbled something about the tax man and then said: “I’m giving it up, I don’t want to hang about and become a has been.” Then she added much to my surprise: “I’m not in great demand. I started to write a book, then realised in the middle I didn’t really know what I was talking about; it was on the subject of Hinduism. I might go into films.”

With that Mary Quant, Alexander Plunket-Green, Bailey and Smudge came in and it looked like my interview was ended. We wandered down to the basement and spent half an hour searching for a picture of her. “Bailey hardly ever photographs me unless it’s work!” Sue Steward

Pussy Galore

1960s, british boutique movement, carnaby street, petticoat magazine, pussy galore, sixties, The art of labels

Well I never. All these years I’ve been moaning that I knew so very little about the Pussy Galore boutique, aside from the brief paragraph the V&A managed to unearth when they displayed my frock. Yet right under my nose, in a clearly somewhat under read copy of Petticoat magazine, was this little gem. Well, now I know why they didn’t last very long. I’m not sure I’d want to buy frocks from a girl in her underwear. I don’t care what they may say about rocketing lingerie sales, pah!

Pussy Galore was opened by Carnaby Street entrepreneur Henry Moss in 1969, when this clipping dates from.

I realise this may not be terribly exciting for anyone else, but at least if I blog about it I’m unlikely to forget I have it. Which is something I often manage to do.

My solitary[ish] Pussy Galore piece is the tablecloth mini, but I also have a pair of purple suede hotpants (Made, apparently, for someone with a child-size bottom. Size 38 my….errr….arse!) which had this hang tag on them. I’m sure they must be Pussy Galore, but there isn’t a fabulous huge satin label inside. Just the hang tag. Dyed by the purple suede over the years. Isn’t it groovy?

Sunshine Superblouse

alice pollock, british boutique movement, moss crepe, personal collection, vintage fangirl squee

I just realised how grey my blog is looking currently. And since I was leafing through my Boutique book this morning, in an attempt to cheer my poorly self up (revenge of the spring snuffles), and realised I had never scanned in the photo of Alice Pollock wearing my Alice Pollock blouse….I thought I ought to share. And brighten this place up a bit. Because it is seriously yellow.

I once made the mistake of wearing this blouse to the theatre. I hadn’t realised how tiny the theatre would be, that I would end up in the front row – practically on the stage, and that John Simm would quite possibly be blinded by my sartorial choice that night. Whoops!

The Mill on the Floss: Helmut Newton does Alice Pollock

1960s, alice pollock, bill gibb, british boutique movement, mary quant, ossie clark, quorum, zandra rhodes

I must admit that I don’t have a great many copies of Queen magazine in my possession. But a conversation about Alice Pollock the other day reminded me that I have one, frankly awesome, copy from 1969 with an entire fashion spread dedicated to Pollock’s clothes – photographed by Helmut Newton. It’s entitled The Mill on the Floss.

When the London rat-race is too much for you…you can retire to the calm and order of the country and gaze peacefully, restfully, into the depths of a mill-race. Ideal wardrobe for mill-racing – catch of floaty granny-dresses from Quorum. (Yes we do mean that long; we are rather serious about this.) Wear your granny-dresses with suede boots; after all, the climb through the mill may be rugged.

It’s funny really, how few Pollock pieces turn up nowadays. And the ones which do are usually the more Ossie-esque. I’ve had a few, all blouses I might add, and currently only own one labelled piece. But this spread shows you a bit more of her range, beyond pretty crepe blouses. Apparently her knitwear was extraordinary, and one person described it as possibly superior to Bill Gibb. Which is high praise indeed.

She had less of a defined style than Ossie, but her clothes were, by all accounts, exceedingly wearable and feminine. Less aggressively sexual, which is why it’s so interesting to see them photographed by someone like Helmut Newton.

It made me wonder if a lot of female designers in the Sixties had that problem, and why so few (aside from the idiosyncratic Zandra Rhodes, and master self-publicist Mary Quant) have remained in the public consciousness since the Sixties and Seventies. My own favourites at least, it would seem. The male designers were often the biggest drama queens, and have ensured their notoriety continues to this day. Whether through the strength of their designs, their lifestyles or just a knack for self-publicity. I’m sure there are countless exceptions to this rule, but it’s been occupying my mind today.

Anyway, enjoy the Pollocks! I for one wish I could be running around a mill, in the countryside, in Quorum clothes right now.

Peacocks and Wainwrights…

1970s, british boutique movement, janice wainwright, peacocks, website listings

Some may be negatively superstitious about Peacock feathers, but I prefer to take the more positive superstitions on board where Peacocks and their feathers are regarded as protectors and have mystical powers to benefit the soul.

Seems Janice Wainwright had the same opinion. I knew the woman was a genius!

Exquisitely embroidered and appliquéd, this skirt suit by British Boutique legend Janice Wainwright is one of the most stunning examples of her work I’ve ever had the pleasure of handling. The back of the jacket is entirely smothered in the gorgeous peacock and its plumage, with a handful of flowers and leaves surrounding it.

The rest of the outfit might as well be a potato sack because really the focus of the ensemble is this back. But luckily, Janice was in the habit of creating stunningly tailored and very wearable suits – of which this is one of the best! I love the fact that the optional belt for the jacket is embroidered to match, with the peacock feathers at each end. Iconic and of the highest quality, a classic and a collectable in one fell swoop! Available over at Vintage-a-Peel.

Go Shopping in the Seventies

1970s, british boutique movement, eye candy, Inspirational Images, vintage fangirl squee, website listings

One of the pet peeves of the vintage lover is when you’re reading your vintage copy of Petticoat or 19 or somesuch, that you can’t just walk into a shop the next day and buy the dress of your dreams – like the first reader of the magazine could have done.

One of the best things about my being geeky enough to buy a lot of these magazines is that sometimes, just sometimes, I can actually offer the item for sale. How lovely is that? From this delightful 4th April 1970 issue of Petticoat, we have a feature on appliques in all forms.

Sadly I don’t have everything for sale, but you may notice the butterfly trimmed coat and maxi skirt featured from Wallis.