
Hand-dyed shirts and pants by Lothars of St. Tropez. Shirt: £10.10.0. Pants: £9.10.0. Escalade, 187/191 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge.
Scanned from Vogue, February 1971.
A holiday necessity—to entice your gigolo, or simply preserve decency on the terrace for lunchtime drinks — is a cover-up. We’ve looked around, found the nicest ones in town and had them sketched here by Caroline Smith. Some you tie Polynesian style (remember Blue Lagoon?) round you; others you lie on, or in; others are like the simplest dress slipped over your head to demurely cover you up (don’t shock the curé) for church-seeing.
1 Du-Du at 95 Parkway, NW1 are in for a sell-out this summer with their ‘Kangas’. Kangas, for the uninformed, are long pieces of cotton in a huge variety of colours and patterns. They come from Africa and act like a sarong ; they cost about £3 and pack to the site of a handkerchief. 2 Foale & Tuffin‘s new swimsuit will take you right back to Nanny and the sand-pit. White and orange spotted seersucker with a shirred bodice and bloomers ; £7.50, from Countdown, 137 Kings Rd, SW3; Lucienne Phillips, 09 Knightsbridge, SW1. Proving that the cottage industry is thriving, Christopher Morris and his wife Lera, with a friend, Hazel McKenzie, recently opened Habari at 39 Sussex Place, W2. Christopher designs all the clothes, while Lera and Hazel dye the fabric and screen-print it into luscious patterns. They also sell things like the small basket shown below. It’s in brown and cream string and really pretty; £4.25. The dress has a hessian bodice and a low back (or front —depending on how you wear it) with a short voile skirt: £18-50. Peeping out from under the dress on the extreme right of this page you can see their leather sandal, shaped like a trapezium ; £4. 4 Le Bistingo Boutique at 93 Kings Rd, SW3, have gone to town on the Piz Buin collection of swimwear. Its made of polyester fabric —see-through and also tan-through. The designs are rather Tahitian with bright colours and bold flower prints. There are sarong skirts to match the bikinis and make you more respectable. If these still aren’t enough, the bikinis do also come in a less revealing material. The bikini is £7.80, the skirt £10.90. Le Bistingo have also latched on to another idea … if you find that by some strange quirk of fate you need a different sized bikini top and bottom, ‘Huit’ ) now make them separately up to 38″ bust ; £5.50 the set at Le Bistino. 5 Equinox in Antiquarius (135 Kings Rd, SW3) is owned by David Scott and James Goldsack who have got together a fantastic conglomeration of stock from all over the world. It’s a haven for all Indian enthusiasts, as there’s a jolly collection of Navajo Indian carpets and jewellery. You can also buy Spanish crockery which is very, very ‘earthy’ looking, or if you prefer to sit on a prayer mat and sip your tea out of a little Chinese bowl, then Equinox can cater for both these needs as well. So as not to stray too far away from the point of this month’s Shopping B, they also do a very nice line in beach cover-ups ; this one is Mexican and hand-embroidered on cotton, £20. 6 Guaranteed to keep off sunstroke : pretty red straw hat with tanan ribbon ; by Buckle Under about f6.50; from Harrods, Knightsbridge and Darlings, Bath. 7 Essential beach bag to hoard biros and postcards — in canvas, comes in various colours (this one is green). £4.95, Escalade, 187 Brompton Rd, SW3. 8 If you like long skirts and dresses beautifully embroidered, and soft cheesecloth skirts with appliqués, then the place to go is Forbidden Fruit at 352 Kings Rd, SW3. We chose a long cheesecloth skirt with dark brown embroidery around the hem and a matching shirt with shirring round the waist and neckline. Very soft and feminine; sold together, £15.
Illustrated by Caroline Smith.
Scanned from Harpers and Queen, July 1972.
Jackets are the brightest you’ve ever seen, with enormous checks and swirling swingy backs. They go with vivid sweaters and the widest possible Oxford bags, worn shorter than usual to reveal gleaming white lace-ups and tappy 46 two-tone shoes. What a way to get yourself noticed!
Second model from the left in the top image looks to be Ika Hindley.
Photographed by Peter Castellano.
Scanned from Honey, October 1972.
Bright girls use their grey matter and use flannel as a platform for colour
Photographed at St. Pancras Station, London. Hair by Gerald at Evansky.
Photographed by Frank Murphy.
Scanned from Flair, September 1972.
It was this close-cropped straw-white head munching a hamburger that stopped Paul Young, Mr Escalade, in his tracks. Within minutes, Suze was the first London fan of Betsey Johnson, young American designer for Alleycat & Co, and pretty hot news herself. Betsey’s clothes were fresh out of the packing cases, en route to her own special department in Escalade, packed with sensational shapes like these … moving proof that Betsey Johnson knows all about shape. Welcome to London, Betsey.
All clothes by Betsey Johnson for Alleycat & Co.
Photographed by Lieberson.
Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vogue, December 1971.
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.”
Always happy to bring you another ‘lost’ shoot by the late, great Brian Duffy. Since Duffy destroyed his own archive, we are left to piece together a career from what was published in magazines or retained in other people’s archives. I try to scan and share whenever I can… I covet both Alice Pollock pieces in this spread, and love the man’s style. Definitely how all men should dress, always.
Photographed by Duffy. Fashion by Deirdre McSharry. Modelled by Greta Norris and Cyril Hartman.
Scanned from Cosmopolitan, July 1972.
As an aside, apologies for sporadic blogging at the moment. There are a few changes afoot and it is distracting me a little from my usual magazine scouring and scanning. I will tell you when everything, hopefully, falls into place in the next few weeks.