I re-discovered this gem of an article from a Woman’s Own magazine from 1966 entitled, “They’re Experts on Women” with a fabulous interview with my entertainingly opinionated design hero, Mr John Bates. I thought you might enjoy it!
“Women are often dishonest – dishonest with themselves. They refuse to see themselves as they really are!” John Bates, the 27 year-old dress designer, doesn’t believe in mincing words. “And they might fool themselves,” he goes on, “but they don’t fool anyone else. I’m all for people trying to minimize their bad points, but sometimes women disguise faults which could be eradicated altogether, if they got down to some hard dieting and exercise.”
John feels that with so much good inexpensive, wholesale fashion, a girl has to concentrate on her face and figure. “Fashion is a challenge and I think it’s a challenge women need. Nowadays, with so many people buying the same clothes, a girl has to decide how best to present it so that she gives her wardrobe an individual stamp.”
Despite his vested interest in fashion – he is the designer for fashion house Jean Varon and recently designed Diana Rigg’s Avengers wardrobe – John doesn’t think one should follow it slavishly. “Study it to see what’s in it for you. I’m always hearing complaints that current fashion is directed at just one type, but that’s nonsense.
“I have three different types of girl to model my designs. Look at this design.” He showed me a short fly-fronted dress. “It’s classic really. Worn a little longer, maybe in a different colour, it would be ideal for the older woman. And to prove his point, we took the photograph left, of a simple dress from his collection adapted and worn by three women of different ages.
“Appearance is not all-important – there has to be something else – but it is quite important. Like all men, when I first meet a girl, I react to her appearance. It’s only after the physical impressions that you listen to what she has to say. So it is important to be attractive as well as interesting.”
And what makes a woman interesting? “Constant change,” says John emphatically. “When you’ve found your style, don’t stick to it or you’ll find yourseld in a rut. Don’t be ‘dated’ by fashion or make-up. Be bold. Try different styles as they come in – you’ll be surprised how much suits you. And don’t let it stop there. Change the furniture around; try new dishes on the family. It’s the secret of keeping interested – and interesting!”
And if you’re going to be bold, leave your husband at home when you go shopping is John’s advice. “He’ll insist on your playing safe – Englishmen are dreadfully conservative – and then he’ll spend an entire evening gazing at a girl in the outfit you might have bought if you’d shopped alone.”
John feels that English women have a rough deal. “Seventy per cent. of their problems would be solved if only Englishmen were more appreciative. They just don’t care; so who can wonder if the womne don’t care of give up? I blame segregated education and clubs.
“Englishmen will drool at the mention of a French woman and never look at their own. Yet English women are the best in the world. They have the best figures, skins and colouring, and a marvellous sense of humour. French girls are marvellous only because their men tell them they are.”
Rejecting emigration as an answer to the problem, what did John suggest?
“She must rebel. She must ignore any lack of interest from her man and make the changes she wants, dress to please herself, say what she thinks. Do be subtle about this. Express your opinions pleasantly and watch your timing. But a woman can get her own way if she goes the right way about it.”
John says that women must remember that they are people.
“That’s why I think that they shouhld carry on with their jobs after they are married. This ensures that they are still part of the human race – it keeps them bright and interested. It’s terrible for them to be cut off from the outside world and plunged into domesticity. And thre’s no reason why babies should stop them; if a woman finds babies aren’t enough to keep her occupied and happy, she should use nurseries…work to pay an au pair girl, if necessary.”
Not that John wants to see women imitate men; he just wants us to drop the age-old idea of the battle of the sexes and get down to enjoying life, and he thinks women can achieve this.
He enjoys working with women. “They’ll always have a go at trying to achieve the effect you want,” he explains. “Men approach problems in a different way. They’re apt to apply a slide-rule and, if you suggest trying something slightly different, they’ll insist it can’t be done. But women don’t approach things like that, and what might seem illogical to a mere man, actually works in practice. In fact, very often I don’t see their reasoning at all.
I alluded, in an earlier post, to having recently acquired an original Avengerswear piece. Now before you go getting too excited on my behalf (because, you know, I imagine you would…..), it’s not a John Bates one. That remains my holy grail of collecting…
Diana and Alun
In the first colour season of The Avengers, Alun Hughes took over from John Bates as costume designer. Although strictly speaking Bates was never the costume designer per se, he simply provided Mrs Peel with a fully equipped working mod-girl wardrobe. Which would be used in various ways by the designer and whoever else happened to be making such decisions. Explaining why so many fabulous outfits, in which Diana Rigg was heavily photographed for publicity, made only brief appearances – if at all.
The colour episodes had been intended to be designed in a similar ‘working wardrobe’ manner by Pierre Cardin, who was already creating Steed’s very elegant suits [Shocking! A Frenchman designing our beloved Avengers? Whatever next??], but he was unable to complete the task and Hughes was brought on board as designer instead. Unfortunately I know very little about the man himself, but it would seem he actually was a costume designer rather than a fashion designer like Bates or Cardin. With the new colour format, and the strong overseas interest in the show, Hughes had new challenges to those of Bates with the black and white. He attacked it with gusto, using vivid colours, prints and playing with new synthetic fabrics. There’s also the varied influences, reflecting the ever-changing fashion scene of the time. We still have space-age cut-outs and skin tight gear, but also feathers and psychedelic silks. The look is more way-out, and more feminine than ever. He also invented the Emmapeeler, which was a more ‘Pop’ take on the leather and pvc catsuits of the earlier series.
“Don’t diss my mustard emmapeelers!”
As with Bates, and Frederick Starke before him, an Avengerswear range of clothes was produced and licensed out to different manufacturers and shops. Unlike Bates, whose Avengerswear collection was largely complete replicas of the Mrs Peel-worn originals, Hughes’ designs were used as templates for a wider range of colours and styles. Most items were produced in different colourways to the one seen on screen, again unlike Bates who was largely working in black and white anyway, and it would also seem that some items were produced in different lengths.
This stunning moire patterned velvet dress is clearly the same design as the one she wears in Return Of The Cybernauts. Emma’s is black (or perhaps dark green, it’s difficult to tell with early colour television) and a mini. Mine is purple and a maxi length. Nevertheless, it’s my first – and possibly only piece of Hughes’ Avengerswear and I feel very honoured to now have it in my possession.
Some of you may or may not know of my slight….slight obsession with vintage Doctor Who. Yes indeed, coupled with my love of Blakes 7, The Avengers and Sapphire and Steel I think that gives me fairly impressive geek credentials, no? A lot of it is childhood nostalgia, particularly in the Eighties series which I grew up with but also for the occasional Seventies story which my brother would acquire via third generation videotapes recorded from Australian TV, but even the episodes I didn’t grow up watching hold a magical quality for me. Not least because The Doctor was always adept at finding himself aided by a gorgeous companion wearing seriously groovy gear from her own time. Even the few exceptions to this (Leela – Warrior Princess and Romana – Time Lady) look very much ‘of’ the time in which the stories were made.
So I’ll start by introducing you all to the notable young ‘Who girls of the Swinging Sixties.
It began with the Queen of the Ankle Twist, Susan (Right: Carole Ann Ford 1963-65) and her Mary Quant outfits. Susan was The Doctor’s granddaughter and a schoolgirl of exceptional talents. The actors often wore their own clothes due to budget limitations and Carole Ann Ford has said that a lot of her gear was Mary Quant. The show began in 1963 and in many ways is an interesting time capsule for the dramatically changing fashions of the time and I think Carole was the archetypal Quant girl with her elfin hair and boyish figure. The clothes were fairly simple, little jumpers and cropped trousers or pinafore dresses and roll neck sweaters.
Her immediate successor was a young girl from the future named Vicki (Left: found on the planet Dido, I kid ye not!), played by Maureen O’Brien (1965), who somehow seems to have found the off-screen Tardis boutique and was usually dressed in a similar manner to Susan. Nothing extraordinary, just your very average girl about town for the time. Although it was 1965 and the advent of the mini skirt, her hemlines remained very modest as you can see in the picture to the left.
The ridiculously named Dodo (Jackie Lane 1966) was the next gal Billy Hartnell ‘picked up’, running straight into the Tardis from Swinging Sixties London of 1966. Yes indeed, Dodo was conceived as a trendy young thing designed to appeal to the more fashionable young audience. 
Sadly, she didn’t last long and remains something of a joke to most serious Who fans, but she wore some very groovy little numbers (as we can see on the right from The Celestial Toymaker [Sorry, I had to have a picture of the divine Peter Purves in his youth *licks lips*] she’s working the op-art look!) and deserved more of a send-off than the disappearing act she manages in The War Machines….
…..Which itself introduced us to Polly. Ahhhh, now that’s more like it! Polly (Anneke Wills 1966-67) was a modern London girl with long legs, long blonde hair and big dolly girl eyes. Her introduction was possibly the first time that there was a bit of a something for the dads, with her mini skirts and beauty she was more sexy and womanly than any of her predecessors had ever been. She was also, unfortunately, ill-used mainly for tea-making (Polly put the kettle on?) and screaming in her brief tenure in the Tardis and sadly most of her episodes have been wiped/burned (a fate which has befallen most of the Sixties girls to some degree or another). Polly was the companion who eased the viewers into the regeneration of Hartnell to Patrick Troughton, but eventually left him to return to her own time.
High Priestess of the Piercing Scream, Deborah Watling, entered the Tardis as Victorian orphan and Dalek survivor, 
Victoria (1967-68). Her transition from crinoline to mini skirt was swift and amusing but fairly inevitable. And she really went for it, from the modest little dress she dons in Tomb of the Cybermen to the super micro hippy girl mini dress she is happily traipsing around in by The Web of Fear, via a gorgeous tweed jacket and knickerbocker ensemble in The Abominable Snowmen. Victoria gets a hard time for her girlishness and screaming (utilised to defeat a monster in her departure story Fury from the Deep) but I think her portrayal of a fish out of water is very poignant and she would certainly benefit from having more stories in existence today.
Finally we come to Zoe (Wendy Padbury 1968-69) who, in contrast to Victoria, was a brainbox girl from the future. Zoe has achieved legend status mainly from her infamous silver catsuit in The Mind Robber and the arse contained within it, but she was also known for running around the universe in some eye-wateringly short mini skirts. The maxi was beginning to creep in by this point, out in the real world, but Doctor Who would not embrace the long skirt for a good while yet.
My favourite Zoe outfit is a toss up between the [what looks like a John Bates] mini dress from The Dominators and what may well be a Celia-print Ossie Clark ensemble from The Invasion. [T
hey mention shopping at Quorum in the commentary for this episode, but her friend is wearing a fantastic Zandra Rhodes lipstick print Fulham Road Clothes Shop ensemble so it’s perfectly possible Zoe’s is as well, I just can’t see it clearly enough to tell!]
Zoe was sent back to her own time and her memory wiped, let’s just hope she managed to keep some of her outfits!
I can’t find any information online about it, but a friend has told me that the wonderful Marit Allen has passed away. The name might be meaningless to most of you, but she was instrumental in the careers of people like John Bates and Ossie Clark.
She worked as the ‘Young Ideas’ editor at Vogue in the mid-Sixties and her youthful approach to the clothes, styling and photographs ensured that the designs popular out on the street became widely appreciated through exposure in Vogue. She championed the young Bates, thus enabling him to continue creating the designs he had been struggling to get noticed with. Young Ideas also featured Ossie Clark’s work in the same summer that he graduated from the RCA and started working for Quorum, so Marit was certainly a visionary and true talent-spotter!
She accumulated a vast archive of pieces from the British Boutique Movement, including her wedding suit which was a Bates design, and this collection filled many gaps in the V&A’s Sixties Exhibition last year. I was ridiculously proud that my handful of pieces were being exhibited alongside hers.
She later developed a career in costume design, being designer for films like Brokeback Mountain and Thunderbirds (amongst many others).
I also had the very, VERY great pleasure of meeting her in January at a study day linked with the Sixties exhibition at the V&A. In retrospect, she was possibly the person I was the most excited about hearing speak and then meeting. And bearing in mind that Barbara Hulanicki and Foale & Tuffin were also in attendance, well that’s saying something about my respect for Marit.
It was so lovely to hear her talk about her experiences and views on the era, with photographs and thoughts on the designers. I had begun to think that the day would pass by with no mention of John Bates’ contribution to British fashion but, as in the Boutique book by Marnie Fogg, Marit sought to emphasize his talent and defend his forgotten claim to have been the first designer to really ‘do’ the mini skirt. And with Mary Quant herself in attendance, it was a brave move. The talk was only too brief, most frustrating that it was curtailed to keep the timing of the day and give Mary Quant more time to witter on about her make-up range and how she ‘invented’ the duvet cover (I kid ye not). I wanted to listen to Marit forever, and to see all her photos and hear all her experiences.
Thankfully I summoned up the courage to speak with her afterwards. I somehow found myself turning around to face her, and realised this was my big chance. We chatted a little about Bates, I told her about my collection and how grateful I was that she had mentioned him (we agreed he was a very underrated talent) and about how unlikely it was that such a boom time in British fashion would ever happen again. Mainly due to the cost of clothing production and shop rental in London.
Now, even more than before, I’m so glad I had those brief few moments speaking with her. I am so in awe of her talent and vision and, in a week where we’ve also lost the wondrous TV producer Verity Lambert, the world is a much gloomier place without these pioneering women.
Above and Right: Two photos from Marit’s Young Ideas section of Vogue. John Bates designs from 1965 above and Twiggy in Foale and Tuffin from 1967 on the right.
Well, admittedly it’s mainly on Seventies sitcoms and light entertainment shows (John Bates really was dressing the masses at one point in the early Seventies) which are only funny places in that….well, they’re funny ‘ha ha’ rather than funny weird.
But I was amused to find one of my favourite Sixties Varons in a bra advert of all places. Demonstrating how this bra was perfect for low cut dresses such as this one.
Well no amount of industrial boob-hoicking and padding could give me the kind of cleavage they’re promising (trust me, I’ve tried on this dress many times and realised I just don’t have John Bates’ ideal boobs….much like Diana Rigg apparently!) but it’s still nice to see it being worn, albeit in a very revealing way!
P.S Please excuse the terrible photo of the dress on the left….it’s about time I overhauled my collection photographs!
…and Gina Fratini has a dress to match. So says the London Fashion Guide of 1975. I can’t help but agree with them. Fratini is a criminally underrated designer. She has her fans, me being one of them, but rather like John Bates has been overlooked in favour of the real exhibitionists of the era.
‘As a child I dressed everything from dolls and Teddy to my dog. I never though about a career – I just did it.’ The words float over a studio that looks like a rainy-day dress-up box, full of Victorian dolls, whimsical plants and miles of lace laid out like a daisy chain.
The London Fashion Guide, Spring 1975
I think this is the reason I adore her clothes. She started out in costume (like myself) and this ‘dressing up box’ approach to fashion lends her clothes a romantic, whimsical and period edge. Her approach is something I can relate to as well.
‘When I design a dress it gets half made, then I add a bit here and there. When I’m working on a dress I’ll rummage and play with the lace all day, and suddenly I can feel it coming together.’
She salvaged a basement full of antique lace from shops which were closing 
down in the Sixties, and used this and predominantly natural fabrics in her work. Fratini was never about practicality or minimalism, she was truly a girl’s girl. Her motto is as apt for today as it was back then;
‘One works all day, and afterward there should be a time to really take off. That’s why I love doi
ng these fantasy dresses. You’ve got to dream – these days more than ever.’
Above Left: Alice in Vintageland – an adorable gingham smock dress with pierrot collar and huge patch pockets. Right:You’ll feel like a Regency dream in this utterly, unashamedly romantic muslin dress from the late Sixties.
With thanks to Senti for that title! I honestly had no idea that these photos existed, but I found them yesterday and they’ve swiftly become my favourites. Diana, of course, is a huge inspiration to me – not only as Emma Peel but that does have a lot to do with it. I always loved how natural she seemed, and of course the effortless cool. As Emma, that was helped considerably by Bates’ influence as designer. She wore his designs to perfection, and continued to wear Jean Varon garments into the Seventies. Through this, I ‘discovered’ Bates and simply fell in love with his extraordinary designs. Having now met him, I’m even more in awe than ever before – especially after he gave me a nugget of advice on how to wear his frocks. The man is a legend.
I’ve never heard her speak of him, and only contemporary comments from him about the design process. I suppose these things rarely seem so iconic and special at the time, when deadlines are tight and it’s just another job. But you can just see magic being created in these photos.
*pinches self*
Is it? Is it still true? Did I really meet my all time favourite designer yesterday afternoon?? I think I did…
Wow.
Considering I was a bit of a wreck to start with, he handled me remarkably well! He was very debonair, very charming to talk to and generally didn’t disappoint me at all. It can be a bit of a let-down when one meets one’s idols and I was worried about even introducing myself for fear of appearing to be a muppet (which I’m sure I did) and that he might not be what I was expecting. I needn’t have worried!
Of course I get home and all sorts of things pop into my head, so many things I wanted to ask him and better answers about my collection. But such is life, and I’m so honoured to have met him!
Liz Eggleston 