A Peek at the Boutique: Pussy Galore

1970s, british boutique movement, carnaby street, pussy galore

Image is © Len Fernandes.

One of the best things about my job is that people often get in contact with me in relation to the kinds of things I post about. I sometimes find this a bit overwhelming because the many aspects of my so-called vintage life can consume large chunks of my time, leaving me very little room for following up on everything. The ‘to do’ list in my inbox is frightening.

But, thankfully, occasionally something and somebody will come along which is simple and important enough for me to deal with immediately. And when I received this picture from the lovely Len Fernandes of Hawaii, I knew I had to quickly and cheekily request to post it on my blog.

I have blathered on about Pussy Galore before, indeed my beloved Pussy Galore tablecloth dress was exhibited at the V&A in 2006, but I don’t have much concrete information on its longevity and had no idea what the shop frontage was like. It feels like Carnaby Street must have been photographed daily from 1964-1974, but the reality is that we only see the narrowest of snapshots in each snippet of film or each batch of photographs.

So I was delighted to see this photograph of the shop front in 1971. Delighted and a little sad, for it looks rather ‘on its uppers’ even then. As with so many boutiques that popped up there in the boom times, and flourished in the glare of the media hype, by 1971 it was starting to look less shiny, less innovative. Carnaby Street was a pastiche, a fiction… not the centre of the fashion universe. Everyone had decamped to the King’s Road or Kensington High Street.

Still, it is an amazing piece of history which tells you something of the deterioration, as opposed to the continuous glorification, of Carnaby Street.

Please also note the brilliant positioning which enables us to see the Carnaby Street sign and ‘Kids in Gear’ in the reflection. Thank you so much Len!

Os-squee on Carnaby Street

1960s, british boutique movement, carnaby street, Foale and Tuffin, john stephen, ossie clark, pussy galore

Had a look around the new little Carnaby Street exhibition (at 38, Carnaby Street….shockingly enough) on Monday. Mixed feelings about this one, since it’s both brilliantly informative (I, personally, had no idea that London Mob were created to be sold out of Pussy Galore and makes me wonder exactly how rare actual Pussy Galore labels are….) whilst missing out huge chunks of important stuff (What? No mention of The Small Faces? For shame…) and being a bit strangely put together. It is a glut of information, and it’s always nice to see anything new about things you [think you] know inside out.

However, the displays are a bit cruddy, to say the least, and the book is completely hopeless. £16 for a glossy book of photos of the cabinets. Complete with shadows, so you can’t even read all the cards. Huh? I had also just been wandering around taking photos for myself, and no one told me off. So I saved myself £16 and probably did a better job for the purposes of retaining the new information.

Hmmm. I didn't take a photo of my very unimpressed face. I will leave that to your imagination.

The clothes they had borrowed from Pop Boutique were a bit hopeless. There was one Carnaby Street piece, a slightly dull Seventies Aristos dress, and the rest were just generic Sixties. Why didn’t they call me? They could have borrowed a psychedelic John Stephen dress, a Pussy Galore dress, a Foale and Tuffin….whatever. Strange people.

Precious....one day, one day....

On the plus side, alongside the information, there was an awesome clown-frill Foale and Tuffin blouse I wanted to rescue from being hung limply in a bizarre display. A lovely spliced film reel of Carnaby Street footage projects onto a wall. And, best of all, some photos by Philip Townshend. You can’t buy them officially, it would seem, and they appear in the ‘book’ only as photos of photos. So I just took photos of the photos myself. Pah.

Anyway, the excitement ensued from the fact that there’s a photo of Ossie, presumably standing in John Stephen where his graduate collection was sold (another factoid I was unaware of prior to this), and MY ‘Lips’ dress is hanging just behind him. And then it appears in another shot of a model. Woohoo. Squee squee squee.

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?

V&A’s Swinging Sixties Exhibition

1960s, annacat, british boutique movement, carnaby street, cathy mcgowan, gerald mccann, jean varon, john bates, john stephen, personal collection, pussy galore, victoria and albert museum

Since I’m distinctly unimpressed with the myspace blog facility, I thought I’d repost my images from the V&A Swinging Sixties Exhibition over here. The John Bates exhibition opens on the 13th July so I shall attempt to get photos of that too.