The past, eh? It was just better.
Scanned from Honey, August 1968
I can only fantasise about a carefree life spent lounging in my fabulous apartment, in my beautiful Ossie Clark dress, with my gorgeous wavy hair and hilarious telephone conversations. But in the words of my beloved Steppenwolf, fantasy will set you free…
Waterproof pigskin culottes, 18gns (matching jacket not shown, 40gns) to order, Cordoba Suedewear. Silk shirt, 11gns, by Annacat . Snakeskin waistcoat by Quorum, 6gns, only from Over The Rainbow. Mock crocodile boots, to order, Anello & Davide.
Ahhhhh. Men. So few know how to dress these days. I’m lucky that, more recently, I have been spending time with a gentleman who definitely knows how to dress. If you’d asked me a few years back, to describe how I would like my ideal man to dress…..well, it would be pretty much spot on. But a few years ago, it would also have felt like a very impossible dream.
For some reason, the odd odd-man would come along and would want me to ‘re-style’ them. And then, for some reason, they would fail to listen to a damn word I said. The rest lived in t-shirts and jeans. Sigh. Anyway, you should never try to ‘change’ someone. I just wish they taught this kind of stuff to boys in school. Or that I lived in the Sixties.
(Mmmm, yes, the latter please!)
Anyway, I bought this copy of Petticoat from July 1967 the other day and was having severe fits of menswear-lust. The cover boys are all ‘English Boy’ models, the agency famously linked with those Quorumites in the late Sixties King’s Road scene, but I doubt any of them would be considered model-standard these days. However, they are instantly raised to godlike status simply because of the way they are suited and booted.
I also noted with amusement that the far left chappy is wearing a coat/jacket remarkably similar to my favourite (and now, inevitably, very shabby) burgundy velvet autumn coat. Confirming the fact that, I think, I often aspire to look like a male dandy when autumn hits, rather than a lady.
A conversation with M last night got me thinking about the origins of the idea of ’boutique’. If it was a somewhat posthumous term applied to the era by fashion historians, in the same way that ‘Renaissance’ would not have been understood by anyone living through the Renaissance.
But then I remembered the veritable goldmine of information featured in Vogue in the late Sixties called ‘Vogue Boutique’ or variations on that phrase. So, I guess, no would be the answer. They did call it ’boutique’. This gem (featuring an outfit by Alice Pollock and another by Zandra Rhodes and Sylvia Ayton) is from July 1969. More to come, as and when I remember them…..
Thank you for making the world more beautiful. Photos by Duffy for The Daily Telegraph Magazine, September 1973.
Vive la Marie France! Stunning bamboo printed jersey goddess dress by the mysterious Marie France, who once designed under the Quorum banner. Deeply plunging and deeply gorgeous….
Edited to add a link to a pic of the fabulous WendyB in a very similar Marie France dress she bought from me (I think!!) ages ago. I knew I remembered having a similar one and thought it might have been on Wendy’s blog, so many, many thanks for jogging my memory! Doesn’t she look GORGEOUS? You could look just as gorgeous as WendyB in the bamboo version…