19 Magazine, April 1969
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 in a while ago, never got around to posting. I’m now posting them because I’m strangely uninspired for blog posts this week and need to catch up reading everyone else’s. I’m hoping that will change soon….til then, there’s always Ossies. And Pollocks. The floral frock is a Pollock.
Petticoat Magazine, September 1969, Clothes for Clothes’ Sake!
The lovely Smashingbird commented on my Diana Rigg birthday post that she’d love to see more pictures of the amazing chain strap black dress. Well, I probably have far too many shots of that dress, and it’s certainly one of my favourites, so I figured a blog post about one dress wasn’t too ridiculous. Not that I’m concerned about ridicule of course, I have done several posts about Doctor Who companions after all.
It also helps that the dress was worn for the Assassination Bureau press junket, and therefore there are a few shots of the dress with Olly Reed wrapped around it. I think all good dresses should come with a complimentary Oliver Reed.
If anyone ever finds out who made this dress, I would be eternally grateful. You’d think I would know, wouldn’t you? Sigh…
Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t see the dress here. But it’s there. It’s just behind Olly.
…could you have had a job agency who will find a job appropriate to your star sign. I wondered if it was a joke. Perhaps it was? I like to think I’d fit seamlessly into society if I ever fell through a wormhole in time and found myself in 1969, so I almost get annoyed with myself for finding such things so very amusing and bizarre. Perhaps I would have found them entertaining back then? I hope so…like the idea of sanitary towels aiding my search for a millionaire husband*?
*I was once accused of being a ‘gold digger’ by a former aquaintance of mine. It still perplexes me to this day. She can’t have been basing it on reality, if she’d ever met any of my boyfriends she’d know that. Perhaps she saw a packet of Dr Whites in my handbag?
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?
Has there ever been a sexier pairing on the planet? (Or, even, a more naked woman in the Sixties than Jane Birkin? But that’s another blog post altogether…) The chemistry practically jumps out of the pictures and slaps you around the face…
It’s a great disappointment to me that illustration seems to be such a niche market these days. There are occasional high-concept spreads in magazines (I know The Independent used to be very good at fashion illustration), and the odd one or two used to illustrate regular columns. But I’ve noticed, through my many old magazines, that illustrations used to be used to sell the most mundane products in the back of the magazines. Make-up, catalogues, pile cream, modelling agencies….ok perhaps I made up the pile cream one, but you get what I mean. Hell, one of them even advertises a Club 18-30 holiday…
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.
The other day I promised to show my Sandie Shaw dress. It’s a navy wool crepe with a very nifty little double layered collar (the top layer being in white moss crepe).
I can’t promise this will be a terribly long or informative blog post, because there’s so little information out there about the label. It opened in 1967 and, needless to say, Sandie didn’t design the dresses and shoes (although she had full ‘approval’). I suspect it didn’t last very long, much like Twiggy and Cathy McGowan’s boutique labels. Perhaps there was deemed a conflict of interests when she married designer Jeff Banks in 1968?
Sandie opening her boutique in 1967
I will make Sandie one of my Fashion Icons at some point, whereupon I shall write more comprehensively (if I ever do such a thing) about her and her style. But if any of you are not familiar with our girl, I should probably tell you that her trademark was to sing barefoot. So much was made of the fact that her label was producing shoes!
The images have been taken from footage shown in the BBC’s Queens of Pop programme.
Yes Sandie, I’d be grimacing if they put me in a wig like that!
A screengrab cannot truly capture the seriously groovy Sixties dancing going on at this point.
Ouch, bunions ahoy!
Liz Eggleston 