More Boyfriend menswear gorgeousness (plus Top Ten award!)

amen corner, boyfriend annual, menswear, psychedelia, ruffles, sixties, stripeyness, the herd

I think the Boyfriend 1969 annual might as well have been called the ‘Miss Peelpants Guide to How Men Should Dress’. Here are The Herd and Amen Corner, rocking the stripes and ruffles respectively.

I’m very chuffed to have put in an appearance in Cision’s Top 10 UK Vintage Clothing Blogs, and in such esteemed company as well. Very nice to get recognition from such a site, even if I don’t quite understand how I ended up there! Thanks Cision! Thision.

(That’s for for any Look Around You fans out there….)

Fantasy will set you free…

anna karina, dale bozzio, groupies, gtos, harlow, jane kahn, kahn and bell, lene lovich, miss mouse, new romantic, pamela des barres, pan's people, psychedelia, sandie shaw

Sometimes I have those crushing moments of clear, crisp reality and remember that people (people other than Lady GaGa, I mean) don’t dress up in truly fantasian styles these days. Unless ‘wags’ or ‘porn stars’ were your childhood fantasy.

What about raggedy dolls, warrior queens, belly dancers and silent film goddesses?

Whilst I continue to [apparently] shock the world with my, ooh – gasp!, novelty duck and rabbit print Miss Mouse dress. Honestly. They don’t know from shocking…

Style Icons: The Bangles

bassists, Eighties Fashion, John Taylor, picture spam, Style Icons, the bangles

I had already started musing independently about The Bangles as forgotten style icons, only for them to pop up in conversation the other day. That settled it for me. And so I started hunting for my picture spam….

There can’t be many girls around my age who didn’t want to be a Bangle. The obvious choice was, of course, the almost unnaturally beautiful Susanna Hoffs. But, in retrospect, they were all pretty worthy of a bit of worship; particularly bassist Michael Steele, former member of The Runaways and all-round excellent bassist and singer. I feel like I spent a good chunk of a few years singing their songs into my hairbrush, imagining that I would one day have clothes and hair (and, of course, a voice) exactly like theirs. I avidly listened to, and studied the pictures on, A Different Light and Everything. If I’m totally honest, Madonna didn’t do it for me so much. Not in comparison to that.

I love the early shots of them in their pseudo-Sixties girl group get-ups, through their skintight lycra, puffball skirts and lace tights of the mid-Eighties, through to the more psychedelic, hippy look towards the end of the decade. And let’s not forget the perpetually enormous hair and Sixties-influenced make-up. I’m sure they must be due a lot more respect than they are afforded these days, particularly compared to most of the dreary girl-with-a-guitar whining that goes on in the charts right now. The Go-Gos and The Runaways are always being cited, but don’t let’s forget The Bangles.

And if Susanna Hoffs wasn’t already annoyingly beautiful enough….

Dreamwear: Bianca Jagger in Zandra Rhodes

bianca jagger, jerry hall, mick jagger, seventies fashion, sunday times magazine, the rolling stones, zandra rhodes

I must confess that, beyond thinking ‘poor love, imagine being married to that’, I didn’t always have particularly strong opinions on Bianca Jagger. I knew the legends, and I knew she was a stunner with a propensity to wear beautiful clothes, but The Stones aren’t my strongest musical suit and I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for someone who had actually bothered to get married to Mick. Don’t even get me started on the whole Jerry Hall thing (she should have been Jerry Ferry, it’s just not right….).

Then I read her section in Wendy Leigh’s excellent book Speaking Frankly: What Makes a Woman Good in Bed (which you can pick up for as little as 70p on Amazon these days). Most of the content is boring, some is sordid (hello Angie Bowie), some is misogynistic (hello Oliver Reed, surprise surprise) and some is really rather lovely (hello, ummm, Roger Daltrey. And Serge Gainsbourg, the old rogue).

Bianca’s is a lovely, long, rambling analysis of a Catholic upbringing and a rather sweet, romantic and restrained adult love life. Which doesn’t quite fit with how you’d imagine any wife of a Rolling Stone to be. Not least one who partied at Studio 54. But then again, Bianca has that other-worldly quality which rises above groupie, girlfriend or just ‘wife’. She’s classy. Much as I loathe Jagger, he did have awfully good taste in women at times.

So here is a stunning Sunday Times Magazine feature on Bianca, wearing Zandra Rhodes’s incredible creations, from October 1972. She is my new hair idol, particularly that last shot… Check back tomorrow for the Zandra interview and photograph…

Live Aid

bryan ferry, david bowie, Duran Duran, live aid, nik kershaw, queen, simon le bon, the who, ultravox

Painful as it might be to realise, Live Aid happened 25 years ago today. Even more painful, I imagine, for those who remember it more vividly than I do. I was certainly aware of it, and I remember attending some bring-and-buy sale possibly on the same day, but I wasn’t really old enough to properly appreciate the talent (both musical and totty) on show that day.

It also means that it’s 25 years since Simon Le Bon made the biggest cock-up of his life, in front of a worldwide audience of millions. Ouch. People still use it against him but I can assure you that he has always hit that note when I’ve seen them live. So there.

Christine McVie in Thea Porter

british boutique movement, christine mcvie, fleetwood mac, personal collection, seventies fashion, stevie nicks, thea porter

I’m usually all about the Stevie Nicks. I have a fabulous skirt (in severe danger of falling apart at the seams, quite literally) which is identical to one she had. As identical as a patchwork skirt can be. And it’s safe to say, she is one of my biggest style icons. And I was going to do a post about her today. And then I spotted these two photos in the folder and remembered I had spotted that Christine McVie is wearing a gypsy Thea Porter dress, but didn’t blog about it at the time (for some weird reason).

It can’t have been fun being photographed next to Stevie most of the time, so it’s nice to see a rare moment where she outshines her.

I have one Thea Porter gypsy dress which, despite never having found occasion to wear, I cannot bring myself to sell (the skirt is very sheer and, clearly, I will never find a suitably hemmed petticoat to go underneath….). I rather like the fact that mine is a monochrome (aside from the gold silk waist panel), but it doesn’t stop me slightly lusting after the coloured ones as well.

Both Ends Burning

bryan ferry, roxy music

Because I’m feeling a tad exhausted and uninspired right now and am about to spend most of the afternoon photographing new pieces for the site, so am in desperate need of energy and inspiration, here is a gratuitous BryanGod video.

Both Ends Burning is absolutely one of my all-time favourite Roxy songs, and one I listened to fairly constantly during a very weird period in my life just over a year ago. It doesn’t have bad associations, it’s a reminder of how passionate I can feel about life – even when I’m exhausted physically and, more frequently, emotionally. And that is the power of a great song by a great band like Roxy….

And Bryan Ferry in eyepatch and tight trousers can’t do any harm either…

Mick Karn

japan, mick karn

It’s hard to tell what the outlook is, and it’s none of our business really, but I would like to take the opportunity to send some love and healing vibes to the stupendously talented bassist Mick Karn.

Poodle Parlour

bebe buell, groupies, hair, rod stewart, seventies fashion, stevie nicks

A triumvirate of fluffy hair.

Stevie Nicks, Rod Stewart and Bebe Buell, 1977

Lover of the cover

album covers, the sweet, twiggy

When I was hunting for decent sized images of The Sweet for my last blog (fiendishly difficult, I might add), I stumbled across darklorddisco‘s flickr account and, more specifically, his 45 picture sleeves album.

I have gone through brief LP-hunting phases in the past. But lack of space has often restrained me from buying (though I love to look and still bitterly regret not picking up a Twiggy album from a charity shop in Streatham) and I’ve even re-donated in moments of madness (or clarity, however you want to look at it). I’ve started buying a few more lately because, well, my groupie ladies and my boyfriend are a very bad influence on me.

Whilst I’m trying to be ‘good’ and stick to people I know I love, there is something quite irresistable about really, really bad covers by people you don’t know. And by bad, I mean good. And by good I mean, they’re pretty bad. And so on.

Novelty has its limits, usually available storage space, so it’s a delight to come across someone else’s collection. Which saves you time, space and money. And scanning effort. I hope darklorddisco doesn’t mind my posting a few of my favourite examples. I’m VERY fascinated by those Risqué ladies indeed….