The Rest Is History - 364. Sixties Fashion: Swinging London

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

In a swirling world dominated by miniskirts, feather boas, posh photographers, youth culture, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, London has been transformed, and avant-garde “boutiques” have taken over areas left empty in the wake of the demise of local manufacturing. Join Tom and Dominic in the second part of our series on Sixties Fashion, as they explore the birth of the miniskirt, Sergeant Pepper’s, hippies, the legacy of the 60s, and much more - all you need is love! *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. There she was, the world's highest paid fashion model, snubbing the ironclad conventions of fashionable Flemington with a dress five inches above the knee. No hat, no gloves and no stockings. For my money, she looked tremendous. But Flemington was not amused fashion conscious derby day race goers were horrified insulting a disgrace how dare she if the skies had rained acid not a well-dressed woman there would have given the shrimp an umbrella that Dominic was the Melbourne Sun News pictorial reporting on what I think we both of us would agree is one of the world's most important

episodes in history, rivaled perhaps only by the Battle of Crecy. I think so. In the list of top historical events. For me, Tom, there are three great events in history. There was the Battle of Crecy. Yeah, of course. There was the Battle of Melbourne when Gene Shrimpton was a dress that's slightly too short. And there is Wolves inventing European football in the 1950s.

Okay, well, that means nothing to me. But I think the first two, I'd agree with you. So this is the incredible cliffhanger on which we left listeners at the end of the last episode. Unbelievable cliffhanger. And now, Dominic, you are going to reveal what happens in Melbourne. What has Jean Shrimpton, the shrimp, done? This supermodel, the world's most beautiful girl she's gone to Melbourne and what is it that happens at the races she's done something

absolutely extraordinary Tom she has gone to the Melbourne race course on derby day in a white shift dress made from the synthetic all-on fabric that she's been paid two thousand pounds to advertise and they haven't given her enough fabric so she's been paid £2,000 to advertise, and they haven't given her enough fabric. So she's designed it herself, and her hemline ends just above her knee, so a few inches above her knee, and she has no stockings, as that beautifully read Australian newspaper editorial says. No gloves and no stockings, absolutely scandalous behavior and the the matrons of melbourne and australia is quite a conservative place in the 1960s so this is the place that

your clive jameses and your dame edna's and your germaine greer's are trying to leave because they think it's too stuffing conservative and people in melbourne are outraged by this absolutely outraged the british newspapers are delighted so one british newspaper said surrounded by sober draped silks and floral nylons ghastly tool hats and fur stoles she looked like a petunia in an onion patch so this is the kind of commentary that always endears British newspapers to Australian readers. So, Jean Shrimpton has turned up in this white shift dress, and this apparently scandalous appearance makes the front page of every newspaper in Australia, and indeed in Britain. And it is seen often as the moment the miniskirt was invented, which is actually weird

because she's not wearing a miniskirt because it's a little dress. But it demonstrates, does it not, Dominic, in the words of Vogue, that brevity is the soul of fashion. Oh, very good, Tom. Very good quotation. Reading off your notes there.

Yes, no. So there has been a move generally. We were talking about this in the last episode with the foundation of Mary Quant's boutique Bazaar in 1955 with the growing kind of infantilization of fashion, which I think is going to become an even more pronounced theme in this episode. There's been a move towards a much more informal look, much lighter, more colorful. I was about to say more sexualized.

It's more sexualized, but in a very peculiar way. So it's sort of childlike sexuality. So mini skirts and mini dresses come out of that. So people have been experimenting for a few years with shift dresses and with shorter skirts. And the Sunday Times, their fashion correspondent, Ernestine Carter, had said that 1963 was the year of the leg. And this sort of stuff is in the air but when gene shrimpson goes to melbourne in october 1965 that's the moment when it really explodes into kind of global consciousness and then of course mini skirts are everywhere and they become emblematic of this sort of exciting new but it is basically

a british invention then i think it's fair to say it's a British invention, yeah. So it's up there with parliamentary democracy, industrial revolution. Yeah, exactly. The King James Bible. King James Bible. Absolutely it is, Tom. Brilliant. So proud. So proud. It's just under two years since the Beatles went to New York, which is a transformational moment in the image of British youth culture culture abroad and a genuinely transformational moment so before that point uh british pop culture had had very little sway overseas after the beatles trip to new york obviously you have the british invasion um bands enjoying extraordinary success

not just in america but in almost every western country um and people are looking to britain they're affecting British slang copying British fashion copying the fashion that the pop stars wear and so yeah I think you can absolutely say at this point 1965 that Britain is setting the tone internationally but most of I mean most of the Beatles obviously but Rolling Stones and Kinks, who I sang at the beginning of the last episode and so on, are male. But the look of the 60s is female. Yes, I think that's fair to say. The sound of the 60s is male.

The look of the 60s is female. A guy called Peter Lorre wrote a book in 1965, in that year, called The Teenage Revolution. And he said the real dynamo of the teenage revolution is the teenage girl, the girl aged between, let's say, 13 and 18 or 13 and 21, as people probably said in those days, who has more spending power than anybody of her age previously in history, has more freedom, probably has a job after school or the weekends, has money in her pockets, is reading these magazines that we were talking about last time, like Valentine or Honey, the biggest of these magazines in Britain, is buying the pop records. Yeah. So the Beatles audiences, those gigs in 1963, they're screaming of Beatlemania. I mean, there are boys in the audience too. There are young men in the audience, but it's the young women who get all the attention,

who drive the sales. So the Beatles famously wear suits. They're put in suits by Brian Epstein. Yeah. Which is a kind of slightly mod type thing, I would have said. Right. And thinking about, I guess, the most kind of emblematic British TV show of the 60s, The Avengers, Patrick Minney playing John Steed in The Avengers wears a suit and a bowler

hat. He does indeed. He looks like the archetype of a British gentleman. Yes. But Diana Rigg playing Emma Peel, I mean, she's all about leather and plastic and all that kind of thing. Well, here's the interesting thing. At first, she wears leather. So The Avengers is a really good example to pick because it's the first British TV show.

So we should just say what that is. It's a kind of faintly surreal, crime capers, spies. Yes, exactly. Set in swinging London. Very swinging London and ever more surreal plot. So it starts out and it's quite gritty. And as time goes on, as the 60s continues, the Avengers becomes more and more kind of...

The writers take more and more psychedelic drugs. Yeah, it becomes kind of bonkers and, as you say, very surreal and really fun and imaginative and it's very highly produced it's it's extremely expensive um by the standards of tv series of the day the outfits are a massive element of it so when diana rigg replaces honor blackman honor blackman goes off to make goldfinger the bond film again a real british pop cultural export to the 60s d Dinerig comes in to replace it. Now, Honor Blackman had already been wearing kind of leather, lots of leather, but Dinerig,

the producers make a huge hullabaloo about what her clothes are going to be. And over time, they get rid of the leather catsuits and they bring in this sort of op art look. So op art, most people probably won't even know what that is because again that's something that has dated quite badly so there's an artist called bridget riley who would do these sort of slightly um mind bending geometric black and white patterns very space age she's still very big name oh she's very cool i i love all that stuff. Designers copied that in wallpaper, in fabrics, and particularly in clothes. So you'd wear black and white clothes, short skirts, as you said, lots of PVC, lots of plastic, because people are absolutely obsessed with this idea of clothes of the future. We didn't really talk about this last time, but in 1965, so again, the same year that Gene Shrimpton goes to Melbourne, there's a guy called Andre Correz who does this. By far the most globally reported kind of collection of clothes in the whole of the decade.

And they were called kind of clothes of the future, space age clothes. And they are kind of absolute classic kind of, you know, I'm going to wear a plastic jumper, PVC trousers. This is what people are going to be wearing on Venus in the year 2017. We're all going to be taking holidays on Mars. People will wear space astronauts' helmets as standard. Jetpacks. Jetpacks.

And these clothes, obviously nobody dresses in spacesuits, but people do wear plastic kind of skirts and stuff. I mean, they don't wear them for very long because they realize how ludicrously impractical they are. But there is a great fascination with the op art and with the space age and with new synthetic fabrics. I mean, it's telling that Gene Simpson had gone to advertise a synthetic fabric in Melbourne. And Diana Rigg in The Avengers is wearing all that stuff, very brightly colored. While kickboxing and felling villains.

While karate chopping villains, exactly. So 1965, I would say, is the moment when it reaches the sort of peak of the Austin Powers. Very swinging 60s. As you mentioned, Dolly Birds. Again, it's the infantilization, Tom. Yeah. So they have whitened faces. You would whiten your face.

You might wear white lipstick. And then your eyes, you would blacken around the eyes. Panda eyes. Panda eyes, huge eyelashes. And of course, a lot of people don't even think about this at the time. But the reason this appeals is basically it makes you look like a baby. It makes you look like a child. Never thought of that.

With a very, very pale face and huge eyes, which is famously how small children look. It's carrying to the extreme the look that had first been pioneered by Mary Quant in the mid-1950s, which is, let's have everybody look like members of the Famous Five, sort of Enid Blyton. Yeah, but to be fair, I mean, the Famous Five aren't dressing up in PVC minis. No, they're not. Certainly George isn't. Did I read yesterday, Tom, that the BBC are going to redo the Famous Five? They are, with a Danish director. With a new woke version of The Famous Five. Well, no, I think the Danish director is famous for making kind of very violent films. Is it Lars von Trier?

No, it's not Lars von Trier, but he's kind of in that ilk. But I would like to see The Famous Five done now in the 1960s. So put them in PVC space age outfits. That would be great. Yeah, that would be fantastic. And actually they're fighting, instead of fighting smugglers, they could be fighting pirate radio stations. Yes. Yeah, they wouldn't approve of pirate radio stations at all. They absolutely wouldn't. Anyway, Dominic, so you said that this is the image of the 60s that

people have. Austin Powers begins with him on Carnaby Street, I think. Oh, right. Yes. So Carnaby Street is a, it's a street off Regent Street in Soho. Yes. In the middle of London. Yeah.

Why Carnaby Street? Presumably it's not famous before the 60s, is it? No, not at all. It's cheap and run down. And actually what drives Carnaby Street, fascinatingly,

is not women's clothes, it's men's clothes, really, I would say. So there are lots of boutiques. We talked last time about boutiques. There's a famous partnership called Fole and T's clothes, really, I would say. So there are lots of boutiques. We talked last time about boutiques. There's a famous partnership called Fole & Tuffin, Marion Fole & Sally Tuffin. They are part of this new wave of boutiques that are copying, really, what's happened in the 50s and early 60s in Mary Quant.

And they're establishing their new shops in rundown areas. And they choose a backwater called Carnaby Street. But what actually really turbocharges Carnaby Street is men's fashion. So there's a guy called John Stephen. John Stephen is the son of a Glaswegian shopkeeper. He had moved to London, as so many bright people did in the post-war years, to pursue his dreams. He works as a tailor's clerk.

He sets up his own boutique, which is called His Clothes. And he becomes the king. People call him the king of Carnaby Street, because what he's doing is he is selling the equivalent of all the things we've been describing, but for men. So very brightly colored, jolly. The codswallop fashions of perverted peacocks, I read as one description of them. By the menswear association. Someone's toes are being trodden on the menswear association are probably still trying to sell you quite heavy overcoats and very highly properly tailored clothes I mean the thing with John Stevens clothes I hope we're not going to be sued by him or his estate they're really cheap and they fell apart but they were cheerful yeah they were cheap and cheerful I mean it was basically his shops are

the ancestor of the cheap and cheerful mass market shops that you have now, Uniqlo or whatever, or Primark, or the big kind of retailers that you have in Britain right now. His sort of pile them high, sell them cheap, very jolly, very brightly colored. And Carnaby Street, because it is run down, there's nothing going on there that's the place he identifies it's obviously very central what's happened to london so there's a whole london story here that we haven't really touched on at all which is that what is happening to london in this period is manufacturing is fleeing london so london which was a manufacturing city in a port city those things are dying all those people are moving out of the city center and means there's a

lot of cheap office space, housing space, and so on. So younger people are moving in and that's where you get all the boutiques and stuff. And Carnaby Street is a classic example of that. So by 1967, John Stephen owns 10 boutiques in Carnaby Street alone. And because of the success of the Beatles and their worldwide marketing of swinging London, now, for the first time, you have tourists coming from overseas, also because of the availability of cheap air travel, tourists coming from overseas, and they want to go and buy a pair of Union Jack underpants from a terrible shop on Carnaby Street, as people do today, Tom.

Isn't it time that Christens London is swinging London? Time magazine, yes. Here's the funny thing. You know, most people at this point, so if you'd walk down Carnaby Street, most people it time that christians london are swinging london time magazine yes here's the funny thing you know most people at this point so if you'd walk down carnaby street most people obviously don't look tremendously cool right they're not wearing all these amazing clothes there's a wonderful story in the times the fashion editor of the times who was somebody called prudence glinn she was one of these sort of slightly forbidding women who are the gatekeepers of fashion actually make or break

people's reputations and careers she wrote a story story in August, 1966, the peak of the swinging London craze. She said, I was on the London underground and I looked around all the women on the tube and there were 17 of them. 12 of them were wearing cardigans. 10 of them were wearing navy blue, 13 were wearing sandals. Not one was wearing a miniskirt, not one is wearing a space man's outfit. None of them are dressed in the sort of... So actually, for most people, it has yet to really trickle down. But this is very Sandbrook. Right.

Very, very Sandbrook to basically dump on iconic moments or monuments to the 60s and say, well, most people aren't doing it. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Because it's the myth that matters. Because as you rightly say, Time magazine, just about three months earlier, run this very famous cover story. The title of it is You Can Walk Across It on the Grass. And they had basically, London, the swinging city. A year earlier, the Weekend Telegraph had done exactly the same.

Periodicals in France, Italy, in Germany are doing exactly the same, saying, you know, London is the city. It is the cool place. Everybody is young. Everybody is full of fun. This is when the Kinks released Dedicated Follower of Fashion. Follower of Fashion, exactly. And that is a kind of a mockery of...

It's mocking it because everybody knows it's a bit of a con. The happiest and most electric city in Europe, says the Spanish magazine Epoca. Great days, great days. So, of course, this is a sort of, in some ways, a ludicrous parody. But it's one in which so many people are invested and they believe in fashion like pop music. It's one of the two poles. One is, I mean, specifically is pop. It's sort of the Beatles and the imitators at this point because it's not really yet rock.

And then the other is the fashion, the clothes, the mini skirts, the emphasis on youth. And Jonathan Aitken, you know, Jonathan Aitken, Tom, the guy who the trusty sword of truth and the shield of... Fair play. So he was telling... So people who don't know what we're talking about, he was a Conservative cabinet minister in the 1990s who fought a disastrous libel action. But he went out with Mrs. Thatcher's daughter, Carol, and made her cry. He did.

He did. A raffish Conservative MP. He ended up being imprisoned, didn't he, for perjury. Was it perjury? Yeah. In his failed libel trial against the Guardian. Very Oscar Wilde behaviour.

Very Oscar Wilde behaviour. But he, in the 60s, was a very cool young journalist and he wrote a book called The Young Meteors, which is actually, for those people who are interested in this period,

it is a tremendous read. It's a brilliant read. It's the best book on swinging London. He completely buys into this. He says, fashion has seized all the threads of the contemporary cults and woven them together in a strand that binds the entire younger generation with a new sense of identity and

vitality. And he says- He's a vicar now. He is. I know. He's found God. He found God in prison. Yeah.

Man o' cloth. So that's 1966 that he publishes that. And now that we're in 1966, we should talk about the one person who was called the face of 66, who we haven't talked about at all and is probably, for some of our overseas listeners who know a bit about the 60s, they may be wondering why haven't we mentioned

the one female character who is more emblematic of all this than any other, and that is, of course, Twiggy. So are you a Twiggy fan, Tom? Not particularly. That is a shocking... I don't really have strong views on Twiggy. That's a shocking revelation. She's so famous that I'd never really stopped to think what her name actually meant. Oh, really? So her real name, you know what her real name is?

Leslie Hornby. But would you have known that if you didn't have my notes in front of you? No, I wouldn't have known that. So she's from Neasden. And to give you to give you a i mean kneesden for our overseas sisters it's a synonymous i'm not dissing kneesden but in britain it's kind of synonymous with suburban banality isn't it because private eye the satirical magazine uses it as a sort of the tittering public school boys at private eye tom yeah you can't be dissing tittering public school boys on the rest is history That's the ultimate in self-flagellation. So her dad is a carpenter at the Elstree Film Studios.

It's actually a sort of respectable working class, as people used to call it, aspirational household that she grows up in. She wrote a memoir called Twiggy on Twiggy or Twiggy by Twiggy in the late 60s, which I actually found incredibly interesting as a bit of social history, because she is an absolutely typical example of that sort of social type that we were talking about who drives this revolution. She's a teenager in the early 60s. She's obsessed with pop music, with telly, with dancing, with fashion. She works on Saturdays at the local hairdressers. She earns 30 shillings a week, and she spends almost all that on clothes. Her heroine, by the way, is Jean Shrimpton, victor of the Battle of Melbourne. She does her

face in the sort of the white and black makeup. What's remarkable about her is she's so androgynous. So she's tiny. Well, she's a twig. I mean, she's five foot five or five foot six. She weighs six and a half stone, shoe size four, dress size six. She weighs six and a half stone shoe size four dress size six she basically looks like a waif like an urchin and she starts going out with this immensely amusing person who knows her because his brother works in the barbers next to the hairdressing salon where she works he calls himself justin de ville nerve but do you know what his real name is no nigel davis oh so justin de ville nerve he's just a

sort of a chancer really he starts going out with leslie as she's called and he says um i think you should try it as a model even though you're so skinny now most models so that is june shrimptons they are posh tom yeah they've been to the lucy clayton school of modeling yeah they've often been to private schools it's just a thing that you do if you're a kind of posh girl but the whole vibe of the mid-60s is classless it's classless leslie hornby has not been to any of these things she's not been to the the modeling school she is not posh but basically she manages to get a foot in the door at a sort of cheap down market magazine called the women's mirror and in the course of this sort of there's a complicated origin story but in the course of this photo shoot she goes and has a haircut in this salon and they give her

this sort of um this cropped haircut all the stuff that we were talking about before about looking young with the big eyes and the pale face she has that already and especially with the cropped haircut this wave flight look she looks like an urchins from oliver twist she does a bit doesn't she yeah and the hairdressers put up photos of it because they're really struck by her appearance and a few days later the fashion editor of the daily express who's called deirdre mcshary she goes in she sees the photo says oh who's that i want to get in touch with her and so on the 23rd of february 1966 in the middle of the daily Express kind of middle spread there's a massive photograph of Leslie Hornby's face and the headline says Twiggy the Cockney kid and have they made up

the name Twiggy no so her friends or Justin de Villeneuve aka Nigel Davis called her that as a joke but people love the name they think oh what a brilliant name the headline says the cockney kid with the face to launch a thousand shapes and she's going to be the face of 66 the calm appraisal of a child or a martian a rare strange creature tranquil composed almost bloodless yeah one half orphan of the storm the other purely aesthetic so people as they were doing with the beatles and stuff i mean obviously older people who are trying to look cool go completely bonkers and write these ridiculously pretentious analyses of her appeal. How do older women who can't emulate this kind of waif-like look, I mean, how are they feeling about the fact that this is now being projected as the fashion that everyone should be following?

They're probably quite grumpy about it. So there are lots of women who will say, of the 60s, I didn't have the shape for the 60s, as there had been in the 20s, of course, with flappers. There are lots of women who say all these new fashions actually make absolutely no allowance for how real women look. Because Twiggy is so slight and so androgynous that obviously most women don't look like her at all. However, there is this kind of weird rejection of womanhood and especially, I would say, motherhood in the late 60s, which is a rejection of the kind of housewife ethos of the 1950s. And is that influenced by the coming of the pill, do you think? No, because the pill is not available to unmarried women until 1970. Right.

But there is a sort of sense of sexual availability, I suppose, of a loosening of moral attitudes. Obviously, more women in education than ever, women entering the workforce in higher numbers. But also that becoming a parent is very ungroovy. Very ungroovy. The two things that are actually very ungroovy in the 60s are A, becoming a parent, and B, refusing to have sex with somebody. So this is the whole thing that people would now say. Some people, by the way, did say at the time that the sexual revolution is very one way that the sexual dynamic of the late 1960s is actually quite predatory and quite unpleasant. I mean, you read the 60s manifestos written by countercultural people between 1965 and 1970.

I mean, there's some pretty, yeah, I mean, sometimes we use the word pungent on this podcast to describe stuff we don't approve of. I think there's actually some pretty downright shocking and horrible stuff in those memoirs about young girls, all of this kind of thing. I mean, even actually The Guardian, 1965, the point about very short skirts, white lace stockings and pantomime boots is that they separate the girls from the women. They say, I am young. I'm different, I am special. This sort of emphasis on being a young girl is a really central element of 60s fashion. Mary Quant, I grew up not wanting to grow up. Growing up seemed terrible. It meant having candy floss hair, stiletto heels, girdles,

and great boobs. And all this sort of stuff. I mean, here's this, Mary Quant again. Now, this is unbelievable, Tom. There was a time when every girl under 20 yearned to look like an experienced, sophisticated 30. She writes this in 1966. All this is in reverse with a vengeance now. Suddenly, every girl with a hope of getting away with it is aiming to look not only under the voting age, but under the age of consent. And this sort of stuff about looking under the age of consent is everywhere. I mean, Mary Quant delights in this. She says, this is great. You're saying at the same time, because in the same thing, she says, the girl of today is standing there defiantly with her legs apart saying, I'm very sexy. I enjoy sex. I feel provocative,

but you're going to have to job to get me. I can't be bought, but if I want you, I'll have you. And this sort of emphasis on sexual availability and extreme youth to a 21st century reader is pretty, you know... But there's, I guess it's not actually a paradox perhaps, but one of the big kind of gear shifts in the 60s is between 66 and 67. And in 67, even as girls are still being encouraged to look very young, suddenly boys are growing enormous beards and hair sprouting everywhere. They are. And kind of becoming hyper-masculine. That is a very big tonal shift. And just before we come onto that, one last point about the girls. Some people may think I am being too censorious, that the Cromwellian

presenter of the rest of history is frowning on people's fun. But you read this. This is a 1965, an American reporter. He says, the great thing about England is that young English girls take to sex as if it's candy and it's delicious. I mean, no one would write that now. And actually, I'm not back projecting because even at the time, there were people who said this is not right.

And actually, the most famous one of those is Germaine Greer. So taking us back to Australia, Tom. Yeah. So this is the female eunuch. The female eunuch. At the end of the 1960s, I think it's 1970, the female eunuch is partly about the image of the dolly bird that you see everywhere in the 1960s. And she says, her dominion must not be thought to entail the rule of women, for she is

not a woman. She is a doll, weeping, pouting, or smiling, running or reclining. She is a doll. She is an idol formed of the concatenation of lines and masses, signifying the lineaments of satisfied impotence. She is, in other words, a female eunuch. And I think now, when you look back at that sort of the image of womanhood that is presented in the mid to late 60s, it looks to our eyes, I mean, at the time celebrated as liberated and exciting, but to our eyes, I think it looks, don't you think, pretty exploitative and a bit distasteful? I think we should take a break here. And when we come back the lord protector of the rest is history the man who wants to ban the 60s can cast his anti-fun gaze over a new figure in the cityscape of swinging london the

hippie we'll see you in a few minutes i'm marina hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Suddenly, happiness is flower-shaped. The in-things are Indian jackets and dresses, kimonos, Victorian dresses,

elaborately patterned, beaded, and flowing 20s and 30s dresses, bell-bottom trousers, and brocade waistcoats. Plus of course, those beads, bells and flowers. That was the daily sketch in July, 1967, the summer of love, the summer of Sergeant Pepper. All you need is love. And Dominic, 67 is a real kind of gear shift, isn't it? It is. I guess the female look of the sixties is miniskirts, and we've been talking about them.

But the male look probably paradigmatically is a hippie, beard, John Lennon glasses, kind of caftans. Only from this point onwards, Tom. Yeah. So one of the things I really love about social and cultural history, lots of people don't do it enough, I think, is nailing down the narrative. So at what point do people start having beards? People are not wearing beads and bangles in 1965, but they are in 1968. So when does that change? So Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles are wearing moustaches, but not beards. Exactly. And I think that is a huge change, by the way. So the Beatles, we've mentioned them a few times in these episodes. They're obviously a massive influence in all this because they are the chief

exporters of a British look abroad. But so Sergeant Pepper, they are working on it at the end, by the end of 1966, the beginning of 1967. So at that point, when the kind of the Avengers, Dolly Bird,

Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy look is at its height, the kind of op art, close of the Future, all that stuff. They're going Victorian. And they're going Victorian. So that is one of the remarkable things about the Beatles is they're always, you know, six months to two years ahead of everybody else. The dominant motif of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, which comes out that June, June 67, is the kind of late Victorian Edwardian musical. And so, again, we talked about Teddy Boys, didn't we, in the previous episode?

Yeah. That there's obviously a kind of abiding appeal. There is. And a fascination with Victoriana, I think it's fair to say. So there had been massive exhibitions on Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley in 1963 and 1966. People in the 60s. For the first time, really, they're taking the late Victorians seriously rather than rejecting them.

So the Beatles' moustaches, are they Victorian, do you think, rather than being influenced by what people are growing in California? Yeah, because the Beatles are growing there first, by the way. The Beatles are, I would argue, I mean, I'm not saying they're the first people

in human history to have had moustaches. Well, no, because the British elites, British military men in the late Victorian period, paradigmatically have moustaches. They are. And it's part of the military uniform, actually, isn't it? Because the Beatles are wearing uniforms on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. And uniforms become very fashionable at about that point, 1967. The most famous shop where you can buy them is I Was

Lord Kitchener's Valet, or I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet, which you would go to on the Portobello Road. And there you would buy, it's an ironic imperial shop, isn't it? Right, because Lord Kitchener is the figure on the recruiting poster at the beginning of the First World War. Your country needs you, and one of the paradigmatic imperial heroes. Now I think none of this would have been possible if the British Empire had not by this point definitively been dissolved. So actually when people even today say, oh

Britain hasn't come to terms with the loss of empire, I think actually Britain has come to terms with it perfectly well by this point. Because by this point they're already making a great joke of it. Yeah, they're ironising it. It's very funny. They think it's a tremendous laugh to have imperial shops and to dress up in imperial, to look like General Gordon, basically. Okay, but a question.

So what the British do during the imperial period is go to India, where they go around with moustaches and swagger sticks and kind of tell people what to do. Whereas the Beatles famously go to India and they dress in Indian clothes and they get told what to do by the Maharishi. Lots of them don't like it. Well, Ringo Starr, of course, travels Tom with his own baked beans because he doesn't trust the Indian food. Yeah. So the interest in dressing like in Indian fashions, is there any link to the kind of repudiation of the age of the Raj there, do you think, or not? Would

that be over-intellectualizing it? I think it's more that there's always been a strain of Orientalism in British popular culture that stretches right back to the Victorian period, maybe even beyond. But that's bread of the empire, isn't it? It's bread of the empire. And it's still there. I mean, why India? Why sitars? Why the Maharishi? Because in a way- It's familiar to British people. It's familiar. They're prepped for it. It seems the logic, it seems an understandable thing to do

that people go to India to seek enlightenment because of course people have been doing that for rich bohemian people. So do Indian fashions have the same impact outside Britain or is it a distinctively British fashion, do you think? I think when it goes to California and then to America more widely, I would say it's a general kind of ethnic look, isn't it? There's a very much an ethnic, what people, I mean, that's the term that people would have used in the late 1960s, early 1970s, rugs, bangles, jostics, incense.

Statues of Hindu gods. Eastern religions. Now, obviously the United States at that point doesn't have the same kind of relationship with India specifically as Britain does. So in the US, in California,

it might be mixed up with Native American stuff and those kinds of things. But yeah, there's a fascination with the East that comes in in the late 60s.

I mean, you can connect this, I think, with a general reaction against industrial modernity that is very pronounced in the late 60s. That's part of the hippie thing. So hence the flowers.

The flowers. Now, everyone would have seen probably photos of people putting flowers, anti-Vietnam War protesters putting flowers into the rifles of National Guardsmen. And I think Vietnam is part of this, actually. Vietnam is- But that's American, isn't it? So is there a sense as you move into, say, into 1968, that London's fashion crown is slipping and passing to peaceniks in America? I think definitely. So by the beginning of 1968, the elements of this new look are already there. The bell-bottom trousers, the flare trousers. By the way, that's coming out of the uniform thing,

the flares. Right. And that takes us back to the Regency period where the influence of the dress of the Royal Navy is very influential

on the look of the English gentleman as it evolves. And indeed, to our Trafalgar podcast, Tom, about the fascination of the Royal Navy and the, you know,

who would have thought only the rest is history can link from the fashions of 1968 to a three-part series about Trafalgar, which I heartily commend to the listeners. Because you had your flared trousers, it made it easier to roll up your trouser legs when you were working on deck. People start wearing the flared trousers, the beards, which look like imperial heroes. So why are they wearing beards? Is that just kind of logical, except if you've got a moustache, you might as well grow a beard?

I think so. Because that's going beyond, obviously, a Victorian look. There is an argument by some historians of fashion and sort of sociologists and things that people start wearing the beards because as men's fashion is becoming more feminized, so they're wearing lacy shirts, flowery scarves, ridiculous, you know, Mick Jagger circa 1968 is wearing like a blouse he's wearing a dress isn't exactly all that stuff at the same time you have a beard because it's saying i'm still very much a man's man even though i'm wearing a dress and you know i've got i love flowers although conchita would not agree with that conchita verst the eurovision champion yes those are dark waters tom then which which I don't want to... Let's row back from those.

So the idea of hippie, the word comes from hip, does it? Hip, hipster. So a black American word, African American word, then used by people like Norman Mailer to talk about white Americans copying black culture. So at that point, people are talking about hipsters and then that evolves into about 19 so it's interesting in 1965 66 american teenagers are copying british slang they're saying things are groovy you know gear gear yeah all that fab all that sort of stuff and actually even in

provincial american cities des moines iowa or, there will be shops called the Carnaby Store, the Soho Emporium, you know, I was General Gordon's Batman or whatever, you know, there'll be that. But by 1967, 68, that's no longer cool. And actually, the music, the British music is no longer as cool as it was actually you can judge that from the chart presence it's the doors the Grateful Dead

it's a much more druggie much more Californian sound actually California and San Francisco and LA have recaptured the sense of music more momentum

but the language the fashion that is much more being driven from California and the truth of the matter is Carnaby Street is now a massive tourist trap it's always been a bit of a tourist trap so it's very uncool Language, the fashion, that is much more being driven from California. And the truth of the matter is, Carnaby Street is now a massive tourist trap.

It's always been a bit of a tourist trap. So it's very uncool. I mean, it's the uncoolest place in the world. It is. And, you know, going back to the origins of all this, Mary Quant, she opened her boutique bazaar in 1955. By 1968, who cares about 1955? I mean, it might as well have happened in the 13th century,

as far as youngsters. Because the people who are the shoppers now who are 18, they were five when she opened her boutique. So what do they care about that look? But also there's a sense, I mean, to live through the 60s is to feel that you're kind of running up a down escalator in terms of keeping up with fashion, I imagine. I mean, it's changing at such a speed. Yes. And so obviously. Yeah.

But also there's a tonal shift. It's less optimistic, I think, I mean, it's changing at such a speed. Yes. And so obviously. Yeah. But also there's a tonal shift. It's less optimistic. I think the late sixties, it's more conflicted. The economy is beginning to slow down. And actually, as you say, you're rushing to keep up with fashion. But one of the things we often forget is that even in this period, if we talk about a long 1960s, there were different generational cohorts. So if you're 18 in 1968, 69, what people were buying in 1963, 64 just strikes you as ludicrously antiquated, laughable. You're not going to wear a PVC miniskirt in 1969 if you're very cool. I mean, obviously the truth of the matter is at any given moment, Tom, most people aren't very cool. So I wrote about this when I put White Heat

and ITV made a drama called White Heat about people living through the 60s. And basically, because I had the title, they felt, it was actually

a remarkable instance, probably the only instance in history of a TV studio feeling honor bound. That's unheard of. To recompense me for the fact

they had stolen my title. And the deal was they said well you can be the consultant to the series so i went along to this meeting and they were describing you know it's going to be set in 1966 everyone's going to be wearing you know astronauts clothes and i said and they said they all said what do you think and i said well obviously nobody would want those clothes they all look really boring and they all looked like people really looked. They didn't want to hear that.

That was the last meeting I was ever invited to. A sand bucket of cold water. They said, what would people be listening to? I said, oh, probably the sound of music. Of course you did.

Of course. That's your whole shtick. It is. That's what you do. I would describe it as a shtick so much as a penetrating insight. An insight so good that you keep returning to it.

That I keep returning to it, even when TV companies are begging me to stay away. Okay, so this is all rather sad then, that London had its time in the sun. It was swinging, it was groovy, it was gear. And now the 60s are ending and they're selling hippie wigs in Woolworths. Yeah, so unbelievably, you could buy,

I love this detail. Where is it? I must have found this in a magazine or something. An advert. Make the scene with these fantastic new raves. You can buy false side pieces, as they call them, and a false moustache made by Paul White Productions. Wow.

So Withnell and I weren't joking. And here's the thing, Tom. The slogan says, as seen on TV. Who's wearing them on TV? It says, these Edwardian style sideburns are so realistic they're almost undetectable and can be used time and time again.

Please send a small cutting of your hair for colour and matching. Your shade will be matched as near as possible that old scammy and then there's a note that says glue not included all these people walking around with with mustaches glued it's very sad at that point you know that the the spirit of the early boutiques is a long way away the dream is over exactly so there's a sort of efflorescence of these mad boutiques in the late 60s so granny takes a trip that's the kind of beatles have one don't they the apple store is

a kind of i mean hopeless people just running off with mad gizmos that don't work and things and the most famous one of these so the one that is, always taken as the parable about what happens to 60s fashion is Bieber. You've heard of Bieber, obviously, Tom. Yeah, I have. It's a remarkable, remarkable story. So it's run by somebody called Barbara Hulonicki. She was born to Polish parents. Her father was killed by the Stern Gang in the 1940s. I'll tell you who else. Somebody we haven't talked about at all, Vidal Sassoon, the hairdresser. So he did kind of Mary Quant's hair in this very famous bob. He fought in the Arab-Israeli war in the 1940s and 1948. And he had been part of an anti-fascist sort of squad in London called the 43 Group, who went around beating up British anti-Semitic fascists.

Goodness. I had no idea. Anyway, this is a segue from Bieber. So Barbara Huluniki, she'd studied at Brighton Art College. She sold kind of very early 60s gingham dresses. And actually, she's really ahead of the curve because she can see, I suppose because she recognizes this latent appetite for Victoriana and stuff. She opens Biba, her shop, in 1964 in Kensington. And at the time, people say, oh, it looks like an Eastern souk.

And it's full of tie-dyed stuff and maroon scarves and very dark colors. So it looks completely different from anything else. And she is well ahead of the game on all this. So Bieber is very cool to that extent. So in other words, it's selling the fashion of 1968 three or four years early. And by the end of the 60s it's it's the most fashionable the most celebrated of all london's clothing shops so it gets celebrities kind of julie christie brigitte bardot marianne faithful they come and shop there it's very cheap they open a new store in 1966 in kensington church

street as one journalist puts it an estimated estimated 3,000 dolly birds each week push through the heavy Victorian wood and brass doors intent on dissipating their last shillings on the tempting sartorial baubles of the Aladdin's cave that lies within. They suffer massive problems, like all these shops do, with shoplifting. So because of the sort of grooviness, you know...

Yeah, because it's far too... I mean, that's very blue meanies to have people stopping you shoplifting. Exactly. Very square. Exactly. And they move into bigger and bigger shops. So they move into one in Kensington High Street in 1969.

And that has got Egyptian columns and it's marble floors. They get 100,000 customers a week. Their turnover is four times that of a department store. They are selling, you are selling sunglasses, boots. It's the hippie look par excellence. You want a feather boa, Tom. You're going to one of your events. You're going to a book event to publicize your new history of the Romans.

You might wear a cravat, a feather boa. It's kind of Jimi Hendrix look. You'd have glued on those Edwardian sideburns. You'd be wearing a kind of floppy hat of some kind a sort of jimmy hendrix is exactly the look platform heels platform heels because i'm starting to mutate into elton john aren't i and that's the truth the seven early 70s the fashion that is waiting yeah or for or for british listeners you're basically the fate that awaits you is peter wingard as jason king that's, you're basically, the fate that awaits you is Peter Wingard as Jason King. That's what you're going to turn into.

Yes. It's all very depressing. And John Lydon will despise you. Yeah, he will. That is what you're turning into. He will. So Bieber moved into a succession of ever bigger locations. And then in 1973, it moved into the former Derry and Tom's department store on Kensington High Street. Big Bieber was the first new department store in London since the Second World War. And it's absolutely losing money hand over fist. And it closes, I think, 1975, I think.

And that's it. The dream is over. over so at that point the early 70s the 60s look has become obviously nobody now is wearing mini skirts and is wearing sort of the mascaraed eyes and the twiggy look i mean all these these people have disappeared from the headlines the look is very decadent and sort of uh you know it's very over glamorous and over kind of lush and stuff in the early 70s and And then punk is this scene, is this tremendous breath of fresh air. And we should do a whole podcast about punk. Because I think punk's legacy is far more sartorial and design and kind of culture broadly than it is musical. And I think the look of punk is actually arguably more important even than the sound.

Although punk in turn gets replaced by new romantics, who again are looking back at kind of the edwardian victorian and so the cycle continues of course and then you're back to the cravats and the and the floppy hats and you can get out i mean you can't get out your edwardian sideburns again tom but the uh if i were the boa that you that you'll abort in biba that comes back if you've still got it 1982 yep go and hang out with boy george and yeah exactly exactly so i suppose by that point by the 80s 60s fashion has been absorbed into the the revolving door that is and then into the 90s you get the mods come back and exactly and it just becomes endlessly recycled i mean i think there is a reasonable case those those people who argue that in music and fashion and design that we're slightly stuck in a kind of an endlessly repeating cycle.

I think that's true, isn't it? That we still live in the shadow. Well, that's the excitement of the 60s, isn't it? There is a genuine feeling that boundaries are being pushed and that new horizons are opening up, even if you may be skeptical about that. But I mean, there is a sense that people have never looked like this before uh that's the excitement of the miniskirt hence the vast historical significance of the battle of melbourne as you pointed out and where you and i would disagree i think tom our fun disagreement that we always have in the rest of this history is you would probably be more interested in the ideas and the the intellectual side of that and

i think that's all actually ultimately driven by money and by the economy no i i don't in any way dispute that i think that that fashion is absolutely driven by money but you're more you're always more interested in you know you're more um you like an abstract noun i do like an abstract noun in the broad sweep of uh european history i mean absolutely i think that um the influence of ideas is vastly more influential. But I think in the context of 60s fashion, I think money, I completely buy your thesis. I mean, I read your books on it. I have no doubt that money is what is driving it. But having said that, you need the raw material of creativity and initiative and originality, which is what you

do get in the 60s. And that's why we've done two programs on the fashion of the 60s and not, say, on the fashion of the 70s, 80s, or 90s. And I think the 60s also gives us something that we've never lost. I can't see why or when we would lose it, which is the cult of youth. The fact that people remark on it so much in the 60s is a sign of how novel it is. The idea that youth, which previously, I guess, was associated with a sign of how novel it is the idea that that youth which previously i guess was associated with a lack of economic power slightly think that youth youth feels embattled

now though yes in a way that hasn't done before yeah i think that's a fair point the kind of economy is against younger people yeah and in fact of course it's the people who were young in the 60s who are now squatting in their enormously expensive houses and with their pensions. Yeah, you're right. We've now spiraled off into general kind of slum bar conversation. But I think you can reasonably argue they're the most fortunate generation in history. Yeah, you could do. The boomers.

Even if you weren't a Carnaby Street habituate, which of course 99% of people aren't uh you've arguably enjoyed i mean of course there have been ups and downs but you've arguably enjoyed greater prestige great greater cultural prestige and greater economic opportunity than any generation before or since well on that cheery note if you are an elderly listener and depressing note if you are a younger listener. We'd better leave Carnaby Street behind and groove off. So Tom, choose a look. Am I male or female?

It's your choice. Female. I would definitely Diana Rigg. Yeah, that's what I'd go for. Kickboxing in miniskirts. Absolutely. Absolutely.

That's exactly what I would like to see we'd look lovely we'd make a lovely pair so the sunday times wanted to photograph us dressed up as henry the eighth and his wives yeah i was against it but if they had said if the descendant of the pioneering sunday times color section of 1962 had said we want you to dress as Mary Quant. Oh, it's Gene Strimpton and Twiggy, Tom. Yeah. I would have been so up for that. And actually, that's a standing invitation to other colour supplements.

Dominic, I mean, I don't want to be offensive. I don't want to sound rude, but I think you'd make an improbable Twiggy. I'd be Gene Strimpton. I would absolutely be Gene Strimpton. I think do it counterintuitively is the only way to do it, Tom. Okay. Okay. Well, there's a terrifying thought,

a mental image that listeners may find hard to get out of their head. Yeah. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Dominic for brilliant sweep through, through swinging London. And we'll be back very soon. Bye-bye.

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