CARNABY STREET

In the 1960s Carnaby Street's importance to contemporary fashion derived principally from the boutiques that opened up along it. The street metamorphosed from being a thoroughfare into being a destination. Principally, it furnished affordable male fashion. Even people who could afford to shop elsewhere used its shops. However, there was a second element present - the Greek tailors who worked on its side streets. They were quick to adapt their traditional skills to the new trends, such as fingertip-length moleskin jackets. Several of the boutiques came to be run by their younger, hipper relatives of these tradesmen.

In 1968 Lord Kitchener's Valet opened an outlet on Carnaby Street. Like its parent on the Portobello Road, this sold old uniforms and military-style jackets. (It closed in 1977.)

There are now numerous independent shops in the area to the east of the Street.

Location: Carnaby Street, W1F 7PA (orange, purple)

Website: www.carnaby.co.uk

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

David Sutch found his initial fame as a rock singer. He had been discovered by the Midlands-based hairdresser-turned-musical entrepreneur Reg Calvert. In 1963 the Profumo Scandal caused the disgraced minister to resign his seat as the M.P. for Stratford-upon-Avon. Calvert had a country house¹ that was sited close to the town. The impresario suggested to his client that he should stand in the ensuing by-election. The performer participated in the contest as the candidate of the National Teenage Party. The campaign was run by the entrepreneur and his wife Dorothy. It was Mrs Calvert who wrote Sutch s manifesto. This included calls for the pedestrianisation of Carnaby Street, something that was to come about, as did his call for the lowering of the voting age from 21 to eighteen. She had married her husband when she had been eighteen-years-old and regarded it as having been absurd that she had had to wait another three years until she had been enfranchised.

Musicians who played on Sutch's records included artistes of the calibre of Jeff Beck, Keith Moon, and Noel Redding. That their work during concerts was being recorded for commercial release was not always something that the singer informed them of at the time.

Sutch formed the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983 to fight the Bermondsey by-election. The group became an ornament of the British electoral system. He changed his name to Screamin Lord Sutch by deed poll.

In 1991 Stuart Hughes became the Monster Raving Loony Party's first elected representative when he was returned to the East Devon District Council for Sidmouth's Woolbrook Ward. Mr Hughes was a hotelier in the town. (The West Country has a long tradition of being independently inclined in its politics.)

Website: www.omrlp.com

¹. Clifton Hall, near Rugby.

Irvine Sellar

Irvine Sellar (1934-2017) opened a shop on Carnaby Street in 1964. One day his wife noted how many women were buying trousers for their boyfriends, who would often be tagging reluctantly behind. She suggested that they should open a unisex chain. Mates by Irvine Sellar became the U.K.'s second largest fashion chain. He sold it in 1981. He went into property and oversaw the creation of The Shard skyscraper.

See Also: SKYSCRAPERS The Shard

Website: The Shard | Remembering Irvine Sellar (the-shard.com)

John Stephen

Vince Man's Shop sold dandified, ready-to-wear clothes and Levi jeans. The Newburgh Street shop was opened in the mid-1950s by Bill Green, a photographer who specialised in creating pictures of bodybuilders that had homoerotic overtones. His initial customers were mostly gay men.¹ The singer and writer George Melly felt prompted to comment that it was the only outfitters where they measured your inside leg each time you bought a tie . The store's reputation spread beyond the homosexual community.

John Stephen worked as a shop assistant in Vince's for a while. The Glaswegian then opened His Clothes on Beak Street. The premises were badly damaged by a fire. In 1959 he and some partners opened the first men's boutique on Carnaby Street at No. 41. He created a look that used skinny trousers, tight skinny jackets, and fitted shirts. He went on to run several shops along the street concurrently. Some of them were physically sited next to each other. He knocked holes through their adjoining walls so that people did not need to go out back onto the street in order to move from one of his boutiques to the next. At one point, he had nearly a hundred outlets across the country and had a number of international licensing deals. Over the years he scaled down his operations but remained active as a retailer.

Location: His Clothes, 41 Carnaby Street, W1F 7DX (orange, yellow)

Vince's Man's Shops, 15 Newburgh Street, W1F 7RX (orange, pink)

¹. The nearby Marshall Street Baths was frequented by gay men.

Swinging London

In April 1966 the magazine Time published a cover feature that was entitled London: The Swinging City. The piece's principal author was Piri Halasz, an Anglophile staff writer who was far more interested by politics than she was by fashion. She created the article with the help of colleagues in the publication's New York and London offices. Originally, it was intended for the periodical's Modern Living section. However, a fortnight prior to publication, Time's managing editor, Otto Fuerbringer, took the decision to run the material as a cover story.

Location: 1 Bruton Street, W1J 6TL. The magazine has since vacated the building. (red, yellow)

Website: https://pirihalasz.com https://timelife.com

David Backhouse 2024