http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/beatles/article6820699.ece
No one can be credited with dressing the band. It was a process of
cross-pollination from Carnaby Street to junk shops
September 6, 2009
Georgina Howell
Before the Beatles had anything to do with fashion, they had to find
a look in a battlefield divided between Mods and Rockers. Clothes
labelled you so definitively that if you strayed beyond your patch
into enemy territory you were asking for a fight. And that was before
you got out of the front door.
Fifty years ago, so much for penniless teenagers was improvisation.
If you wanted narrow trousers, you had to persuade your mother to
taper them. In the days before pre-shrunk denim, we used to sit in
the bath in our jeans until the banging on the door became intolerable.
For once it was men's clothes taking the lead. But it was no longer
the Michael Chantrey-Inchbalds or Mark Gilbeys putting their stamp on
fashion: the sons of a ship's waiter, a cotton salesman, a bus
conductor and a baker called the tune and forged the 1960s marriage
between fashion and music.
When Brian Epstein came into the Beatles' lives, he was a fastidious
hangover from the 1950s, a man who was never young. In March 1962,
for a gig at Barnston Women's Institute, he got them into the
high-street tailors Burton, and sent them on stage in grey lounge
suits with thin velvet lapels. It was Brian, with his love of
flamenco, who put them in cuban-heeled boots with elastic sides, the
much-copied chelsea boot.
Stephen Guy, of National Museums Liverpool, was 14 when the Beatles
had their first No 1. "Brian knew he had to make these scruffs
acceptable to the public. But when he tried to take them to a
Liverpool tailor, John was so foul-mouthed they declined to dress
them." So, in late 1962, Brian took the boys to Douglas Millings &
Son in London, who would make their clothes until 1967 and Sgt
Pepper. This proved quite an undertaking. Fittings had to be taken
wherever the Beatles happened to be, often at midnight, occasionally
abroad. The suits that came offstage drenched in sweat went straight
to the dry cleaners where fans would be lying in wait to tear off
keepsake buttons, lapels, epaulettes. As their gigs multiplied, the
Beatles' need for new clothing became inexhaustible. Only one Beatle,
Paul, was interested in clothes, but they had all become aware of
their common visual identity in Hamburg, where an awe-inspiring young
existentialist, Astrid Kirchherr, had taken graphic black-and-white
pictures of the band on industrial estates.
No single person can be credited with dressing the Beatles. It was a
process of cross-pollination that proliferated with the spread of
boutiques in Carnaby Street, the King's Road and the backwaters of
Fulham and Kensington, alongside junk shops full of Victorian
bric-a-brac, record players with trumpets and faded Edwardian frock
coats: venues that rocked with Beatles music played at top volume.
While the boutiques ripped off the tailor-made clothes on the album
covers, the Beatles also bought ready-to-wear. Brian Epstein bought
them "naval bridge coats" from Just Men. John bought the brown suede
jacket he wore for the recording of their second album, With the
Beatles, from Cecil Gee, and his black roll-neck sweaters from
Sportique. Paul and John's flowery shirts on the back of Revolver, in
August 1966, came from Granny Takes a Trip.
The public became aware of the Beatles' tangled finances in 1967,
when Lennon was asked about the band's income. "Not income," he
replied. "Outcome." Their idea for the £2m they had between them was
to keep it out of the taxman's hands by investing in a boutique, and
they opened Apple the precursor to the corporation on Baker Street.
Unlike Bianca Jagger some years later, the Beatle women didn't lead
fashion so much as influence it by what they wore to be photographed.
Pattie Boyd, who married George in January 1966, was a model who came
to our flat in Shepherd's Bush a year later to be interviewed I
worked for Vogue at the time. A wonderfully pretty blonde in a pale
crepe dress with lacy sleeves, she had recently joined the Spiritual
Regeneration Movement, and ended the conversation by sitting
cross-legged on the floor in a Buddha position, teaching us to
meditate. She was the Beatle girl who most often appeared in Vogue,
sometimes with her sister Jennie, in cotton dungarees or
Liberty-print nightdresses. Jane Asher, a red-haired waif, was
already an experienced actress and appeared in the magazine as often
as she could be persuaded, usually in Tuffin & Foale, the designers
discovered by the editor of Young Ideas, Marit Allen.
Among the generations, one 1960s survivor treasures the Beatles
clothes and keeps them safe in the wardrobe, proud to show today's
stylists and video presenters that he can still put them on and
button them up: Paul McCartney, still fab after all these years.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment