The Cake - 'You Can Have Him' (1967)

   Decades before Sugababes achieved a mild flavour of notoriety for performing their debut single on Top of The Pops with an unsmiling archness, the world birthed this:

   My sentiments regarding The Cake's showmanship could only appear trite; this Manson-James Brown-Ronettes hybridising should only happen in the theatre. What's so delicious about this performance is that it did not

   For unconventional band mascot/ensemble dark horse-status, the impassive baby doll that was Jeanette Jacobs is right up there with ABC's homosexual, Kid Swifty Lazar-esque midget, David Yarritu

Out-Side

The Out Group - 18th July 1967

Back Row: Tom Maschler, David Benedictus, Nicholas Tomalin

Centre: Cathy McGowan, Jonathan Aitken, Tom Hustler

Front Row: Christopher Gibbs and Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon

   Revisiting the theme of Luminaries United, this counterpart portrait to The In Group was also commissioned by Jocelyn Stevens, then the publisher of Queen Magazine, to take place on 18th July 1967

   Don't be fooled by the veneer of respectability this photograph uses to juxtapose itself with its sibling: former Conservative MP Mr. Aitken, for one, is not known for his aversion to a little indelicacy. One should also take note of Chelsea Set leader, designer and dandy, Christopher Gibbs - we have him to thank for giving velvet ties their moment under the club lights

   It's been said that Lord Lichfield's gift lay in eliciting an air of relaxation from his subjects (and let it also be said that his gift was certainly not in lending his name to transient menswear brands). Nowhere, I feel, is this more aparent than in his group portraiture and his more candid work at country piles, Hollywood homes and ambassadorial residences

   But as I said, he had a way with the human reaction. One only has to observe the subjects in this Studio-set shot to notice that

Peculiarly, Mr. Fish

Michael Fish (centre), shirtmaker, Turnbull & Asser alumnus, In Group member, "high priest" of the Peacock Revolution (as described by Hardy Amies) and creator of the kipper tie, with his staff at his 17 Clifford Street, W1 haberdashery in the late 1960s:

... A holocaust of see-through voiles, brocades and spangles and mini-skirts for men, blinding silks, flower printed hats... all the surface mannerisms and mouthings of hippy, but none of the intent

Nik Cohn on Mr. Fish's shop and output

   Very much my sort of shopping experience, then 

   Mr. Fish's work can be seen at the Victoria & Albert Museum

   Cigar to Sharp Dressed Men

Get Wed

   I think that for an alternatively dressed wedding, one's nods to tradition should retain both bearing and visual interest

   A friend of mine recently stood out amongst the formally-observant male guests at a summer wedding in a Scottish ensemble redolent of one John Russell, the 13th Duke of Bedford, here at home in 1966 and adorned in the hedonist's formalwear of that time:

Photograph by Terrence Spencer//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

   This peacock streak carried on to his son, Lord Francis, OE - uncle of the present Duke - when he married the Malayasian Singapore-born model Faith 'Anak' Ibrahim in 1971. In the spirit of the times, he wore an appealingly cheeky, suitably aristocratic velvet frock coat suit with braided piping and a dégagé approach to neckwear. This might make his later conversion to upmarket estate agency seem unglamorous in comparison, but such is natural progression. I understand that his father's tome, How to Run a Stately Home, is fairly edifying (such a pity that his The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs is something of a rarity - I'd expect it to be barrel-full of laughs)

   This certainly is nowhere near the level of today's proliferation of pooling trousers, undesirable, inauthentic corsages and shiny, embroidered waistcoats that may as well be hewn from leisure suit-grade polyester. And why begrudge a little preening on that most happy of occasions?

Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images

Vivacity

 Actor W Clifford Klenk with his wife, Hope Bacon Ryan, in their Hog Island house, May 1968, as taken by Slim Aarons

 
   That traffic light approach to summer menswear that I once mentioned? This man is its avatar

   Aarons and his lens would take at least one more capture of Klenk in 1992:

   At some stage, Klenk acquired a baronetcy and continues to be a fixture of the Life that is High:

   His earlier ensembles, to me, speak of WASP style for the true character

   And nothing kills complacency like characters can

Ossie-fied

 
   Also fabulous, dead and born on this day (68 years ago, to be precise) was Raymond 'Ossie' Clark, a King of the Swingers and of the King's Road in the 1960s and 1970s. And whilst he was off swinging every which way he could, he also took time to clothe the beau monde and become one of the Great Remembered of the late 20th century

   Reputedly able to cut a perfectly fitting dress for a woman by running his hands over her body, Clark was charismatic, multitalented and driven, although like a number of creators in this life, his talent did not come without its drawbacks

   One of them even evolved out of his desire for self-betterment: in a Larkin-like twist, the stimulants given to him by his mother when he needed the presence of mind for early commutes to design school eventually lead to his drug habit

   Naturally, Clark's work for the retail operation Quorum and Ossie Clark for  Radley - the house that purchased Quorum, bailing it out as it did so - has been venerated by nostalgists, collectors, editors, stylists and students. With the highly enticing printwork and intelligently devised textiles by his then-wife, Celia Birtwell, and his nous for cutting, patterns and design, melded with a taste for chiffon, gauze, moss crepe fabric and snakeskin, it couldn't help but be loveable

   Patrons included Twiggy, Ali MacGraw, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Sharon Tate, Liza Minnelli and Marianne Faithful. The Beatles were also recipients of his imagination, and he launched a menswear line in 1968. Mick Jagger, legendary for his parading and preening, also became a client

   Idle talk has it that Clark did more than a little parading of his own with David Hockney, whom he had known since college. It is certainly accepted that Hockney's 1970 portrait of his hardcore bisexual friend and Birtwell, 'Mr and Mrs Clark with Percy,' is one of Britain's most visited artworks

   Following a career and personal decline, a tentative renaissance ended with Clark's 57 stab wounds and a broken skull from a teracotta pot in his Holland Park flat; the fatality was carried out by his drugged out former lover, Diego Cogolato, who received a manslaughter conviction and six years' incarceration

   Fashion designer André Courrèges may have bemoaned that as a result of Clark's popularity, “Haute couture is as good as dead. The streets of Paris are beginning to look like Portobello Road,” but few designers of that time could turn their moment into nearly a decade of pure form and remain memorable and referenced for further decades to come

   Some still struggle with it today

Menopausal Mauve and Bowlers; Oh My

   Mr Peacock has reminded me that today would have been the 99th birthday of Neil Munroe Roger, more familiarly known as “Bunny”

   Now, Bunny is not memorialised for nothing – in life and death, his sartorial renown and his predilections spread deep and wide. Fine and exacting tailoring performed by long-defunct Savile Row house Watson, Fargerstrom & Hughes; the sexual companionship of other men; heavy powdering; carnations; couture design; punctiliousness; the organisation of greatly hedonic parties; bon mots; bon vivantism; fine art and antiques; Rolls Royces; colour complementing, and so forth

   This champagne socialite is remembered as one of the most interesting characters from the 1940s right through to his existence failure in 1997. In the internet age, he is lionised or minimised, depending on which side of the divide created by the awareness of a refined homosexual with a fondness for lurid Lurex ensembles and drag that one falls

Lurex printed Nehru and casual purple wool sportcoat from the 1970s with Turnbull & Asser shirts and sporrans, from the catalogue of Sotheby's 1998 auction of Bunny Roger's estate

   As a relatively nascent fan of extravagant libertines, Roger’s dedication to his aureate lifestyle is, to me, practically peerless. His cordwainers, Poulsen, Skone & Co., created four pairs of dress shoes and boots for his 150-strong collection of tailored suits. Each. I can imagine that he had at least three outings with every individual pair. Most enviable is that he actually had the space to accommodate 600 shoes, to say nothing of seasonal and occasional footwear such as espadrilles, slippers and evening footwear

   (I’ll bet he was a pump man)

   Also of interest is the Neo-Edwardian milieu that he exemplified (and that I've dabbled in). To most people, the term, although self-explanatory, probably doesn’t mean much until one mentions the much parodied City of London look and the performances of John Cleese and Patrick MacNee in Monty Python’s 'Ministry of Silly Walks' sketch and The Avengers, respectively. As I understand it, the label, “Edwardian,” itself puts some tailoring enthusiasts in mind of this look

The middle image, 'Savile Row/The New Mayfair Edwardians' (Peter Coats; William Ackroyd; Mark Gilbey), was shot by Norman Parkinson in 1950; Parkinson was also the lensman behind a portrait of Roger stood near his ornately printed car in 1954

   As noted in the opening photograph of Roger, Neo-Edwadianism in dress, as well as deportment, was a nostalgic exhumation and customisation of an old style. It was the ideal postwar reaction; emerging from half a decade of atrocity, loss and devastation and seeking reinvigoration in the aftermath, Row tailors advocated this fashion to entice customers back to suiting

   Of course, with the likes of Bunny Roger as a paragon, the movement eventually came to be somewhat associated with the surreptitious and the naughty

   Having viewed a number of Neo-Edwardian looks of late, I’ve noted a pleasing variation of styling, although the defining elements are clear. A bowler hatted silhouette encompassed a fitted look, with its long and lean jacket – slightly flared at the skirt – and slim, straight trousers. Pearl pins were often affixed to the ties. An umbrella, as it came to succeed canes, became obligatory. Turn ups were seemingly rare – Bunny, for one, rigorously disapproved of them. As the aesthetic's most well known paradigm, his waist (29 – 31”) and broad upper build (40”, same as I) gave him the sharpest profile of all

   The disparities were where things became more interesting. As the 1950s became the 1960s, the relative sobriety of the look grew suffused with wild abandon in the encroaching age of modernity and Modernism. Interwar austerity was over

   By the 1960s, it had integrated eight buttoned double breasteds, four buttoned single breasteds, turnback cuffed dress suits, brass buttons and a myriad of showy fabrics. The dependably ostentatious Bunny commissioned his most outré suiting designs during that time; his peccadilloes of dress had already won him the respect and following of the Teddy Boys, who were the less elite and refined, and more ragtag and youthful exponents of this Edwardian reminiscence

   They tend to be better remembered, perhaps due to being young and shifty

On the right, Hamish Bowles, photographed at his New York abode for Fantastic Man, wears one of Roger's WF&H checked suits, one of a number he acquired at the posthumous Sotheby's auction of Roger and his brother Sandy's effects. Apparently, the somewhat elfin Bowles has to breathe in to accommodate the seamwork designed for Roger's waisted physique 

   Hardy Amies had also picked up on Roger’s trendsetting. Whilst he summarised the general Neo-Edwardian/London aesthetic of the 1950s as “the average young man of position [trying] to give an air of substance without being stodgy: of having time for the niceties of life” and “uncomfortable in anything other than a hard collar and a bowler hat,” he believed Bunny’s particular cut and quirks would usher in the defining styles of the 1960s. No surprise that Roger was one of his investors, but then Amies knew tasteful change - the mark of a talented dresser - when he saw it:

 Hardy Amies Four Buttoned Suit, circa the 1960s

   Then the Edwardian look grew into something else entirely:

While its name reflected its homage to turn-of-the-century men’s fashions, the trend was equally influenced by the nineteenth century dandy and his flare for the dramatic.  The result was a highly theatrical style of dress in which no self-respecting Edwardian (emphasis: mine) gentlemen would have been caught dead, least of all after six o’clock 

   The aesthetic evolved well into the early 1970s, intersecting with the neo-Regency remixes of the Peacock Revolution, before the energetic, neo-1930s exaggerations of the 1970s claimed a sturdier hold on the tailoring world (one school of thought suggests that the 1960s did not truly end until 1972)

   Bunny, however, continued on his idiosyncratic way. The most famed imagery from his late period comes from his birthday shindig in 1981:

 At the Amethyst Ball in London's Holland Park, held to celebrate his 70th birthday, 9th June 1981 (photograph by Terence Donovan Archive/Getty Images). Naturally, anyone not in a lilac hued outfit was unceremoniously rejected

   Despite his visibility in all matters sartorial, he remained more quasi-iconic in stature. Luckily, we live in an age that can deliver information on him at the click of a keystroke

   After all's said and done, I can't help but find common ground with a man who loved offbeat formality and the colour purple

   And above all, Bunny Roger was a true gentleman

Cigars to StyleForvm, Sator and Carpu at The Cutter and Tailor, and The Neo-Edwardian Hipster

Psych Couture

Lustre

   This recent addition to my eveningwear rig has crossed at least three timezones to reach me. Of course, it was worth it. A relic of the Peacock Revolution's influence on conservative Savile Row outfits perhaps, it's a silk brocade paisley evening jacket tailored for a client of the merged tailoring houses J. Hoare & Co. / E. Tautz & Sons. Latterly, Norton & Sons own both houses; indeed, Tautz has already been put back to work as a ready to wear tailoring line since last year under the aegis of Norton's leader, Patrick Grant, breaking with all three firms' ampersand traditions in the process

   The amount of handwork is commendably extensive. The photographs belong to the seller; despite appearances to the contrary, the jacket is jet black though the brocade does respond as seen to illuminating stimuli. For now, the sleeve length is the main aspect of contention; however, I've long been curious about turnback cuffs and the alteration possibilities within

   A pure joy to wear

Fab Gear

   These are mostly his 'n' hers styles immortalised by Bill Ray in 1968, as published by LIFE in its august days. A mixture of luminaries and scenesters, these were mainly shot in London, as well as France and, one presumes, Italy

   What we have here is a diverse look at the culture crashes that flourished into the iconography of the late 1960s' fashion language, but an emphasis on an air of refinement and an existence predicated on leisure persists. Moroccan caftans juxtapose with matching Mr. Fish shirts, waisted velvet corduroy frock coats, idiosyncratic beachwear by Ken Scott and the earlier designs of Valentino; for the people wearing them, they seem no more than representations of their good fortune. Nonchalance counts

   There are various LIFE collections available. I've always wanted to see Ray's work stand alone, however, and this will suffice for now:

Jane Birkin and Gervase may be the most well known of Ray's various subjects here

   Bang the drum for the days of yore

In Their Element

The In Group – 18th July 1967

Back Row: Susannah York, Peter S. Cook, Tom Courtenay, Twiggy

Centre: Joe Orton, Michael Fish

Front Row: Miranda Chiu, Lucy Fleming

   I’ve felt like sharing this Patrick Lichfield-shot image for a while; it’s been a favourite since a collection of Swinging London photographs passed through my field of browsing vision some time in the distant past. I certainly think this mixture of languor, exclusivity and energy ranks with his airily bohemian portrait of Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakesh two years later, even allowing for their compositional differences

   It also seems to be the only reference for what the man who devised the kipper tie and the wardrobes of Terence Stamp in Modesty Blaise, Jon Pertwee in Doctor Who and Peter Sellers in There’s a Girl in My Soup, Michael Fish, looked like, never mind anything more recent. Surrounded by other luminaries of his scene and taking centre stage in clothing of his own design, one can discern the flair and the garrulousness that made him and his work a desirable commodity; the latter still is, if I have anything to say about it

   The online provenance of this image lies with Shana Ting Lipton; her mother, Miranda Chiu, is seated by Fish’s right knee. Ms. Lipton, an international pop culture and travel writer/editor/journalist and cultural researcher/strategist with an incisive worldview and an exceedingly interesting website, is ostensibly who I want to be when I grow up. My world could certainly use more of her like

   In terms of appearances, there’s certainly a marked difference between this clan of memorable tastemakers and the brand name/High Street scruff of today’s Hot Young Things in an identikit photoshoot. It’s all in the elements

Relaxed Suiting

The Fifth Earl of Lichfield, Thomas Patrick John Anson, via LIFE Magazine

   Men who want to leave the suit behind when their day is done at the coalface are shortchanging themselves. Learning to adapt and procure suits for occasions and for pleasure is merely another aspect of the fun that comes with sharpening one's image. And that suits-with-trainers lark only ever worked for downtown New York New Wavers and David Tennant

   There are other options, you know:

YSL, circa 1969

Also from LIFE, The Beatles take Japan. And Lennon probably didn't need to ask anyone if it was acceptable to sport a muted pink suit

Etro, via the NY Times; the label has entirely defined itself through uncompromising flamboyance, sharp cuts and playful patterning

Etro for summer. There's only one element I'd not wear

The post-colonial African hipster look revived for the NY Times. Suits by Viktor & Rolf (l) and Dries Van Noten (r)

   Let's face it; the mods, suedeheads and peacocks were deriving much enjoyment from their appropriation of traditional dress codes and the results thereof. It's all over Patrick Lichfield's face up above; he's bold, but not over the top, able to enjoy his appearance without being self conscious about it. Given what parades up and down today's metro paving, it's only out of the ordinary because sartorialism is the current incarnation of iconoclasm. Having said that, it still takes a brave or uncaring man to wear a hat crown as large as his face

Mick Jagger and Mary Whitehouse. Really

The 1971 wedding of Mick and Bianca Jagger. His suit was from Nutter's of Savile Row; at this time, the pattern was cut by master tailor Edward Sexton. His shirt was created by Deborah & Clare of Beauchamp Place. The photograph is, of course, by Patrick Lichfield, via The Independent

   It's been well documented that I achieve a more informal look the same way other likeminds do; my shirt and tie combinations could only really be seen at parties or in a creative office. Anyone who really thinks bold ensembles are de rigueur in a conservative professional environment is an idiot or has befriended one too many wide boys. But going the other way and playing the colour field down doesn't harm a suit's out-of-the-office cachet:

Knit tie, green pocket square, striped cardigan; relaxed in more of a cosy sense than a creative one, but also perfectly felicitous for a dressy occasion

   Rather than simply thinking "It's not for me" or "I'm not (delete as appropriate) cool/rich/famous/handsome/slender/crazy enough to pull this off," you simply have to remember that menswear is about the details. For every exuberant pattern, there must be a balancing act performed by the cut; it must, of course, fit exceptionally well. Don't compound the potential shock factor of a statement fabric with offbeat tailoring decisions (unless it's a shorts suit, which is a topic for a future time). Stick with two buttons in a single breasted or go double in a 6x4 configuration. Rather than standard padded shoulders, why not try roped shoulders and/or lightly padded natural shoulders. Retain a well shaped silhouette with subtle buttons. Let the fabric do the shouting

   If anyone would like a place to start, I can think of nowhere better than Dashing Tweeds. Their Exploded Houndstooth design has previously appeared on this column. I do like this Foulkesian 3-piece tailored from one of their cloths by Savile Row's Davies & Son:

Via James Sherwood

   A final thought: don't neglect the outerwear