Michael English And Psychedelic Art Of Hapshash And The Coloured Coat

The Soft Machine poster, 1967

Some time ago I bought this book (from 1979) about the art of Michael English, titled 3D Eye. It is the collection of posters, prints and paintings of Michael English from the period 1966-1979. Large part of the book is devoted to the years 1966-1968, when English was a part of a design collective Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, which specialised in making psychedelic posters for London's counter-cultural underground.

Michael English was born in Bicester, Oxfordshire in 1940. After quitting his first job at the BBC animation studios (reason: boredom), he enrolled at the Ealing College of Art. After completing his course in 1962, he went on to work in an advertising agency. Then, in 1965, he met Tom Salter, owner of Gear boutique.  English started designing various items for Gear: screen-printed carrier bags with slogans like 'Sex' or 'Kiss Me', sunglasses covered with Union Jacks (possibly the first appropriation of it as a Pop Art aesthetic) and T-shirts with a slogan 'Jesus Saves' printed in 3-D. His work got him a lot of attention, especially from various figures from bourgeoing psychedelic underground scene, like John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, who would soon comission English to design the poster for 'Love Fesival'.

Around that time, Michael English painted facades for 'hip' new boutiques - Granny Takes A Trip (below, left) and first  Hung On You on Cale Street.

    

One of the owners of Granny's - Nigel Waymouth (also a graphic designer) became good friends with English, and soon the two started design group Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who would go on to design some of the most memorable posters of British psychedelic movement.

This is how English remembers his time as he member of Hapshash: Before the posters I was involved in my own kind of Pop Art. Done on my own, the first two paintings were mainly a development of that, but 'Love Festival' was greatly influenced by the work of two artists: Man Ray's painting of lips in the sky - I forget the title - and the lips of women in the work of American Pop artist Tom Wesselman (...).At the same time I was fascinated by the sinuous yet romantic shapes found in Mucha's posters and the work of Beardsley and Rackham. Meeting Nigel brought this to life; I responded to his romanticism. All the Underground posters are packed with secret signs, prehistoric forms and flying saucers.We believed and adopted anything that contradicted the rational world: our science was rooted in alchemy and black magic. Sexuality too was a strong force and there is a lot of happening in the posters. Dragons and pubic hair! (Michael English, 3D Eye, Paper Tiger, Limpsfield, 1979 , p 12).

Poster for 'My White Bicycle' - single by Tomorrow, 1967

Poster for The Jimi Hendrix Experience gig at Fllmore Auditorum, 1967

Love Me - poster by Hapshash and Coloured Coat, 1967

Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, The Soft Machine and Liverpool Love Festival at UFO, 1967

Pink Floyd at UFO, 1967

Julie Felix in Royal Albert Hall, 1967

Poster for Crazy World Of Arthur Brown gig, 1967

Save Earth Now - poster by Hapshash and The Coloured Coat, 1967

Poster advertising 'I Can See For Miles' by The Who

Michael English: Nigel Waymouth worked with me on each poster. Nigel would do a bit and i would add to his work and he to mine until the poster was complete. The posters were silk-screened. the artwork for each colour was transferred to its own individual screen and the elements of the image were married together in the actual process of printing. We developed our own technique of putting two or three colours onto the screen, merging them together as the squeegee was pulled across. that was our most successful innovation. We used metallic and fluorescent inks - day glo! (English, p 12).

Poster for Incredible String Band tour, 1967

Poster for 5th Dimension club in Leicester, 1967

Poster for Middle Earth club in Covent Garden, 1967

Poster for International Pop Fesival in Rome, 1968

Artwork for Albion magazine, 1968

Poster for Granny Takes A Trip boutique, 1967

 Welcome Cosmic Visions, poster by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat from 1968

Posters designed by English and Weymouth for OZ magazine, 1968

Michael English: After Hapshash and the Coloured Coat produced a record (featuring The Heavy Metal Kids) on not a black but a red semi-transparent disc, Nigel remained infatuated with music at the expense of graphics, and the Hapshash partnership died (English, p 12).

Hapshash and The Coloured Coat featuring The Human Lost and The Heavy Metal Kids. Album cover, 1968

Michael English photographed by David Bailey in 1978.

All the images and quotations taken from "3D Eye" by Michael English (1979)

(I love finding people's names in second hand books. There's something thrilling in the fact that somebody was flicking through the same pages years before I was even born...)

Hung on You

Hung On You (...) was simultaneously the last fling of dandyism and the first intimation of Hippie, of strangenesses to come - wrote Nik Cohn in 1971.
The boutique was owned by Michael Rainey - a young designer, enterpreneur and self described dandy. He was a son of notorious society figure Marion Wrottesley. Before he opened Hung on You in December 1965, he was already well known in London for his eye-catching, yet elegant style and his marriage to aristocrat Jane Ormsby - Gore - a daughter of Lord Harlech. She was a contributing editor of Vogue and she became Rainey's buisness partner when Hung on You opened on 22 Cale Street.

Michael Rainey in 1966

Unlike John Pearse, Mr.Fish, or John Stephen, Michael  Rainey did not have a previous experience in fashion industry.He drew his inspiration from his stylish friends, such as his wife's brother Julian Ormsby - Gore, aristocrat Neil Winterbotham or antique dealer Christopher Gibbs.

Neil Winterbotham in Hung on You, 1966

Christopher Gibbs, 1966

Hung on You's sources of inspiration for designs and tailoring policy were similar to those of Granny Takes a Trip. There was a fascination with Art Nouveau visible in artwork by Tony Little on the walls of the shop.

Interior of Hung On You, 1967

Photoshoot for a cover of Life magazine inside Hung On You. The second left is Ossie Clark and first right is Neil Winterbotham. 11.07.1967. 

 Jess Down modelling jacket from Hung On You for Men In Vogue, 1966

George Harrison wearing same Hung On You jacket, 1966

Michael English had designed psychedelic posters advertising Hung on You.

There was also an oriental influence - Jane Ormsby-Gore was making regular trips to India in search of fabrics. Michael Rainey, just like John Pearse, was reworking vintage clothing trying to adapt it to the trends of the 1960's. He was making Liberty print jackets and mandarin collar shirts complete with frills. This was a peacock style at its finest - a psychedelic and dandified look, with references to past and to present, to East and to West. One of the customers of Hung on You described their clothes as "Edible looking - ice cream coloured (...) white, pink, pistachio-green and cream" (Paul Gorman, The Look, p. 83).

Typical white suit from Hung on You, 1966

Models Sara Crichton-Stuart and Twiggy outside Hung On You, 1966

Inside Hung On You, 1967

These clothes were often made by well-established East-End tailors who were working with fabrics supplied by Rainey. In his interview for Town magazine, Rainey said: "We are not tailors, but we will make things up for people if we think their ideas are good" (Gorman, p.83). The clothes were expensive - jackets were priced at around 35 guineas, and shirts between 6 and 7 guineas, but as one of the customers, Richard Neville recalls, "Groovers didn't mind paying triple for a floral chiffon shirt, because Mick Jagger had probably bought one like it the day before" (Gorman, p 83). The fact that Hung on You was embraced by pop stars, especially Beatles, Stones and The Who was very helpful for the business and in 1966 the shop moved to the new location - 430 King's Road.

Jenny Boyd (sister of Patti) outside Hung On You , 1967.

However, the success of Hung on You was short-lived - it closed down in September 1968. It was a part of the same pattern that caused the downfall of Granny Takes a Trip - expensive fabrics, cost of tailoring and inability of combining laid-back mentality with business. During its short existence, however, Hung on You was an influential place in an exclusive circle of London's young, rich and famous. Nik Cohn wrote: When you shopped at Hung On You, you felt like both Oscar Wilde and Captain Marvel, locked up inside one body(...) From past and present, and future, influence and cross-influence, Rainey wound up with something all his own, a personal montage. In my view, he was the most original designer that English menswear has produced (Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, p 120).