Everywhere The Carnabetian Army Marches On

A nice documentary footage of Carnaby Street from around 1966 to 1968 featuring all the John Stephen's boutiques as well as Gear, I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet, Mates and Lady Jane (How great are those hangers at Lady Jane!).

Also, we can see Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees collecting the John Stephen Award for the best dressed male of 1966, as well as few other celebrities who frequented Carnaby Street in those days, like Jean Shrimpton or certain disgraced TV presenter.
We also get a brief glimpse of  Carnaby Street after its heyday, from early to late 1970's.

John's Children modeling for John Stephen

Two members of British Psychedelic band John's Children are modeling kaftans designed by John Stephen in 1967. The band was mostly remembered for their 1968 song "Desdemona" (which was banned by the BBC for containing the line "Lift up your skirt and fly") as well as the fact that their line-up at one time included Marc Bolan.  

Lord John, Mates Boutique and post-1966 Carnaby Street

In the mid-1960's , after John Stephen's success, Carnaby Street became a gold mine for fashion retailers. For a few years in the late 1960's, the combination of Carnaby Street address and colourful clothes became almost a guarantee of instant, but short term success. Stephen's clothes were and remained well-made. His imitators realized this to be unnecessary - George Melly wrote - It didn't matter how quickly everything fell to bits. The clothes weren't meant to last, but to dazzle. Their shops, blaring pop music and vying with each other for a campest window and decor, spread the length of Carnaby Street and its environs (George Melly, Revolt Into Style, p 151). Among those competitors,only two men managed to come to a financial success comparable to John Stephen's. These men were Warren Gold, who ran Lord John, and Irvine Sellars who ran Mates boutique.

Shoppers at Lord John, 1966.

Lord John was started by brothers Warren and David Gold who opened two boutiques on Carnaby Street in 1964 after a successful period of selling suede jackets from their stall on Petticoat Lane. Aping John Stephen, Lord John specialized in Mod look. Warren Gold made sure that his designs were always up to date, and followed the trends, which, as far as male Mod look was concerned , were changing on almost weekly basis in the mid-1960's. This strategy proved an instant success, and soon Gold brothers were seen around London            

driving Rolls-Royces. Warren Gold liked his gangster-like image. Nik Cohn wrote about him: When I interviewed him, Gold wore a see-through bodyshirt over a golden-tanned spare tyre and was not communicative: 'Let's make this fast , young man - I've got a very busy day' (Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, p 115).    

Warren Gold, 1969

In 1967 Gold brothers commissioned decorators Binder, Edwards & Vaughan to paint the exterior of Lord John's branch on the corner of Carnaby Street and Ganton Street with a psychedelic mural, making it probably the most eye-catching building on the street. This, combined with the skillful advertising campaign in the press, only added to the success of Lord John. By 1970, Gold brothers owned eight boutiques, and expanded it to thirty during early seventies.

Psychedelic mural by Binder, Edwards & Vaughan

Newspaper ad for Lord John from around 1966.

Jackets from Lord John from early 1970's (found on E-bay).

Coat from Lord John from 1968 displayed in Victoria and Albert Museum.

Cat Stevens outside Lord John, 1966

The Yardbirds at Lord John, 1966

Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees being fitted by Warren Gold himself, 1967

Fashion spread in Fab 208 magazine featuring Lord John coat, 1967

Lord John shopfront circa 1969

Outside Lord John, 1969 (courtesy of John Hellier)

Irvine Sellars was a founder of Mates - one of the first chains of unisexual boutiques in London. 

Mates, 1967

Just like Warren Gold, he started his career in fashion from a stall in East End. Observing the beginnings of Carnaby Street, he had noticed that more and more often boys accompanied girls on the shopping trips (and vice versa). He decided to start a boutique that would sell clothes for both sexes. His designs , just like those of Warren Gold's, were initially aimed at Mod youth - and just like Warren Gold , he did not quite achieve John Stephen's originality. Nevertheless, he was making money, and by 1969 (at the age of 32), he owned a chain of 24 boutiques. Nik Cohn wrote about Sellars: He had his own factory in Neasden, and a house in Brighton, and a very large flat overlooking Marble Arch, impersonal and full of antiques which he paid a friend to choose for him. 'This is one of the biggest flats in London, and I can prove that', he said. 'It has ten rooms, three bathrooms and the furnishings are worth a fortune.'

Irvine Sellars, 1970.

He was not villainous. It would be pleasant to depict the Carnaby Street operators as bloodsuckers, ruthless exploiters, milking innocent kids of their very last dime; but Sellars wasn't like that. 'I'm in business', he said, 'and when you're in business, your personal tastes come second to your profits, or they should do. People try to get at me but I'm not a monster, I'm a human being, like everyone else (Cohn, p 115).

Mates on Carnaby Street , circa 1967

Warren Gold and Irvine Sellars were typical entrepreneurs that had overtaken Carnaby Street after 1966 - businessmen first, designers second. They do not have the same significance for fashion history as John Stephen (who, as elsewhere in this blog was said, is himself very underrated), but, just like him ,they became rich. And when the sixties ended ,their boutiques were on the 'way out' - just like John Stephen's. Both Gold and and Sellars ended up selling their businesses, once they stopped being profitable. Warren Gold remained in the clothing business - he came back to Petticoat Lane, where in the Big Red Building he opened Goldrange - a clothing factory outlet store, which he owns to this day.

Sellars (These days known as Sellar - he seems to have dropped 's' from his surname) went into property business, which made him one of the richest people in Britain. Today, he is one of the main investors behind The Shard - the new tallest skyscraper in London.

  

    

Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen, Pt. 2

Here's some more pictures of Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen circa 1966.

In these ads , we can catch a rare glimpse of John Stephen's ladies range. The model is Kiki Dee - a pop singer today mostly remembered for her 1976 duet with Elton John, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart".  

Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen

I have found this photo of Mick Avory, drummer from The Kinks, modeling a John Stephen suit in 1966. It was in Uncut magazine. I wouldn't take for granted that it really is John Stephen's suit, because there were some mistakes in the article (They actually referred to a designer as John Stephens), but it is quite likely, as it is quite typical for John Stephen's designs from that period. If anybody knows more about this photo, please leave a comment. 

Vince - Small Boutique That Initiated Big Changes

In my last post, I looked at the career of John Stephen - a true revolutionary of male fashion in the 1960's. Now, I would like to devote a little space to Bill Green and his boutique called Vince (1954 - 1969). Bill Green pre-dated John Stephen (who was also his one-time employee) few years, and the height of his career was in the late 1950's - however, his designs were an inspiration for many designers who would revolutionize male fashion in 1960's.

Bill Green started his career in the late 1940's from being a photographer specializing in taking photos of semi-naked wrestlers and musclemen. His models were wearing provocative bikini-style posing briefs, designed by Green himself, who, in the absence of  readily made garments decided to start his own line of briefs. He began to sell them through the mail order catalogue in 1950. His homoerotic designs appealed initially almost exclusively to gay customers. After holiday in France and Italy in 1952, Green, impressed by young Frenchmen who were sporting 'existentialist' look - black sweaters worn with lack jeans - started his own line of such clothes. He was the first one to introduce this look to British men. His mail order business flourished, and  in 1954 he opened Vince's Men Shop in Newburgh Street. This choice of location was not accidental -in 1950's, this part of Soho was an epicentre of gay underworld. Marshall Street Public Baths - a popular cruising area for gay men was just around the corner.However, the clientele of Vince quickly expanded beyond gay community. His unconventional designs appealed to young West End actors and Chelsea bohemians. Green was using fabrics which were unusual at the time - velvet, silk, bed-ticking for hipster trousers and pre-faded denims. is window displays were also quite shocking at the time - the mannequins dressed in briefs, or pink hipster trousers.

Typical magazine ad for Vince from 1962.

One of the shoppers at Vince's recalls his visit in the mid-1950's: "The only person (I) saw was tall, well-dressed young Negro who bought a pair of coloured denim hipster trousers. The Negro was obviously homosexual and I realized that homosexuals had been buying this stuff for years. they were the only people with the nerve to wear it" (Jeremy Reed, The King Of Carnaby Street, p 8). But the fact that, by late 1950's, it was not just homosexuals who had the nerve to wear it, proves that there was a shift in taste among young Londoners. The clientele of Vince included such names as actor Peter Sellers, jazz musician George Melly (who joked: "I went into Vince's to buy a new tie and they measured my inside leg" (Reed, p 9).) Pablo Picasso (who bought a pair of suede trousers), The King of Denmark, and young model-soon-to-turn-actor Sean Connery. Bill Green's designs did not influence street style or youth fashion directly as teenagers generally could not afford to shop there. However, the impact of Vince is difficult to underestimate. For the first time it was acceptable for heterosexual men to wear clothes previously only worn by homosexuals. It was also the first time when leisure were became chic - jeans and sweater could  be worn for an evening out from now on. This was a step towards informality, ambivalence and flamboyance - and it led grounds for a revolution in male fashion that happened in 1960's.  The young man largely responsible for this revolution worked briefly as a sales assistant at Vince's. Bill Green had sensed is ambition: "Not much good" - he said of his work as sales assistant - "Always dreaming of the bigger things" (Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, p 64). The young man himself also seemed dissatisfied: "I was just standing there taking money. Suddenly I thought, if this guy (Green) can do it, so can I..." (Reed, p 19). The young man was, of course, John Stephen. He had learnt a lot at Vince's and his own early designs and shop fronts owed a lot to Bill Green. However, the rise of John Stephen as a designer marked the downfall of Bill Green's. Stephen was much more in touch with the youth culture. Bill Green could not keep up with rapid changes in fashion which were happening from early 1960's onwards. By mid-1960's, his shop became un -chic. Financial problems forced him to move Vince's Men Shop from Newburgh Street to cheaper location in North London. In 1969, he closed his shop for good.  Bill Green might have been one of the initiators of the revolution in fashion, but he quickly fallen behind the times. In 1971, Green (by then a manager of a restaurant in Soho) said to Nik Cohn: "If I was to go into male fashion again today, I wouldn't even know where to start" (Cohn, p 51).

Outfits from Vince's Men Shop from mid-1960's in Victoria and Albert Museum.

John Stephen - A Forgotten Fashion Revolutionary?

John Stephen and Mary Quant, 1966.

It seems today, that John Stephen is a slightly forgotten figure. Much has been said about the impact of  1960's fashion designers such as Mary Quant or Barbara Hulanicki on female fashion, but John Stephen who was just as revolutionary in a field of male fashion, is usually being omitted from Fashion History. It was particularly visible during last year's exhibition Carnaby Street - 50 years of fashion and music (curated by Amy De La Haye and Judith Clark) which took place in a pop up shop on Carnaby Street. The role of John Stephen in making Carnaby Street a epicentre of Swinging London, seemed to have been downplayed by the authors of the exhibition. Out of original garments displayed, nearly all were female garments, and none of them was by John Stephen.It seems highly innacurate, considering that Carnaby Street was associated largely with male fashion - thanks to John Stephen , who, by late 1966 owned 14 boutiques on Carnaby Street.

Luckilly, the most recent publications about 1960's  fashion such as magnificent Day Of The Peacock by Geoffrey Aquilina Ross and Boutique London by Richard Lester give John Stephen the credit he deserves. And, of course there was a new biography of John Stephen by Jeremy Reed (on which I will focus later).

In order to fully understand John Stephen's role as one of the 'architects' of Swinging London, it is worth to take a brief look at his fascinating life.

John Stephen was born in Glasgow in 1934. He came to London at the age of 18. Interested in fashion, young John took up a job at Moss Bross in Covent Garden, a well-known tailoring establishment, which specialized in evening suits. Stephen had learnt to cut in the military department of Moss Bross and was gaining experience as a salesman on a shop floor for a salary of £6 per week. he was not comfortable with a formal atmosphere of Moss Bross and he spotted the absence of outlets selling modern clothes for youth in London. He observed the explosion of Teddy Boy fashion and he had seen it for what it was - a beginning of an era where teenagers  would search for their own identity which they could express through clothing (unlike most of his contemporaries, who had seen it merely as a brief fad). Desperate to open his own shop, Stephen worked double shifts to save enough money. In addition to his day job at Moss Bross, he worked as a night waiter at Forte's - a West End restaurant. in 1956, he started working at Vince - an avant-garde, and then uber-cool boutique situated in Newburgh Street ,which specialized in  selling quirky clothes to bohemians, homosexuals, and West End actors. The owner, Bill Green, felt that, Stephen's enthusiasm, good looks and impeccable style would make him popular with customers. However, ambitious Stephen had seen Vince merely as a stepping stone in his own career. In 1957, with a help from his new business associate, Bill Franks, Stephen managed to open his own shop at 19 Beak Street. His early designs were not million miles away from those of Bill Green - they included hipster trousers, multi-coloured denim, as well as tab-collar shirts in colours such as peacock blue, foggy-gray or pink. He appropriated some of the advertising tactics used at Vince's - drawings of musclemen, casually dressed James Dean lookalikes, etc. Before his shop at Beak Street started breaking even, he managed to open another one thanks to courtesy of his landlord. The second shop was located at 5 Carnaby Street. At that time, in 1958, Carnaby Street was just a gray back street of Soho - a home to a few tobacco shops and Central Electricity Board building. Within the next six years, thanks to Stephen, it would become an epicentre of London's fashion world.

Carnaby street in 1966 - at the height of Stephen's career.

Stephen's biographer, Jeremy Reed writes that: "Stephen had a mission that was compounded into youthful genes, not only to change the way men looked forever, but o make clothes and the compatible awareness of self-image into necessary lifestyle. Nobody before or afterwards was to provide the individual with such a rapid update of detail-obsessed fashion, to the extent that styles were deleted every week" (Jeremy Reed, John Stephen - The King of Carnaby Street, p 24). Stephen was also the first designer to understand the dynamics of street style. He observed mod subculture, which was rapidly growing in the late 1950's, and was aiming his designs at these fashion-conscious young men. Knowing that buttons featured prominently in the mod iconography, he was using them in an innovative way, by arranging them in double or triple groupings on the shirt fronts. He introduced patterns such as paisley and polka dot to the designs of his shirts and ties. He was designing collarless suits as early as 1958, few years before they were popularized by the Beatles. The popularity of his designs was growing, and, in 1959, he opened third boutique at 49/51 Carnaby Street. Apart from the originality of his designs, the key to his success might have been relatively low prices. His jackets were priced between £7 - £10, trousers and shirts £3 - £5 (the average weekly wage of a teenager in early 1960's was about £16). Nik Cohn writes: " Every time you walked past a John Stephen window, there was something new and loud in it, and when you counted out your money, you found you could afford it" (Nik Cohn, Today There Are No Gentlemen, p 66). Nearly all fashion writers analyzing John Stephen's impact (Nik Cohn, Alistair O'Neill, Jeremy Reed) indicate his young age as a key factor in his success. Being a part of 'youth' himself made him understand youth fashion better than his contemporaries - like, for example, Bill Green, who was in his forties in he late 1950's. Stephen understood the intentions of Mods - they wanted to look well, but not necessarily to attract he opposite sex - that was a secondary reason for dressing up. It was their longing to be seen , to be the Face (slang term for a fashion leader) that really mattered. Jeremy Reed writes that the attitude of Mods "was one of remaining unattainable, and their exclusively male coterie invited mental homosexuality and gossip as a substitute for intimacy with girls. While Mods were their own, and not John Stephen's creation, their sexual ambiguity ideally suited his equally ambivalent clothes" (Reed, p 67). this phenomenon has its origins in Regency dandyism. George Walden, in his essay  Who Is a Dandy? which analyzes the impact of Beau Brummell on early 19th century male fashion, wrote: that sexuality is an adjunct, rather than at the centre of dandy's creed (George Walden, Who Is a Dandy?, p 32).

By 1966, John Stephen owned fourteen boutiques on Carnaby Street, as well as branches on Regent Street, in Brighton and Loughton. Apart from his boutiques for men (called 'His Clothes') he also owned 'His 'N' Hers' and 'Tre Camp' for girls, and his own tailoring shop.

Male West One - one of John Stephen's boutiques on Carnaby Street, 1966.

Stephen's Domino Male and Trecamp on Carnaby Street, 1966.

Apart from the fore mentioned affordable prices, the success of John Stephen was assured by the fact that Pop stars were his frequent customers. Rock n'  Roll idols Cliff Richard and Billy Fury were shopping at John Stephen's as early as 1960. Billy Walker of Walker Brothers was modelling for him in 1962, and by 1966, nearly every group in London - most notably The Rolling Stones, The Who, Small Faces and The Kinks, were sporting John Stephen's clothes.



Mick Jagger and Keith Richards shopping at John Stephen's, 1965. 

Towards the end of 1960's Stephen's designs moved on with the fashion once again  - in 1967 he started incorporating oriental elements in a spirit of hippie fashion. He was designing colourful kaftans, decorated with beads, tunics and foppish dandy outfits , inspired by Regency fashions. The Peacock Revolution was a result of a momentum started in the late fifties by John Stephen.

Suit by John Stephen from 1970 displayed in Victoria and Albert Museum.

Stephen's star as a designer started fading in the late sixties. By 1970 he was generally seen as terribly demode. In 1975 he sold his company, which, by then was struggling with financial problems. After another takeover the company finally ceased to exist in 1986. Stephen himself disappeared from public eye ( although he was still involved in fashion, working for the small bespoke tailoring company). He died in 2004. A year later a plaque with his name was unveiled on Carnaby Street in recognition to his outstanding contribution to British Fashion.

Suit  by John Stephen from 1968 (University of North Texas collection)

Shirt by John Stephen with typical for mid-1960's round collar. Found on E-bay.

Tie by John Stephen bought in Carnaby Street around 1967 (courtesy of Mr. Peter Lowe) 

Eastern-influenced hippie menswear by John Stephen (circa 1968)

Crochet tops and striped cotton skirt and trousers by John Stephen, 1965

John Stephen's groovy wigs, modelled by the man himself, 1968

John Stephen dressing one of his models. 1967

In a late 2010, a biography of John Stephen written by Jeremy Reed was published. Unfortunately, the book does not do John Stephen justice. Although large parts of it are interesting, it has a lot of considerable drawbacks. Bizarrely, it only covers Stephen's life until 1969, so we don't find out anything about the downfall of his empire. There is very little about Stephen's private life - his lifelong struggle with bi-polarity disorder is hardly mentioned. Also, the images are black and white (which seems strange in a book about the designer who was famous for introducing colour into male clothing) and there is no name index or bibliography at the end. 

It is good that a book about John Stephen has been written, but unfortunately,one can't help but have an impression that Jeremy Reed's effort is a wasted opportunity.