The Fashion BusinessIn 1961, the year the Beatles were discovered, Quant began to mass-produce
miniskirts. It was several years before the hemlines of adult women started
to rise above the knee, but the styles of “Swinging London” gradually made
an impact around the world, even in Paris. In 1961 French designer André
Courrèges showed his first miniskirts. Courrèges later claimed, “I was the
man who invented the mini. Mary Quant only commercialized the idea.”
But Quant dismissed his claim: “It wasn’t me or Courrèges who invented
the miniskirt anyway – it was the girls in the street who did it.” Although
Quant’s success did not herald the rise of a new generation of women designers,
it did mark the official beginning of a revolution in fashion based on youth.
Styles began on the street, among a core group of working-class youths
who were obsessively concerned with issues of personal style. They were
known as “mods” – an abbreviation of “modern”. In the 1950s, menswear
tended to be staid and sober. But as England’s youth culture blossomed,
clothing for young men became increasingly colourful, modish, and body
conscious, advertising the wearer’s sex appeal. This transformation was called
the “Peacock Revolution”.
Youth culture was based on music and fashion, sex and drugs. According
to boutique owner John Stephen, when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
adopted a style, “fans noticed what they wore and wanted to buy the same
clothes.” Just as the miniskirt was probably indirectly influenced by the
greater availability of contraception, especially the birth-control pill, so also
did changing sexual attitudes influence men’s fashions. Sir Mark Palmer
recalled that “There was a time when men wouldn’t wear coloured clothes
for fear of being thought queer.” However, after homosexuality was decrim-
inalized in Britain in 1967, gay men felt less need to disguise their sexual
orientation to avoid persecution.
“Sexual intercourse began in 1963,” declared the poet Philip Larkin with
pardonable exaggeration. Certainly, the sexual revolution influenced the
course of fashion history. As we move into the twenty-first century and fashion
becomes ever more erotic and taboo-breaking, it is clear that the youthquake
of the 1960s played a pivotal role in the development in modern fashion.
Soon the “mod” style became an international phenomenon. “Even the
peers are going “mod”” declared Life International in a piece on the “Spread
of the Swinging Revolution”, published in July 1966.
It all began with the teenage ‘mods’ who spent most of their pocket money on
flamboyant clothes. Now the frills and flowers are being adopted in other strata
of Britain’s society, and the male-fashions born in London have joined the theatre
among the British exports that aren’t lagging. The way-out styles already have
appeared in such disparate metropolises as Paris and Chicago and may eventually
change the whole raison d’etre of male dress.