London and its influence on Fashion

Chelsea, King’s Road and Carnaby Street

It was 1955 when the first boutique was opened in Chelsea. Named Bazaar, and situated on the King’s Road, its owners were the designer Mary Quant and her husband Alexander Plunket Green. They started a trend that became very popular in Chelsea-after Quant’s Bazaar came Glass & Black, Biba, Clobber, Hung on You and Granny Takes a Trip. It was the first time that fashion was not addressed to the richest classes. The people who owned these boutiques were part of the Chelsea Set, but still they needed to work, and as a result got involved with small crafts and businesses connected to the arts. Most boutiques offered their own clothes, made in-house, often on the top-floor of the shops. These were the very first steps London took towards becoming a fashion capital.

In the 1960s, Mary Quant designed the Mini skirt and all young adults in town were riding Vespas and Lambrettas, listening to reggae music and partying till dawn. These were the years of the mods, when London fashion found its own real character where it still is, on the streets. As Mary Quant described, “Once only the rich, the Establishment set the fashion. Now it is the inexpensive little dress seen on the girls in High Street. These girls...are alive...looking, listening, ready to try anything new...They may be dukes’ daughters, doctors’ daughters, dockers’ daughters. They are not interested in status symbols. They don’t worry about accents or class...They represent the whole new spirit that is present day Britain – a classless spirit that has grown up out of the second world war...They are the mods.”

Vivienne Westwood and the Punk culture

It was also on the King’s Road that the Punk fashion movement was born.  After the boutique Hung on You changed management a few times, in 1970 it was called Paradise Garage. Out of the back of the shop, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren used to sell second hand 1950’s rock and roll albums. One year later they took over the business and called it Let it Rock. This was the beginning of Westwood’s career: although she never was trained as a designer, she started creating copies and interpretations of the Teddy Boys’ style. Let it Rock became soon Too Fast to Live too Young to Die, and Westwood began dealing with biker rock items. After that, it changed again into SEX and specialised in leather and rubber clothing that were previously considered for the fetish. SEX changed name again in 1977 into Seditionaries.

Thanks to the various makeovers of this boutique combined with the success of the band managed by McLaren, the Sex Pistols, the Punk movement developed internationally and became the cult we remember, which to this day inspires the creations of artists and designers. Meanwhile Vivienne Westwood also grew up professionally becoming one of Britain’s most influential and prestigious designers.

Read the rest of this article on page 20 of NOIR, the London Issue.