Disclaimer: After being interested in Mr. London, he does it again.
This time, he talks to us about post-war tailoring, and the stylistic revolution that marked England in the 1950s. He has the floor!
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London, at the end of the 1950s. A gray city saturated by fog and pollution, a destroyed capital struggling to rebuild , where the scars of the Second World War are still visible on every street corner.
Rationing only ended in 1954 for essential foods like eggs and cheese. It is hard to imagine that 10 years after the war, the restrictions are still so present.
The mod influences of English tailoring
Despite everything, the United Kingdom is gradually emerging from its dark years, and the industry is operating at full capacity. Life resumes its course, with composure and discipline. But young people are bored, terribly.
350 kilometers to the north, a group of teenagers in suits are preparing to revolutionize music, inspired by the American programs that pirate radio stations are beginning to broadcast, and the albums brought back to the United Kingdom by sailors returning from a voyage.
As you can imagine, we are talking about the Beatles before Yoko comes to sow discord .
The history of the Island is changing. Pop madness invaded England, led by the Beatles, then by the Stones, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and many others. From skiffle (styles with African-American blues influences, editor's note) from the beginnings in Liverpool, to the British blues boom, including pure rock, the country is becoming the epicenter of new musical movements.
This phenomenon reflects the appearance in Europe of a “youth” culture , with its multiple subcultures. Teenagers soon ditched their blazers to wear American blue jeans , and adopted the dress codes of their favorite musicians, gathering in groups with very recognizable styles.
Dressed in small tailor-made suits and large khaki coats, the mods only travel by scooter. They wear the lapels of their jackets very thin, like ties, polo shirts, and “Penny Loafers” moccasins, popularized a few years earlier by Kennedy. In short, they are petty bourgeois, who take advantage of their parents' purchasing power to have fun, dress up, and go dancing.
Mods who will demonstrate. They can't do anything without their scooters!
Their absolute enemies are the rockers, who claim to be "working class", and wear the leather jacket, blue jeans and white t-shirt required, in order to be comfortable on their big motorcycles, far from the twink scooters.
Everyone has their own style, everyone has their own musical tastes, everyone has their own idols. And in the evening at the dance hall, the opposing bands get into each other's throats, banging with helmets if necessary.
We are far from the wise English schoolboy, tie and wearing a round cap.
However, in the West End district, the ongoing cultural revolution leaves old gentlemen cold, who wear their double-breasted suits on their way to the club, bowler hats on their heads and umbrellas under their elbows.
Only the headlines in the Times about the juvenile delinquency of these ridiculously disguised teenagers worry them from time to time. Their tailors continue to offer classic pre-war fabrics, straps in boxcloth or Thurston fabric , and beautiful knee-high socks. Rights in their boots.
The world could sink around them, but English tailoring cannot evolve! A blindness to societal changes that made fashion photographer Cecil Beaton react in 1965:
It's ridiculous that they continue to make clothes that make men look like PG Wodehouse characters. Their style bores me terribly - completely outdated. They should really take inspiration from mods... Their barriers are down, and anything is possible. Savile Row really needs to reorganize itself, and to use a trite expression, get going! »
Cecil Beaton significantly influenced the "Swinging London" scene. He distinguished himself in the creation of numerous portraits, each great figure of the time passed in front of his lens.
Hardy Amies, the Queen's official tailor, began to revolutionize the men's fashion market a few years earlier, by offering ready-to-wear fashion shows . But the cuts remain classic, and it would never occur to a British tailoring institution to go and see what was happening in the boutiques of Carnaby Street, then the Mecca of mod, and soon hippie, boutiques.
For the meeting between the elegant classic style of the elders and the pop chic of the new generations to finally take place, it will take a young entrepreneur. But not just any one! An aristocrat, and an Etonian one at that.
Etonian ? This name designates a student of the prestigious Eton school, founded in the 15th century, and corresponding here to the middle school/high school years.
The only difference being that the students wear a tailor-made tailcoat to go to class, that their parents pay thirty thousand pounds for annual tuition, that the French teachers are sent directly by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that From the age of 12, students are prepared to rule England, or even the world.
In short, it is one of the most exclusive schools on the planet, and the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, attended the establishment, like many of his predecessors.
We're the Etonians, and we're going to rule the world!
But let’s get back to our costumes, and our aristocratic entrepreneurs. Lycett Green, since that's who we're talking about, founded the Blades boutique in 1962, and moved it to Savile Row a few years later. He was the first to infuse a pop spirit into his creations, notably with velvet suits and liberty print shirts.
The time is also for the reinterpretation of prints, such as the paisley pattern, in a more pop, even hippie version. If parents used these busy designs for their ties or pocket squares , children make shirts, or even pants, and find in these convoluted patterns (of Persian or Indian origins) the reflection of their new psychedelic aspirations.
Savile Row, between classicism and modernity
But in Savile Row, it is a young apprentice who is preparing to lead the real style revolution . After seven years with Donaldson Willams and Wards, a young man named Tommy Nutter opened his own house in 1968, at 35A on the famous street. He takes in his luggage Edward Sexton, a cutter in the same company.
The famous Tommy Nutter. Note the way it plays on volumes and cuts!
Several of his clients lent him money to settle down, including the director of the Beatles' production company, as a neighbor. Apple Corps , which still belongs to the most famous group in the world, is in fact located at number 3, Savile Row.
It is therefore quite natural that Tommy Nutter creates the costumes for the “fab four” for the famous Abbey Road cover, with the exception of George Harrison, who walks around in jeans.
The cut is clearly modern, the pants are slightly flared, Ringo's jacket looks like a frock coat, and John Lennon is dressed completely in white. Very shocking , but revolutionary.
To make matters worse, Tommy Nutter also creates suits for women, notably the famous white tuxedo jacket for Bianca Jagger, wife of Sir Mick , the leader of the Rolling Stones. It’s this jacket that Bianca wears on her wedding day with a skirt and a hat…. but with nothing underneath.
Bianca Jagger's white tuxedo has truly become cult. Even today, certain women's collections continue to draw direct inspiration from it, such as at Versace.
The 70s were thus those of Nutter, who used his perfect knowledge of clothing and the technique of Edward Sexton to make the reputation of their house, and to constantly innovate: pie shovel shirt collars above the jacket collar, gigantic lapels, mix of horizontal and vertical stripes…
And a decade later, in the 80s, it was still Nutter who created the Joker costume for Jack Nicholson, in Tim Burton's Batman. A very British inspiration, with the use of tartan, peak lapels, and the double-breasted waistcoat with lapels, with a little something French dandy in the neck knot, and a completely different color palette.
Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton as Joker and Batman.
Throughout all these years, Tommy Nutter-style tailoring has of course remained a separate adventure, influencing some tailors, but not all. He is important in the history of men's fashion, certainly, but not omnipresent.
For the big houses of Mayfair, it’s “business as usual” . The Gieves house became Gieves and Hawkes in 1974, after purchasing Hawkes and Co, and orders for classic costumes continued unabated throughout the street, whether from Anderson and Sheppard, Kilgour, Huntsman or even Henry Poole. It must be said that not everyone can show up at the office wearing a neon pink pie collar!
In the early 1980s, a young man took his first steps with Tommy Nutter, as he himself had done 20 years earlier. His name is Thimoty Everest. A few years later, another apprentice named Alexander McQueen arrived at a neighboring house on Savile Row. The following decade, these two figures, along with a few others, revolutionized English fashion, for the second time in thirty years.
