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.This newly-fashioned identity was then transmitted for widernational and international consumption via a range of media.The DailyTelegraph read the signs earlier than most, labelling London the mostexciting city in the world in a weekend edition in April 1965.Here,American journalist John Crosby name-checked the capital s main nightspots Annabel s in Berkeley Square, the Ad Lib Club and Ronnie Scott sjazz den in Soho, the Marquee on Wardour Street, the Scene on GreatWindmill Street and performed a roll-call of the fashionable glitterati,dukes and duchesses, designers and media darlings, whose presence hadmade London the gayest, most uninhibited, and in a wholly new, verymodern sense most wholly elegant city in the world.A more powerful· 9 1 · SB_C06.qxd 03/12/2004 15:22 Page 92SI XTI ES BRITAINpiece of myth-making came exactly one year later, when the US magazineTime carried a front-page feature on London: The Swinging City , focus-ing on how the capital had reinvented itself from being the centre ofa once-mighty empire into a city that now set the social and culturalmarkers for the rest of the world.As one of the female editors whoworked on it recalled, the article also gave a licence to indulge the fas-cination among the senior editors for mini-skirts (Green 1998a: 86).Central to both of these commentaries was the idea of a newly apparent classlessness , based on the observation that many of the leading swinging London celebrities came from working-class or lower-middleclass backgrounds.Photographers such as David Bailey, Brian Duffy andTerence Donovan were East-End working class the press was delightedwhen the unstuffy Bailey wore a light blue sweater and green corduroytrousers for his wedding to actress Catherine Deneuve in August 1965 while actors such as Michael Caine and Terence Stamp were drawn froma similar social milieu.Now they could afford to drive Rolls-Royces andmix easily with the youthful offspring of Britain s major titled families,whose acquiescence in the development of classless relations was seen ascrucial to the swinging London phenomenon.When the Beatles wereawarded their MBEs at Buckingham Palace in October 1965 it was takenas proof positive that a new classless age had truly arrived.Of course swinging London was always a highly selective composite,based predominantly on the fashionable western districts of Soho,Chelsea, Mayfair and South Kensington.It ignored the council housingestates, corner shops and greasy cafés that typified most of the city.It alsosat uncomfortably alongside alternative narratives of the state of thenation , such as the rediscovery of poverty by social researchers in late1965 (see chapter 9), or people s absorbtion in the horrific details ofthe Moors Murderers trial in April May 1966.But, as with all mythicalconstructions, it corresponded to an important imaginative reality, andthe myth had a cultural resonance which transcended the tiny cliqueswho made up London s interconnected scenes.By 1962 London alreadyemployed more than one-fifth of the country s working population(Rycroft 2002: 578).As the Time article noted, some 30 per cent of itstotal population was in the 15-to-34-year-old age bracket, and an influx ofpost-colonial immigrants meant that London had a more cosmopolitanethnic mix than anywhere else in the country.Between 1965 and 1967 all· 9 2 · SB_C06.qxd 03/12/2004 15:22 Page 936 u Swinging Londonof these factors helped to make the congested capital city an importantgathering point for creative expression across a range of cultural forms,the combination of which produced a new aesthetic that was widelyshared throughout the rest of Britain.Fashion was at the leading edge ofthis phenomenon, pushed forward by design pioneers like Mary Quantand John Stephen, and continued by art-school graduates who had spenttheir time at college studying fine arts and graphic design as well asfashion.Indeed, as fashion rose to high prominence during the era of swinging London , so its status as an academic discipline within the artcolleges also gradually improved.A prime force here was Mary Quant,who gained a national profile after she opened Bazaar, her first shop, inthe King s Road in 1955, designing and selling sexy clothes such asbrightly coloured mini-skirts and skinny-ribbed sweaters to the youngChelsea set.The store was a magnet for those who wanted entry intothe fashionable scene.Before he became the Rolling Stones manager,Andrew Loog Oldham was employed to dress the Bazaar windows a jobhe likened to an apprenticeship for designing record covers (Oldham2000: 94).Quant s ability to conceive and implement new design ideasalmost daily ensured that there was a constant turnover of new stock inher store.Ten years later she was being described as the major fashionforce in the world outside Paris (cited in Booker 1969: 22).Quant and theart-school-trained fashion girls who followed her lead absorbed Pop Artand pop music references into their design and retail strategies, makinghaute couture and luxury fashion look out-of-date in comparison withtheir own off-the-peg clothes (McRobbie 1998: 35 6).The mini-skirt wasintegral to the new look, designed as a symbol of sexual freedom andmodelled by the catwalk icons Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, whose tinywaistlines were an ironic counterpoint to the post-austerity abundanceof the sixties.Barbara Hulanicki, whose Biba boutique had a clientelethat included Ready, Steady, Go! presenter Cathy MacGowan, offeredher own explanation for the new style. The postwar babies had beendeprived of nourishing protein in childhood and grew up into beau-tiful skinny people.A designer s dream.It didn t take much for them tolook outstanding (1983: 79).The infantile dolly bird look became thedominant style represented in fashion magazines like Petticoat and Novawhich in turn fed the public appetite for the uniform.As Angela Cartercommented in a piece for New Society in 1967, clothes such as this had· 9 3 · SB_C06.qxd 03/12/2004 15:22 Page 94SI XTI ES BRITAINa significant social and psychological function as disguises which givea relaxation from one s own personality.More constructively, she sug-gested: Style means the presentation of the self as a three-dimensionalart object, to be wondered at and handled.And this involves a newattitude to the self which is thus adorned (Carter 1967: 866).It wasimportant, therefore, that boutiques selling the latest style spread fromthe capital to other towns and cities, modelled on stores like Bazaar andBiba which became, as Angela McRobbie observed, focal points for youthculture as well as a place in which to adorn the self.The boutiques were as innovative in design as the clothes they stocked.They didn t look like any other shops
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