HISTORY OF 1960S FASHION AND TEXTILES

Shopping

Tote bag, Unknown, late 1960s. Museum no. T.35-1992 (click image for larger version)

Shops played an important part in popularising new fashions. Whole areas of London like the King's Road and Carnaby Street were transformed as boutiques took over. Boutiques sold an inexpensive range of rapidly changing outfits and offered an informal atmosphere and self-service, unlike traditional clothes shops.

At the same time, quirky interior decorations and pop music lent the boutique an individuality which was lacking in the newly built chain stores which were taking over the high street.

John Stephen was one of the first to open a boutique selling menswear on Carnaby Street. Demand was such that he ended up owning eight more shops in the same location. Meanwhile, Michael Fish established Mr. Fish, selling psychedelic-inspired outfits provocatively close to Savile Row. Exotically named outlets opening their doors on the King's Road included Bazaar and Michael Rainey's Hung On You.

Boots, Barbara Hulanicki, 1969-70. Museum no. T.67+A-1985 (click image for larger version)

Other Chelsea shops were Nigel Waymouth's Granny Takes A Trip, where fashionable hippies shopped for antique clothing, and Quorum run by Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock. Biba's first premises were an old chemist's shop in Kensington, but the business eventually expanded to take over a huge 1930s-built department store on Kensington High Street, where Barbara Hulanicki held parties in the roof garden.

Another new approach was taken by Terence Conran in his shop Habitat. Inspired by furniture shops he had seen in Scandinavia, he displayed goods in a minimal pine interior, stacked in piles as though they were in a warehouse. Conran was successful in marketing well-designed domestic goods, including home furnishings, at relatively low prices.