“As the back-to-the-land cult gathers momentum, sprinkling parsley on the stew and sipping camomile tea are just for the amateurs…”

Illustration by Ian Beck.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Cosmopolitan, May 1974

Liberty print dress by Jeff Banks. Hat throughout by Edward Mann. Petticoat throughout by Laura Ashley

Styled by Caroline Baker. Photographed by Harri Peccinotti.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Nova, May 1975

Smock dress and matching pyjama trousers by Serena Shaffer at Electric Fittings.

Dress by Christian Aujord.

Top and circle skirt by Janice Wainwright with print by Bernard Neville for Cantoni.

Spotty bikini by Plaimar at Simpsons

Nothing new has happened to swimwear for many summers. Colours and fabrics mark the fashion changes. The shapes stay the same. For a swimsuit is a swimsuit is a swimsuit- be it a one piece, a two piece, a half piece. And the shops are full of them. Lovely little things in super prints and colours. And that`s where the problems begin. They are little, very little indeed. Bikinis especially have got skimpier with every passing permissive year. A year ago a generously endowed size 12 could fit quite neatly into a size 12 swimsuit; today she has to squeeze herself into it and hope that all will stay put when in use. That is to say, if she can get into it at all. And to find a larger size is nigh impossible. The shops have either sold out already or else the buyer never stocked them, since, alas, the majority of today’s fashion- conscious ladies slim themselves down to the smaller sizes. Then there are the others- ‘them’, the unspeakable, unwearable, unsightly “them`, made by the British swimwear manufacturers especially for the fuller figure. And just one look at them is enough to put the fattiest, with good taste, off swimming and beaches for ever. The shapes are okay, for a swimsuit is a swimsuit is a swimsuit, but why couldn”t the manufacturers leave the voluptuous out of the swirls and violets and stretch-nylon crunchy fabrics? Why can`t they just make large swimsuits in plain and simple colours, stripes, dots and nice flower patterns? Meanwhile, until they all realise that the fuller figures sometimes have very good fashionable taste, all that`s left- apart from eating less — is to search among the rails of tiny inviting little bikinis and swimsuits in the hope of finding one that will do up.

Some things never change. I feel like we’re still having the same conversations about clothes now, and wistfully remembering a non-existent time when everyone was catered for and everything was of the highest quality. Still, of the highest quality are these extraordinary illustrations which, frankly, deserve to be framed and hung on a gallery wall…

By Caroline Baker. Drawings by Celestino Valenti.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Nova, July 1972

Blue and white striped swimsuit by Guitare

Multi coloured striped bikini by Jer-Sea

…and a good double entendre will never date. Fnar fnar.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Honey, April 1970

Words by Tina Brown. Photographs by Pat Booth.

When Bianca Jagger wants to be dismissive her favourite word is “marginal”. Los Angeles is marginal: “Une ville suspendue — no cultural route at all.” Mrs Trudeau is marginal: “Where is her decorum? Her lack of self-composure is amazing.” Fashion is marginal: “lt is woman’s greatest enemy – an industry to produce shirts, shoes and dresses. l have become anti-fashion.” What about rock stars? She shrugs. “l had no intention of marrying one, if that‘s what you mean.” Yes, one feels, definitely marginal.

Bianca Jagger’s divorce is giving her a new bruised energy which becomes her. Gone are the days of late entrances, made in a whirl of impromptu glamour which took five hours to prepare. For lunch at the Connaught in London she arrives punctually, wearing an old, black corduroy jacket over a white shirt and (admittedly) a pair of purple crépe de Chine pantaloons. On her a lapel is a badge labelled “outsider”.

Like a lot of head·turning women, feature by feature she is not a pretty girl, but the confluence is incendiary. Eyes, nose and mouth are all a fraction on the slant, a piquant asymmetry which makes her stillness brooding and her smile foxy. There is also her voice, a lazy Latin American murmur.

“She looks so deliciously mean and ratty,” her friend and fan, shoe designer Manolo Blahnik enthused. “l met her in Paris at a fancy dress party ten years ago, when she was in her extravagant feather boa phase. She was sensational then: but she’s so much better now. She always wears the same thing – a St Laurent blazer she‘s had copied 12 times over and, of course, my shoes. Have you noticed her feet? I find it very hard to like a person with horrible feet. Bianca’s are exquisite, tiny.” Sure enough, beneath the Connaught’s plat du jour the tiny feet teeter in a pair of purple suede stilettos from Manolo’s shop, Zapata.

Mrs Jagger attributes her brave new change of direction to physical discipline. Whether she is in London, New York or California she goes to a gym and works out like a demon for two hours. In London she frequents the Grosvenor House. Here, most aftemoons when she is in town, she changes into a grey plastic pixie suit (for extra weight loss) and joins a trio of sweating, middle-aged men screaming with pain as they do their situps and jacknives on a rubber mattress. No one takes much notice of Bianca. A panting bonhomie prevails. “You training to fight Joe Louis or what?”, asks the trainer, as Bianca hurls herself into a manic press-up routine. “lt’s just,” she growls, “my sexual tension coming out.”

It is also, she admits, a way of blotting out the frustration of her divorce. On the day we met she had heard that her $5,000,000 lawsuit against Mick Jagger might be foiled by the fact that he is no longer domiciled in Califomia. “Now you can see why l need Marvin Mitchelson to be my lawyer,” she says. “I had a decent old-fashioned Englishman acting for me, but I got nowhere.

“Mick is avoiding taxes in every country in the world and he has 13 lawyers helping him to do it. Why should I be denied my freedom and a decent allowance for the sake of his tax situation?

“Then I read in the papers that Marsha Hunt had been awarded the I same sum from Mick in her paternity suit that I, his legal wife, am given to bring up our daughter and run the house. I felt fed up, furious. It was at that point that Mitchelson called me from Los Angeles and offered to help me. He likes women. He has a sense of justice. He made me see that if Mick wants a fight, I must use the same weapons.”

This speech is delivered with an impressive nostril-flaring hauteur. Mrs Jagger is not given to blabbing about her private life. “I’ve always felt that if you tell lots of intimate revelations it’s one more thing you don’t own anymore.” Other sources, however, con- firm that marriage to the rock world’s most notorious tightwad has been no picnic for the “Nicaraguan firecracker”.

“He had this awful working-class chauvinism towards her,” one of Jagger’s old cronies told me. “He pretended to support her acting aspirations, but actually dreaded her being financially independent. He liked to have the whip hand, so that she would always have to beg. She had to keep up the image of being the jet·setting Mrs Jagger on a Marks and Spencers budget. She got over it by developing such style that top designers like Halston rushed to offer her free outfits as a walking advertisement.”

Bianca Perez-Mora de Macias has always been a girl with more cachet than cash. Sceptics say that even the cachet was self-invented: “She could’ve come from Wapping for all l know,” said one of the King’s Road meritocrats with whom she used to knock around in the sixties. “She never would talk about her past. Then, again, there were never any rough edges to her and you don’t just pick up four languages by the age of 18.”

She was born in Nicaragua 32 years ago. Her father, she says, had a coffee plantation. There were three children, Bianca, Carlos – now 25 and living in Paris trying to be a painter – and Indiana, 26, who married a lawyer and stayed in Nicaragua. “My mother was a great classical beauty.” Bianca told me, with the ruefulness of a woman who still privately rates conventional prettiness over her own transcending feats of style. “She was blonde and fair-skinned in a country where most people are brunettes. She overshadowed me completely.”

When Bianca was quite small her parents were divorced for reasons she will not divulge. “Nicaragua is very Catholic. The family was very Catholic. My mother had a hard time as a divorced woman.”

It was, perhaps, the ructions at home and the social opprobrium directed at her mother which made Bianca plot her escape. At 16 she left for Paris with ambitions to become a diplomat. “For Latin Americans at the time Europe was the place for culture. The only other place to go was the United States, but that struck me as a vulgar cliché. I thought of Paris as the sinful city. In fact, it turned out to be quite marginal.” She studied politics at L’Ecole de Science Politique for three years and swiftly penetrated a chic Bohemian set. She put away her diplomatic bag and drifted to London, where she became involved with Michael Caine; then back to Paris. “How did I meet Mick? You know. I always find that an offensive question. If you’re intelligent and pretty you can meet anyone you want. Altematively, if you haven’t got it you can be hanging around the right places for years and not meet anybody interesting at all. Ironically enough, I find it harder to meet new people now than I did when I was that shy little girl from Nicaragua.”

Actually, the shy little girl from Nicaragua was already the girlfriend of the boss of a record company who took her to a Rolling Stones concert in Paris and brought Bianca to the inevitable party afterwards.

Her impact on Mick Jagger was immediate. She pulled out all the stops and beamed her mystery at him.

She would stand him up, appear and disappear. While the other Stones’ wives grouped gratefully around back- stage, Bianca would be doing Big Thinks in a corner, displaying a thumbed copy of a novel by Kafka or Camus. All right, she did not retum to Nicaragua to defeat, as she had vowed to do – “the disgusting oligarchy that prevails there”- but as she brooded behind dark glasses on the flights to New York, Rome or Rio it was clear that she was contemplating it. She even called her preoccupation with clothes “a concern with statics”. Jagger was impressed, particularly when she made it plain that she would not lose herself to the rock·star life, like Marianne Faithfull (a previous Jagger flame), or Anita Pallenberg, Keith Richard‘s longstanding girlfriend.

“If I’d been around Cocteau I might have smoked opium,” she says. “To be around Keith and Anita and have my teeth fall out from shooting smack is not, I think, the same thing.” She recognised that Jagger‘s band was something she could never crack. “The Stones are a secret society. Mick would go through fire and water for Keith. He‘ll forgive him anything. To be one of those wives, involved but not included, is very disturbing. I used to go on gigs with them until I read in an interview with Mick that he hated it when his old lady came along.” By such means do rock stars’ wives discover their husbands‘ feelings.

Today Bianca spends most of her time in her house on the Embankment in Chelsea, “leaming to live alone”. The exterior was recently painted pink, she says, in a sudden expression by Mr Jagger of his rights of ownership. “l said, Mick, why pink? You don‘t live here, I do. He said ‘Because it’s my house and I happen to want it pink’.” Jade her seven-year~old daughter, attends a smart London day school nearby.

“I’m so glad I had her,” she says. “Without her I’d just drift. l’m such a rootless person I wouldn’t care what city I was in, who l was with. I tend to live in a daydream, but Jade is my link with reality, the everyday business of schools and shopping and early bedtime. I try to give her a normal life. I keep her away from photographers because I know from my own experience that publicity should be your own l choice. The problems with her father have drawn us very close. She has great dignity and poise. She knows never to say too much: but, in fact, she sees and senses everything.”

Bianca assured me that she had not forgotten her political aims, That Nicaraguan oligarchy still gets her down. Meanwhile she is pursuing her dreams of being a film star. Thisyear she will be seen at the Cannes Film Festival in Flesh Colour, co-starring with Denis Hopper. “I play the head of the Mafia,” she says. “I interpret her as a woman with ice-cold intelligence and a touch of cruelty, but at the same time romantic and vulnerable.” She also appears with Ned Beatty in an American film, The Ringer, directed by Bill Richart. In it she plays a 1930 courtesan: “a woman who, though highly sensual, is, at the same time…”

She is very aware of the bad publicity which surrounded her abortive film début in Trick or Treat four years ago. Filming stopped midway because Bianca refused to strip. Fortunes were lost in botched rescue jobs and litigation, all due, it was alleged, to Bianca’s prima donnaism. The experience chastened her. “Pressures alter people. Believe me, when you’ve lived through big trouble, you change.”

Some of her old friends refuse to take the new, austere Bianca seriously. As one put it, “She needs a daft earl to bail her out now. I mean, she can’t go on jumping out of Concorde and waiting about with poofs and pavement artists for ever, can she?” They feel that Mitchelson’s lawsuit will make or break Bianca. My own feeling is that even if Bianca does not boogey all the way to the bank, her strange quality will see her through. We have yet to see if she can act. If she can, she might turn out to be a Dietrich; if she cannot, maybe she will be a Nancy Cunard. At any rate, she will not be marginal.

Images scanned and text copied by Miss Peelpants from The Telegraph Magazine, May 13th 1979

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Nova, April 1968

Illustrations by Anne Delaney.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Cosmopolitan, April 1979

“Histoire d’un puzzle qui peut vous faire gagner un honey pot de Coty!…”

Illustration accompanying a competition to win some Coty make-up. Illustrated by B. Weiss.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Mademoiselle Age Tendre, June 1972

New zone of bareness: Valentino shows jewelled serpents entwining a bare waist. The reptiles are holden with fake diamond and coral set heads. With belts and bareness emphasising waists this summer, they need to be slim.

Photographed by Barry Lategan.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vogue, April 1969

Don’t you love a party… especially when you’re a guest and don’t have to do the washing up? But think of the satisfaction of throwing your own party and knowing it’s a great success… like the headline-hitting party Bianca Jagger gave for Mick’s thirty-second birthday when the guests stayed until the morning papers landed on the doorstep. Cosmo’s party didn’t quite last the whole night through, but it proved that you don’t need months of planning. We invited our guests just three days in advance, asked them to wear red and white to celebrate our first wine offer and could hardly belieev it when everyone turned up on time and stayed on.

Back row, left to right: Gai Pearl, John Siggins and John Bates of the John Bates fashion team; David Clay, model and athlete; Cristina Viera, Brazilian model girl; Janis Raven, fashion co-ordinator at Swan & Edgar; Richard du Ploc of Electric Fittings. In the centre: Pattie Barron, Cosmo’s fashion assistant; Carola Standish, PA to Cosmo’s publisher; fashion designer Bruce Oldfield. In the front: model Juan; Serena Schaffer who owns Electric Fittings; Michael Roberts, Sunday Times writer; Pat Booth, stylish and Terry Raven, property consultant.

There’s almost TOO much fabulousness going on in this image. Including the fact that it was taken by James Wedge. I’m particularly fond of the Johns Siggins and Bates in their dapper white suits, and the remarkably unappetising spread of food in front of them all. Still, looks like there’s plenty of wine and, really, that’s all that counts…

Photographed by James Wedge. Produced by Linda Kelsey.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Cosmopolitan, November 1974

Square necked sideless dress by Ginger Group. Gold link belt by Paris House. Black patent shoes by Kurt Geiger. Satin beret by Rudolf.

Try a touch of seasonal sorcery – swop clothes with yourself instead of with your sister or friend. Mix tweed with satin, sweaters with fur; play addition and subtraction with your wardrobe to achieve subtle solutions for every climate, every occasion and every mood.

Photographed by David Anthony.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Queen, December 1967

Square necked sideless dress by Ginger Group. White blouse by Eric Hart. Tortoiseshell and gilt link belt by Dior. Brown shoes by Kurt Geiger. Brown knitted beret at Fenwick.

Oxford bags by Gerald McCann in Donegal tweed with detatchable black satin turn-ups. Black satin shirt by Eric Hart. Black patent belt by Mary Quant. Black patent shoes by Kurt Geiger.

Oxford bags by Gerald McCann in Donegal tweed with detatchable black satin turn-ups. Brown and tweed long belted sweater from Browns. Antique Baltic amber beads from Sac Freres. Knitted brown beret at Fenwick. Beige and black ankle boots by Ravel.

Short white fluffy kid coat by Calman Links, with white fox collar and white satin belt. Diamante drop earrings by Dior. Square diamante handbag by Susan Handbags. White grosgrain strap shoes by Russell and Bromley.

Short white fluffy kid coat by Calman Links, with white fox collar. Round-necked chocolate sweater by Laura Jamieson, with long sleeves, buttons down back, and matching ribbed skirt. Tortoiseshell and gilt belt by Dior. Stretch brown leather boots by Kurt Geiger.

Black velvet trouser suit by Carrot on Wheels. Cream silk shirt by Annacat. Square snakeskin handbag by Russell and Bromley. Black patent shoes by Kurt Geiger. Black velvet hair bow by Dior.

Black velvet trouser suit by Carrot on Wheels. Beige polo necked sweater by McCaul. Black belt with perspex buckle by Dior. Leather shoes by Charles Jourdan.

Photographed by Hans Feurer.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Honey, October 1968

No excuse for looking a wash-out with these rainy-day separates. Showerproof three-quarter length Dannimac cotton jacket. Black Simon Massey shirt. Keep-the-worst-off cotton hat by Malyard. Bouncy beads by Adrien Mann. Bumper sunglasses by Oliver Goldsmith.

Photographed by Willie Christie.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Over 21, September 1972

Fabulous shaggy acrylic jacket by Weathergay – believe it or not it’s showerproof. With a pure silk crepe de chine Sujon shirt. Cream wool trousers by Mary Quant. Splash-happy PVC hat from Herbert Johnson. Wet=grass green leather clutch bag by Mulberry Company.

Casual-as-they-come trench coat in cotton and polyester from Aquascutum. Lined wool bags by Sujon from Just Looking. Silk shirt from Aquascutum again. Bringing-back-the-sun clutch bag by Mulberry Company. Shoes from Russell and Bromley. Antelope felt hat from Herbert Johnson.

Pale stripy sweater with drawstring sleeves by Dorothee Bis. Pale blue wool trousers by Pablo & Delia. Cultured pearls by Mikimoto. White hat by Herbert Johnson.

Photographed by Peter Knapp.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vogue, June 1972

For a long time I firmly believed that we all wanted to become a nation of mass-produced Twiggies and Shrimptons. Hankering after the security of knowing there isn’t anybody with a nicer figure/face/hair, we all jump on the trendy bandwagon, and do whatever is expected of us in the cause of fashion. And where fashion is concerned, it seems we are all prepared to do anything…

Dreary copy, I won’t bore you with any more, but a gorgeous illustration of Twiggy and Shrimpton-types by Barbara Hanrahan.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Honey, September 1967

Alistair Cowin photographed by John Carter for 19 Magazine, April 1969

You might not have heard of Alistair Cowin before. Like many other superbly talented designers in the 1960s and 1970s, he has rather fallen off the radar in recent years. But all it takes is a little article from a contemporary magazine, and an original garment, and I’m hooked. I’ve just listed this dress over on Vintage-a-Peel, and it’s a beauty. A vision in white chiffon, and very reminiscent of designs by his contemporaries John Bates and Gerald McCann. I only have one other piece by Cowin so far, so I think it’s safe to say his work doesn’t show up very often. And how often does a wearable collectable piece, in a non-teeny tiny size ever pop up?

Available now over at Vintage-a-Peel.co.uk

Alistair Cowin 1960s chiffon mini dress at Vintage-a-Peel

Blue ban-lon dress by Earlybird, 20 Park Walk, SW10

How is your exit line? Backs – bare ones – are the centre of attention. The fashion scene for winter is a sea of halter tops, strapless slinks, little nothing numbers held up by narrow straps and open-work low cut dresses that plunge down to there… or beyond. Accept that an unusual expanse of you is going to be ruthlessly exposed this winter – especialy at party time. Your back used to be your own private business, but now it’s going public. Each shoulder blade, jutting vertibra and pad of fat will be the object of scrutiny. You could be an ostrich – I can’t see it so it isn’t there – but it might be wiser to flaunt the sexiest, smoothest, most senusous and sinuous back around.

Photographed by John Vidal.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Cosmopolitan, October 1973

Red wool boucle dress by Carolyn Brunn, 287 Brompton Road

Ungaro in his workshop. Maria Kimberley wears his dress, “un peu cinema, a little exciting, very glamorous”, wth diamante flower faces.

“My clothes make my statement… that a woman is to be treated with care…”.

Photographed by Norman Parkinson.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vogue, September 1974

Stirling Cooper

This photoshoot, featuring the brilliantly named Celestia Sporborg, is another one of my all-time favourites, and one I have put off scanning for a long while because Vanity Fair is actually a rather painful magazine to scan. The gummed spine, with age, does not enjoy being flattened so it requires extra effort to maintain some kind of structural integrity. I couldn’t NOT scan though. I love these images. I love the blurriness, her natural facial expressions, the very domestic backdrop and, of course, the completely mind-blowingly fabulous clothes. I don’t know where to start. That Stirling Cooper above is just so modern. And the Radley playsuit, so very Glam. And the Ossie… Plus Alice Pollock, Foale and Tuffin and a Ritva sweater I sold on Vintage-a-Peel a few years back…

It also identifies the shots from Vanity Fair’s Guide to Modern Etiquette, ‘Nice Girls Do’, which I posted about before. To contextualise this shoot, the entire June issue is dedicated to feminism and liberation. Certainly one of the main reasons I love Vanity Fair almost above all other magazines of the period is the fact that they would theme all the contents of an issue, including the fashion spreads.

Celestia Sporborg is now a casting director herself, with over a hundred film credits on IMDB. She married theatre and film producer Robert Fox (brother of James and Edward) in 1975 and they had three children together.

Photographed by Frank Horvat.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Vanity Fair, June 1971

Foale & Tuffin

Radley

Ossie Clark

Ritva

Alice Pollock

Left to right: White crepe bolero and trousers by Gina Fratini. White shoes by Kurt Geiger / Satin trousers and matching chiffon top in print by Celia Birtwell, both by Ossie Clark at Quorum. Red leather shoes by Chrystal of Copenhagen. / Black silk organza shirt and trousers in Bianchini’s black silk organza flocked with velvet, both from Thea Porter. Cord belt from Piero de Monzi. Wide jewelled belt and double chain and green stone belt from Ken Lane. Black satin shoes by Kirt Geiger. / Black cire trouser suit from The Fulham Road Clothes Shop. Black leather boots by The Chelsea Cobbler. Black and cream silk scarf from Thea Porter

Everyone is tired of hearing that the mini skirt is on the way out.
Nearly as tired as when they heard it was on the way in.
These things in fashion die a very slow death,
but in this case one reason has been the lack of alternative.
Designers made too great a leap with the maxi,
and too indefinite a move with the midi.
After extremely short skirts,
something flapping around mid calves did feel extremely frumpish.
This was tied in with the fact that no boot manufacturers at
that time were making them with high enough heels,
essential with a longer skirt,
and it was very difficult to find feminine unclumpy
shoes which gave enough of a lift.
Now footwear is changing.
Boots are tall and beautifully fitting.
l-ligh-heeled shoes — very high — are pretty,
well proportioned and extremely flattering.
And so one branch of fashion may well be influencing another.
ln the end everything is a matter of proportions.
When skirts went up, heels came down.
The high stilettos we used to hobble around in so painfully,
not really that long ago,
looked far too tarty with hemlines halfway up the thigh and even
worse with trousers, especially tight ones.
Since most women feel their legs to be too short,
and the wearing of the heel as very necessary to a feeling of femininity,
this cancelled out the wearing of trousers for a very large number.
Until a short time ago trousers were being worn by,.
apart from men of course,
women who looked like men — that is, girls with no curves.
Lean hips. Long legs — in flat shoes.
Now for the first time comes the alternative to the mini skirt. Trousers.
That is, until hemlines decide exactly how far they will drop.
As drop they will.
Footwear has helped provide the solution.
It will comfort many to know that the models in the
pictures which follow, averaging 32″-35″ hips, still have
to choose, very carefully, shapes which suit them.
Their legs are long but still need the added inches that a high
heel gives them. Their shapes are slim, but female.
Still sometimes round enough to need the camouflage of a long jacket,
cardigan or tunic. They show that closely fitting
trousers can be sexier and will also make you look fatter.
They show that a small waist is made smaller by a high
cut rather than a hipster style.
Most of the trousers for evening lit well over the hips but flare out
in a very feminine, flattering way.
They are glittery, shiny, and see-through.
Beautiful in fact; better than ever before.

Alas, now that mini skirts are accepted just about everywhere.
we have to warn that trousers, for women that is, aren’t.
An appalling number of top London hotels
still hold fast to outdated rules about them.
Officially they are not allowed in, even to drink,
let alone to dine or to have lunch.
ln the Dorchester they can’t even have tea!
In the Mirabelle: Ofhcially, trousers are not admitted.
The question does not arise much at lunch—tirne
as there are never very many women there.
ln the evening the rule has now been relaxed and you
would be permitted to dine in trousers.
Talk of the Town: Certainly you may wear trousers.
Savoy: They now allow very dressy evening trousers in public rooms
but no daytime trousers at all.
Wearing them to private functions in private rooms
is left to the discretion of the organisers.
Dorchester: You would not be served anything
when wearing a trouser suit.
This applies to all public rooms,
but for banquets and other private functions it is up to the organisers.
Connaught: Officially not allowed at any time in the bar or restaurant,
but it is a decision left to the manager.
Carlton Tower: Trousers are not encouraged in the Rib or
Chelsea Rooms, but they are coming to accept them.
They prefer lunch-time trousers to evening ones.
Westbury: Trousers are not allowed in the bar or restaurant;
this applies to evenings too.
However, this rule, like others, is relaxed from time to time,
eg, when Brigitte Bardot arrives in trousers from the
airport – or Lord Snowdon arrives for dinner in a roll-neck shirt.
Hilton: Officially no trouser suits in the Roof Restaurant.
Unofficially you could get away with it if it’s
a very beautiful catsuit or something similar.
At private functions it depends on the organisers.
Ritz: No rule for the daytime, it just depends on the trousers!
Usually it is permitted to wear trousers
in the evening, but again it depends . . .
Claridge’s: Very strict,
definitely no trouser suits in the public rooms,
though they say you can wear what you like in private!
Crockford’s: They don’t object to them at all.
Coq d’Or: They much prefer to see a lady dressed as a lady.
During the day they prefer skirts
but don’t object to trousers in the evening at all.
White Tower: lf the woman looks elegant and well-dressed she is let in,
otherwise she may be told that the restaurant is full.
Brown’s: No objections at all for either day or evening
in either restaurant or bar provided the wearer looks neat and tidy.
Les Ambassadeurs: Don’t mind couture—cut or evening trouser suits,
but don’t like anything untidy like blue jeans.
Caprice: Quote from the reservations man:
‘l am sure we can have no objections.
women eat here in trousers all the time’

Words by Molly Parkin. Photographed by Harri Peccinotti.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted the Ossie Clark ensemble which won Dress of the Year in 1969. For an item which won such a prestigious award, it’s always amazed me that I haven’t seen more contemporary images of it. I suppose it’s quite ‘out there’, even by late Sixties standards, but thankfully Molly Parkin was always pretty way out there.

If you can make your way through all the text, it’s a pretty impressive and important insight into the attitudes towards women in trousers in late Sixties Britain. It’s easy to forget how scandalous it could be, even in 1969 – a good four years after we first saw Emma Peel in John Bates’s trouser suit designs in The Avengers, for a woman to wear trousers. People obviously did it, you see enough fashion spreads to know that, but the list of swanky hotels and restaurants who still would refuse entry and service to a woman in trousers is quite extraordinary.

Scanned by Miss Peelpants from Harpers Bazaar, April 1969.

Left to right: White voile peasant shirt and wide pink, blue and turquoise brocade belt with gilt buckle, both from Thea Porter. Trousers in shell pink silk chiffon with sequins by Gina Fratini / Cyclamen silk shirt with full extravagant sleeves and purple trousers in Warner’s silk damask furnishing fabric, both by Thea Porter/ Brocade belt with gilt buckle by Swordtex from a selection at Mr Fish. / Gipsy bolero in silk brocade and cream organdy trousers, both from Thea Porter. Long orange and yellow scarf wound around waist from Flora Boutique. Chain belt studded with flowers from Browns. More jewelled belts and chains from a selection at Ken Lane.