After a bomb-damaged East End could no longer provide a suitable home for London’s garment business, many tailors moved to Carnaby Street and the trend towards turning this otherwise modest street into a ‘rag trade’ centre accelerated when John Stephens, the son of a Glasgow grocer, opened his first boutique in London’s Carnaby Street in the late ’50s selling Mod gear. His greatest success was getting men to follow fashion just as much as women did, but it wasn’t until 1965 when Mary Quant designs clothes hit the streets that swinging London was really born and Carnaby Street became the place to see and be seen.  The sixties were also the era of male fashion – there was Twiggy of course, and Quant herself, and other sixties icons like Jean Shrimpton, but above all it was the men who were in the spotlight.

Whether you were a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones follower, or whether the Beach Boys or The Doors were your groove, masculine fashion filled the newspapers and the newly developed colour television. Long suede coats with fringing, headbands, embroidered jeans and tie-dyed tops made men look dramatic and androgynous – combined with the long plaits and massive outbreak of facial hair that heralded the hippie era, it often looked as if city streets had been attacked by a bunch of fashion conscious bears. 

When you see the die-hards who still dress ‘sixties’ it can seem like a blessing that the phase of the peacock male has passed, but it has left its imprint – men are more adventurous in clothing and more conscious of the impression they make.  Proof can be found in the sudden upsurge of pink polo-shirts being worn this summer: that would never have happened before the 1960s!

Lennon courtesy of All Posters