Biba, the face of 1960s and early 1970s fashion, was named after its moving spirit, the fashion designer Biba (Barbara) Hulanicki.
From its first small premises in Abingdon Road, High Street Kensington, London, in 1964, it quickly moved to bigger premises in 1965 and then, in 1969, to a couple of shops next door to each other and knocked through to make one showroom at the bottom of Kensington Church Street.
The shop was dark; it was stylish; it was cutting edge fashion with a retro feel; it was boas and Twiggy and maroon velvets and floppy hats and it was hugely successful and influential.
In 1974 it moved into the seven floors of the old Derry & Toms department store back in Kensington High Street, but the huge scale of the new building rather overwhelmed the old Biba feel, and this was also a time of economic turbulence. In 1975 it closed.
A pair of mock cut-steel knee-buckles by George Bower, Birmingham 1816.
They go on breeches.
As you get older you have to wear clothes of better quality - better material, better cut, better everything. When you are very young, clothes are pointless and the only thing that matters is showing your body. As this loses its beauty, your clothes have to take over the job of making you look good.
Elegant older women know this. Well dressed older men are fewer, but they know it too.
Picture (of David Niven at the age of 55) reblogged from i12bent:
Dapper gentleman actor, David Niven: Mar. 1, 1910 - 1983
Photo Gjon Mili, 1965, LIFE
A Star Belly Sneetch and a Plain Belly Sneetch
Taste begins when appetite is satisfied
The first really new idea in underwear for some time. The pants are made with ultra-short legs and are a new style that gives maximum comfort, convenience and support. Men need support every much as women need the support of a brassiere. Doctors have recommended jockey shorts because of their masculine support which takes the strain off important muscles. At the same time, bulges and shadows are eliminated so your outer garments hang better and look smarter. The new Y front has a convenient angled opening so that it cannot gap, while the Lastex belt keeps the garment in place. In the words of one American ad, it is “the underwear that ends squiriming for ever”.
The Editor of Varsity writing for students about the introduction of the Y front, or jockey short, to England in 1938.
This fine jacket is a little bit let down by its display. The point of a jacket like this is LEGS. It is cut way above the waist so that the military trousers seems to go on for ever, elongating the legs in the same way as a high heeled shoe does for a woman. Meanwhile, the buttons taper in to suggest a V shaped upper body, and the epaulattes, by artificially widening the shoulder line, do the same.
As with all good tailoring, the cut is designed to do some visual cosmetic surgery to the body, and make it look better, according to the fashionable ideal of the time.
Hung on a stick and not on a body, something of the effect is lost….
fuckyeahvictorians:
yeoldefashion:
The 1862 jacket of an Assistant Surgeon in the Medical Service, shows how military uniforms had remained virtually unchanged since the Revolutionary War.
reblogged from oldbookillustrations:
Mr Nicodemus Dumps… cross, cadaverous, odd and ill-natured.
Illustration by Fred Barnard, from Scenes and characters from the works of Charles Dickens, London, Toronto (not dated).
Via archive.org.
But look at the clothes. Very high waisted flat fronted trousers, designed to emphasise and lengthen the legs - which was THE focus for men in early nineteenth century Europe. Later, trousers became looser and baggier, and so the shape and length of men’s legs disappeared from view altogether, except when riding.
The coat rounds the shoulders, with its high collar rolling down to the lapels, and a slight puff at the top of the sleeve where it joins the body of the jacket. The thickness of the coat, and waistcoat, and their darkness, obscure everything except the cravat, which is held with some sort of diamond or similar pin - this flash of clean linen and luxury conveys wealth and status.
Mr Dumps is an old and miserable man, and his clothes are, no doubt, old fashioned for his time. But the style is now SO old that we can see it, not as dowdy and out of date, but as a style wholly new and interesting to us, which both contains the germ of the modern business suit and tie, and retains the long lost styles of the Regency.
The character is from Sketches by Boz
reblogged from jonnodotcom:
Fitz-Patrick, “Fotografia Inglesa” - Calle Rincon 176, Montevideo, ca. 1900
(for robertpatrick, thizizit, sailorjunkers et al.)
The picture is old and discoloured but the essential character of the sitter still breaks forcefully through, utterly real and alive. The sailor suit is so different from the strange Sunday best usually worn in these studio portraits that it shocks us with its thickness and coarseness, entirely demonstrated by the natural fall of the cloth over the man’s stocky body.
Have a look at these close fitting trousers from Inseam Men, grey with a black stripe running all along the inside leg with no break.
