With bands like The Kinks, The Who, The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds emerging from the London scene, and Carnaby fashion taking the world by storm, London was the centre of the style universe in the 1960s. Only a hop, skip and a jump from the capital, Kingston became a playground for many of these bands, who would come to play at The Fighting Cocks or the Poly, and expand their sartorial influence into the suburbs.
Bentalls – established in the 1920s – was one of the few major department stores outside of Oxford Street, allowing Kingston to provide a stylish enclave for the flourishing creative community. Through its innovative marketing, extensive fashion lines and creative shop displays, it played a crucial role in rebuilding London’s post-war fashion industry, expanding suburban fashion consumption and servicing the newly emerging teenage consumer.
In 1968, the world’s most famous model -North London native, Twiggy – caused a stir when visiting Bentalls to launch her new British fashion line, and had to escape a ‘near riot of teenagers’, keen to get a glimpse of her.
The ubiquitous ‘Mod’ look of the early 1960s, with its modernist use of straight lines and bursts of vibrant colour, spoke to the future-focussed and optimistic voice of a new generation, out to build a new world far from the one their parents had known. Breaking away from convention, it was the sartorial representation of the messages of jazz and of rock ‘n’ roll. Music and fashion combined as a dual mode of communicating that this generation was doing things differently.
Kingston University, once Fashion had been added to the curriculum in the 1930’s, went from strength to strength under the new leadership of Daphne Booker. In 1965, the University’s Fashion students won first-prize at the St. Gall Fashion Awards in Switzerland – a first for the UK against the established European winners – signalling the emergence of the ‘London Look’ as the signature style of the decade. The following year, businessman Stanley Picker – a major benefactor to Kingston University – struck a lucrative deal with trailblazing fashion designer Mary Quant, to manufacture, licence and sell her thriving makeup line from his Gala Cosmetics Factory in Chessington. These two locally grown fashion innovations would go on to have huge, global impact, and Kingston’s Fashion students would go on to win twice more in 1966 and 1970.
As the decade came to a close, psychedelia took over, with style icons of the time, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors touring to London, and Eric Clapton’s Cream and Pink Floyd performing in Kingston at the Jazz Cellar and the ‘Poly’. The psychedelic influence on fashion saw increasingly vibrant use of colour, ‘trippy’ swirling patterns and bold floral motifs, seen on bell-bottoms, maxi dresses and long coats, as the use of hallucinogenic drugs became more mainstream within the young generation. Kaleidoscope, the first charity set up to provide a safe space for those affected by drugs, at the height of the craze in 1968, was established at the John Bunyan Baptist Church on Cromwell Road.
