Mary Quant: Scots remember the dramatic fashion changes of the 1960s

It’s true to say that the sixties are held up as an enchanted time, all Beatles hairdos and flower power, but it’s also true that it’s often looked on in isolation, as if a switch was flicked on January 1, 1960, and off on Hogmanay 1969. That period of rapid change was only facilitated by the movements of the late 1950s, and its influence carried on well into the early 1970s.

Perhaps more than at any time in living history, we can regard fashion as an indicator of social change, and when it comes to 1960s fashion, one name reigns supreme. That of Mary Quant.

A retrospective of Mary Quant’s work opens at the V&A Dundee on Saturday, April 4, and covers the 20 years from 1955 to 1975. Curators have put together an exhibition that not only uses the V&A’s own Quant archive, but utilises access to the designer’s collection, which includes her own clothing.

Perhaps most important has been the public response to an appeal by those curators to root around in the attic and search out those Quant classics. The V&A in London has had many fashion-themed exhibitions, but not too many visitors would have been able to point out a Dior or McQueen dress that was part of their youth.

Visitors to the V&A Dundee over the summer will see some Scottish contributions, but how much of an effect did Mary Quant and the London scene she personifies have north of the Border?

Four Scots who had the sixties as their formative years give us a picture of the decade when hair got longer, skirts got shorter, ambitions were bigger, and the world began to get smaller.

Rab Noakes

Musician and songwriter, 72, Glasgow

WHEN I was about five years old, I was taken to Marks & Spencer in Dundee. My mum bought me and my brother pale grey corduroy suits, with short trousers and a jerkin-style jacket. It was the first time I felt great just by wearing an article of clothing – and that has never really left me.

I was too young to engage fully with the late 1950s’ Teddy Boy culture, but I really sprung to life during the period between rock’n’roll and The Beatles. The early 1960s were generally a smart era. Hair was still combed back, and we were wearing three-button Italian suits and shoes. The button-down shirts and tab collars started to emerge, and all of that informed Mod fashion. Mod too often defaults to the Parka, but in my experience that had no currency in Scotland, because it went along with scooters and those weren’t such a big thing here.

My secondary school was a bit of a car crash, probably because I was working to self-finance my clothing. I did a paper round, then graduated to a milk round. You got 25 bob for that, then I got 30 bob for delivering groceries in the evening. I kept my five bob Sunday paper round on, and once tips were added in, I could be earning a fiver a week.

I moved from Cupar to Glasgow in 1963 for work, and would go to the High Street tailors for made-to-measure suits. There was also Burton’s and Jackson’s and although they weren’t entirely bespoke, you could pick your lining and customise. There was also a place called Gerald’s in Dundas Street, which was about the only place you could get Levi’s at the time.

By the time the Mod thing really kicked off in 1964 I had moved to Alloa, and for the one and only time in my life I became a bit of a fashion leader. I actually managed to make some headway with women at that time, because I was the only Mod in the village.

By the end of 1963, everything was focused on swinging London and getting to London was an absolute necessity. Even though I grew up in Cupar, we were lucky in that we were the first generation to really have engaged in a global way with everything that was happening.

People forget that Mary Quant had been around since the mid-1950s. We started to see what was happening in magazines like Rave, but we would also look at the lassies’ magazines like Valentine and Mirabelle, because they were more pop-music oriented.

I think it’s funny now when people say that youngsters are hung up on brands. We always tried to get brands. We made the pilgrimage to get Levi’s and always wanted Converse and Ray-Bans. Sometimes you had to settle for something similar, but believe me, we knew what those brands were.

Eilean Burgess

Business owner, 74, Dunblane

ICAN’T think of many people who would have actual Mary Quant dresses when I was growing up, but everyone loved the look.

I had white boots that came up over my knees, bought in Wishaw, and my Mary Quant style-dress was bought from Brooks in Carluke. It was a sleeveless shift with a geometric print with a slash boat neck.

I was from Coldstream, so had to get two buses to get to school at Lanark Grammar. Even though I was quite bookish, I went dancing on a Saturday night with my pal at Lanark’s Loch ballroom, also known as the Palais. I wasn’t a Cliff and The Beatles girl; I preferred The Animals and The Stones. We didn’t go to pubs though – that wasn’t the done thing. I also went to visit a friend who had moved away to Ayr and had my first Chinese meal there in 1965, which felt quite exotic.

I had left school in 1963 and although a lot of my friends went off to university, I wanted to get a job, and at that time you walked straight into one. I worked in a bank but joined the police in 1966. I left in 1968 when I got engaged – at that time I would have been kicked out when I got married anyway! I phoned the bank, asked for my job back, and walked straight back in.

Like most young women then, I stayed at home until I got married in 1970. After my first year in the bank my wages had gone up, so after board and travel I finally had enough to buy clothes. I have to say though, a lot of clothes were made at home through Butterick and Vogue patterns. So many people could sew then that we made a lot of our own Quant-style dresses.

A lot of my friends had gone off to art school and we didn’t have too sheltered an upbringing really. I went on the pill in 1968, two years before I got married. I was engaged but it was still a big deal at the time. I didn’t want to get pregnant; I was having too much fun! I was lucky that my mum and dad were pretty open-minded.

I’m extremely thankful to have grown up in the 1960s, when we had so much more freedom than the generation before.

Dave Burnett

Retired but part-time musician, 74, Newburgh

AT the beginning of the 1960s we were buying chrome studs from a shop at the bottom of the Hilltown in Dundee to put into our leather jackets, but The Beatles hadn’t appeared yet. In 1962 everything changed, and in Dundee the Mods started to appear around 1964, when they copied bands coming up to the Top Ten Club at The Palais.

There was a shop Caledonian Tailors, which managed to stock a lot of fashions like the small faces-style striped jackets. Guys still couldn’t get things like Springer shoes though and had to travel to Glasgow for those.

At Claude Alexander’s in the Overgate we could get made-to-measure suits for £12. The jackets were short, called bum freezers, with three or four cloth-covered buttons. They had sky blue lining, with one-inch splits up the back.

Alexander also did tie and handkerchief sets, but the handkerchief was just three points stuck on to cardboard, to stick in your top pocket for show!

The trousers had to have 15-inch bottoms and they were short with short side slits to show off your Chelsea boots. Those boots with the winklepickers really ruined my feet – I’m suffering now.

You couldn’t separate fashion from music then. I played in a few bands in Dundee and with Phoenix we supported a lot of the bands, like The Kinks, that came to Dundee. If we weren’t playing, we were there to see them.

I remember a lot of women making their own clothes in the mid-1960s and a lot of them trying to look like Marianne Faithfull, then on to that Mary Quant style. What I do remember is the freedom for women in clothing and the bright colours they wore. I think tights were a great freedom though. I think a lot of women who couldn’t afford Mary Quant dresses could get things like the striped tights. Handy for the miniskirts – you couldn’t wear the old stockings with them!

I had things made too. A floral belt and matching tie were made for me in 1966 because I couldn’t buy them. I also had an op art piece I made in 1966, which I still have.

Things changed quickly though, and by the end of 1967 we were wearing pink loons. They were hipsters with no pockets, but 30-inch bottom flares. Again we had to customise, so we would go to the pet shop and buy budgie cage bells and sew them about six inches from the bottom.

It was such a brilliant time and I really wouldn’t take a million pounds for the memories.

Yvonne Bolouri

Freelance writer, 65, Barrhead

I WASN’ T quite a teenager when the Mods appeared, but Mary Quant was having an effect when I was at school, where we would be rolling our skirts up to make them miniskirts. When I was going out showing a lot of leg my dad would shout: “There’s Yvonne going out in her belt again!”

We were so inspired by Mary Quant and shops like Biba and Granny Takes A Trip. Chelsea Girl was a big one for me and I worked in the one in Glasgow.

We dreamed of Carnaby Street and when I was 14 my Aunt Nettie took me on holiday to London and promised we could go. It was some sight – everyone looked incredible and I was trying to be cool and shake off my old auntie!

I asked if I could get some false eyelashes and she said yes, so we trooped into a shop that sold fake fur eyelashes.

The girl behind the counter couldn’t understand me because I was so Glasgow! The more I asked the more I would roll my rrrrrs in “fur” and she just couldn’t get it, so I left without them!

Nettie wanted to buy me something, but she said everything in Carnaby St wasn’t worth the money “you could spit peas through it!” so we ended up in C&A on Oxford Street. She said: “Just tell them it’s from Carnaby Street.”

My mum and dad were a bit bemused by it all, but they went along with it anyway. My bedroom had Beatles wallpaper, bedding, and a lampshade, and it was only in the 1980s that I discovered they had just taken unopened rolls of Beatles wallpaper to the tip. That was a shocker.By the time I was into my teens everyone was heading off to San Francisco with flowers in their hair.

In Barrhead though it was budgie bells from the pet shop around our necks and pleated string around our heads. Later I was a bit glam and entered contests, I even became Miss Stone’s Green Ginger.

I was very modern and go ahead, within my financial restraints. I didn’t realise that things like getting a loan were still shut off to me as a woman.

If I could have, I would have been off to San Francisco. In reality I could barely get to Glasgow from Barrhead!