Time for Bed...


Apparently bed capes were once a thing. This young lady is either about to go to bed with her Horlicks or head out to fight crime in a knitted superhero costume.

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March of the Mods

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  Sometimes you see an image which looks quite ordinary, but with a little background knowledge a fascinating story emerges. Take the chap on the cover of the knitting pattern below. He's clearly very pleased with his new knitted waistcoat, but check the other details: the small collar, the thin tie with bang up to date pattern and the neat, but stylish haircut. Our hero aspires to Mod style. Similarly, check out the young man on the right. Banished are the chunky cable-knits, pipe and the general impatience for the arrival of middle age which were so often the hallmarks of the knitting pattern aimed at young men. Instead we see a close fit, a stylish  houndstooth check pattern and an air of youthful confidence and style.  If you grew up in the seventies, as I did, there was always the feeling that the sixties was a huge party to which you weren’t invited. The music was better (sixties Soul and Jazz versus seventies Disco – no contest!), typography and graphics were crisp and sharp
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From Beatniks to Bullitt: The (almost) Accidental Invention of the Smart Casual Look

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  Our chap here is displaying style cues of the post-war Beatniks at that point when the style had been so thoroughly integrated into the mainstream that elements of it morphed into Mod style and the menswear revolution that we now know as ‘smart casual’. This opens up the chance for me to discuss one of the favourite subjects of Knitters of Yore: how fashion spreads from the streets and is assimilated into the mainstream. This process was memorably termed by George Melly ‘Revolt into Style’, with the opposite process, from the drawing boards of elite designers to everyday life, probably best termed by Tom Wolfe as ‘From Bauhaus to Our House’ (the latter was about architecture, but seems appropriate in this context). Anyway, I digress. The Beakniks might seem a mild and harmless development now, but they were look upon with a mixture of scorn and horror by large elements of Britain's ever-conservative press when their influence began to be felt in the UK. Check out this review of J
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The Mighty Maxi

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The mini skirt seemed so cutting-edge and rebellious when they first started to emerge in the early 1960s - it is often credited by British designer Mary Quant, but it seems she was reacting to a trend that was in the ether at the time. By the end of the decade, as often happens in these matters, the trend began to swing in the opposite direction. The use of decimal coinage on this example indicates that it is from 1971 or later. The same hippyish fashion imperative that introduced Oxford Bags into the male wardrobe (as seen above worn by David Bowie on the rear cover to his 1971 album  Hunky Dory ) also brought the Maxi Skirt into existence. Skinny ties and the Italian-inspired lean silhouette which informed the Mod look for both men and women was supplanted by a more flowing, bohemian style. Yves Saint Laurent brought the look to the Paris catwalks in 1969 as part of a peasant look and pretty soon the knitting pattern manufacturers were on the case.   
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