Knitters of Yore

  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...

Fashion Knits 72, published by Patons, demonstrates how far the Art Deco revival had pervaded the general fashion consciousness in the early 1970s. Not only are several of the outfits featured specifically 1920s and 30s themed, but the influence even extended to the choice of typefaces. There was a major trend in this period for Art Nouveau fonts, an offshoot of the British vogue for Victoriana which emerged in the sixties.     The revival of interest in the fashions of the twenties and thirties can be traced back to Arthur Penn's 1967 film, and more specifically the costume design of Theadora Van Runkle, who made Faye Dunaway look sensationally good. Key to the look was Dunaway's beret, as Van Runkle, who won an Oscar for her first frilm as Costume Designer, explained: "The beter was the culmination of the silhoette. In it, she combined all the elements of elegance and chic. Without the beret, it would have been charming, but not the same."  The beret brought an air ...