As a teenager in the early 60s I occasionally went with my mother to mannequin parades in a department store in York. Models with names like Sylvia or Lilith glided along the catwalk in two-piece suits, duster coats or cocktail dresses to tunes like Elizabethan Serenade or Some Enchanted Evening. We enjoyed ourselves but often had to suppress the giggles brought on by the decorous atmosphere.
One evening, though, my best friend’s mother drove us over to a fashion show in Leeds (in her Mini, of course). We waited with anticipation for it to start. Wow! Mary Quant and Alexander Plunket Greene appeared beside the catwalk, pop music blared out from the sound system and models who looked only a little older than us bounded out in the brightest of colours. The shortest of skirts, the longest of eyelashes. For us, the swinging 60s had begun!
Caroline Cole
In swinging 1966, when I was six, my family lived in Markham Square, off the Kings Road. Mary Quant’s boutique, Bazaar, was on the corner, and the square had a wonderfully eclectic population of posh bohemians and council tenants.
My young friends in the square and I used to run into Bazaar quite frequently and, in among the racks of daisy-patterned mini skirts and make up booths, shout “Tits” in unison, and scamper out again quickly, giggling. Mary, laughing out loud, would shout “Fuck off” at the top of her lungs. I think it was the first time I had heard the expression.
Jeremy Trevathan
