Exhibitions 1
The Cutting Edge: Fifty Years of British Fashion (Victoria and Albert Museum, till 27 July)
No laughing matter
Vicki Woods
Since the British are largely antipathetic ro .the opulence of high fashion, since no British government has ever supported. it, few rich men ever back it and many rich Women are indifferent to it, the wonder is that it has survived for long enough for the V&A to mount their exhibition The Cutting Edge — Fifty Years of British Fashion. In January 1945, the fashion writer Ali- son Settle wrote in Picture Post: 'Success cannot come to English fashions, so long as men of the country treat fashion as being essential) y frivolous and even laughable. 'She was writing five months before D-Day and. four years before the end of consumer rationing; ,., on-mg; women languished in their -InPy Utility suits and re-dyed officers' greatcoats, dreaming of satin and chiffon and silk zibeline. No wonder they fell like stones for the 30 yards of unrationed fine W,„0°1 in Christian Dior's New Look skirts of 1947: he was bankrolled by a fabric manu- facturer.
FftY-two years later, success of a kind has come to British fashion. The House of Dior is headed by a plumber's son from Streatham, John Galliano. But alas, alas, men of the country — leave alone men of the City — are still unable to keep a straight face while discussing trends, colours or the whole philosophy of clothes with me down at the Royal Oak. Which is why, in 1989, a British Fashion Council's industry survey assessed the total sales of designer and diffusion ranges in Britain at only £265 million. In France it was £1,400 million; in Italy, £1,850 million; in the Unit- ed States, £3,500 million. Even the Ger- mans, who aren't famous for being fashion-plates, managed £880 million in a nascent — but fast-growing — industry. And I'll bet most German men know what a 'designer diffusion range' actually is. Big, important, international business is what it is.
The exhibition seeks to explain the essential Britishness of British fashion since the war, and groups men's and women's clothes together, in four peculiar- ly British themes: 'Romantic', 'Tailoring', `Bohemian' and 'Country'. 'Romantic' clothes, developed through court dress- making and society dressing, are quite swoony — especially Sir Norman Hartnell's 1957 state gown for the Queen in ivory silk, thickly clustered with pearls and beads, padded with a fat bow at the back mid- knee (she couldn't possibly have sat down in it). A perfect gown for a state occasion, unlike poor Diana's horrible wedding-dress (not the dress on show, but a prototype' lookalike) in dusty beige silk taffeta (the Emanuels said ivory' but I say the hell it was) that creased like fury and made her look like four pairs of old curtains from Claridge's Ball Room. Apart from a terri- ble 1980s mistake by Zandra Rhodes, with gold pleated plastic ram's horns on each hip, it's the only really unwantable dress on show. Why didn't she ask Vivienne West- wood? Westwood can do stately sacque- back Romantic to a band playing, even if it's got only one sleeve.
Bohemian' fashion is where British designers really let rip — and why not in a country where a 48-year-old composer of popular melodies can appear on an ordi- nary working day as Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton in a long red velvet cloak with a ditsy fur collar and ridiculous knee- breeches? 'Bohemian' clothes aren't really `fashion' at all — they're artsy, intellectual, exotic, dressing-up clothes, dating all the way back to Dress Reform and Dorelia John and Lady Ottoline Morell, trimmed up with all the bazaar offerings from our subject peoples east of Suez. You don't have to measure up to Kate Moss to wear Bohemian; you can be a size 20 and go to literary parties swathed in Turkish purple pantaloons and dripping with Kashmiri shawls. If you're a woman, that is. For some reason, Bohemian men are all envi- ably skinny. The most breathtaking outfit in the whole exhibition is a man's Bohemi- an evening suit in cream Lyonnais silk jacquard, collarless and worn with a white silk crepe stock-collared shirt. Slender as a willow wand, it was designed by Mr Rupert Lycett Green, and made by Blades, the innovative tailors he founded off Savile Row; how I would love to have seen him wearing it.
If 'Romantic' and 'Bohemian' clothes sound worryingly poovy to Spectator read- ers, let me hurry you on to the 'Tailoring' display. The skilful had of Savile Row cuts, fits, pads, curves, shapes, enhances and displays the male figure with technical brilliance and perfectly British understate- ment. The skilful hand can be seen even in a wonderfully hideous Demob suit in cocoa brown (double-breasted, so no wasteful waistcoat; no drape, no turn-ups, pocket linings made of flour-hag cotton), as well as a perfectly cut three-piece suit by Tommy Nutter from 1969 that a Conservative front- bencher could still wear with perfect confi- dence — except that the unremarkable grey pinstripe cloth is cut horizontally instead of vertically. To surreal effect. If only British women could still be tailored as well as British men, There's a raft of new bespoke fancy-boys on and off the Row (Richard James, Ozwald Boateng, John Pearce and others) who tailor superbly, but no new comparable brilliance for women. I loved Sir Hardy Amies's nub- bly tweed, John Cavanagh's breathtaking suit in cream silk zibeline that stands like carved ivory, and Jean Muir's softly tai- lored curved jacket — beautiful — but if I want that perfection today I have to go to Yves Saint Laurent or Chanel.
Finally, 'Country', and here we all know just where we are. Cordings. Barbour. No pooves in the country. Thick, conservative and sturdy garments in the muddy colours of the British landscape, that set out to do a proper job and keep the weather off you. A country wardrobe doesn't change much
'Remember when I said I had nothing to wear for this party, you said, "Oh, youl think of some ping." Well...' over 50 years, whether you're buying your battered moleskins or inheriting them. Nor will it change, even as we enter the uncharted pastoral arcadia that will be Planet Blair. If he means what I think he means, your fishin' clothes should be safe enough under Labour, welly-boots, rain- chokers, fly-pockets and all. You might have to mothball the huntin' and shootin' clobber for the duration, though. (Or sell it all off to the Germans.)
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