'MY CENTURY HAS A CLEANER BOTTOM'

On his 83rd birthday, Hardy Amies

reminisces about his life and times

MY YEAR, 1909, was in the first decade of the century. Now we are in the last. The 20th is my century. It doesn't seem long. Three times brings us to William and Mary. Six times more to William the Con- queror.

I was just born an Edwardian, and ladies on the District line wore Edwardian dress until 1914. Then we followed my father to his army camps. On 11 November 1918 a thousand day-boys and I cheered our heads off in the playground. War rations were enough to avoid hunger. But there was disgusting marrow jam in brown card- board cartons.

A Daimler was hired to move us to a farmhouse on rhubarb fields ten miles east of Barking. There was neither gas nor elec- tricity. I boarded at an ancient grammar school just gone public. We were given a bath night once a week. My century has learned to wash. There are more bidets around. My century has a cleaner bottom.

The motor-car became part of our body by the Twenties. My mother died before the second world war without ever having had a refrigerator. My father longed to earn a thousand a year as this was the seal of success. My younger brother was a mon- gol who did not die until his 60th year. Only in about the last ten years did we have help with the expense of a boy who could never be left alone. My century has learned to look after such things. Whenev- er I have seen the National Health func- tion, in the countryside especially, it fills me with admiration.

My century has travelled enormously. I was sent to France in 1926 for the last of my summer holidays while at school. Next year I left school to take up an 'au pair' job at the English school in Antibes.

People were just beginning to sunbathe. The big hotels at Cannes and Nice were closed in summer. Winter was the season. Hotels in Juan-les-Pins were opening in the summer. My century has sunbathed too much. Skin cancer in old age is the price we pay for youthful folly. A leather- textured and -coloured skin looks seriously common.

In Paris, I worked in the office of cus- tom agents. The London basket filled with parcels from cloth merchants would arrive next morning at the Court dressmakers in London. I had my foot in the door of a dress house. I travelled home at Christ- mas, steerage, from Dieppe to Tilbury. The next year I went to a Lutheran par- sonage in a small town on the Rhine. I got work at a wall-tile factory. I studied Ger- man fiercely and became assistant manager.

I stayed two and a half years in Ger- many. My 21st birthday was celebrated on 1 August, the same day the French tri- colour was lowered on the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, 1930. The occupation of the Rhineland was over. I went back to England. My German boss gave me as a parting gift an air ticket from Cologne to Brussels and then on to London. It was Imperial Airways and the seats were wicker arm- chairs. Several people were discreetly sick into bags. I wanted to work in Europe but ended up in Birmingham. My mother left the Court dressmaking business in which she had worked for ten years, when war broke out. She kept in touch with the proprietors and several of the staff. I did too. But with never a thought of entering the business.

Suddenly there came an offer to run a fairly recently established bespoke tailors, women's tailoring business, the designer manager of which had left to start his own business. The owners had been my moth- er's employers.

The shop specialised in tailoring: in what ladies still called 'coats and skirts' but which by the young rich were known as 'suits'. I now see that the 'suit' has truly been the ladies' gear of the century. Based on a man's jacket, Chanel did it in the Twenties: her successor Lagerfeld is still doing it. Hundreds of thousands of women all over the world are wearing versions of men's jackets, made in real or imitation wool, over matching skirts or even printed silk dresses.

Success came to me slowly but steadily. The Coronation of George VI in 1937 brought American buyers to London en route for Paris. We made better suits than did the French. I am good at planning tai- loring. The placing of buttons and pockets, added to good proportions of the body of the coat, is as important to me as fenestra- tion in a house.

I moved to London. I became friends with fashion journalists and went on into the fringes of the beau monde, but slowly — I was intelligent enough not to be pushy. I learned the lingo. But I am surprised to remember that I was invited to a party given in the old Carlton Hotel for the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson by Mrs Beatrice Cartwright, an American hostess. Nolyneux made the dress especially for tonight. It's awful. You should always copy things out of the collection.' I was learning fast.

My century has seen the rise of a huge industry based on ready-to-wear clothes for men and women. Sport has become a big- ger influence than elegant living. Taste is not required.

In my century we won two wars. In the second there was created an organisation called Special Operations Executive. Its role was to encourage and strengthen sub- versive resistance movements in countries occupied by the enemy. It organised and sometimes took part in sabotage: big bangs. It was hated by the Secret Service (MI6) and its protective sister MI5. I became head of the Belgian Sector. Belgium was the most heavily guarded part of Europe. We parachuted agents into the Ardennes with radio equipment — I fear often into the arms of the Germans who had pene- trated the secret armies we were trying to support. I was successful in keeping the exiled Belgian government happy. They had to prove that they were trying to help. They were preparing for their come-back

after victory. I made five parachute jumps, just to prove I could do it: not behind enemy lines but into an airfield near Manchester. I was made a lieutenant- colonel and was allowed to demobilise myself, deeply distressed by Churchill's call for unconditional surrender. I had got used to thinking of my old friends in Ger- many as my enemies. I know that most intelligent Germans had seen the horror and the vanity of their leaders and were longing for a truce.

In 1945, I collected some capital from friends. I took a lease of a house built by Lord Burlington in 1735 and badly dam- aged by a land-mine which fell on Savile Row in the Blitz. I gathered a staff of tai- lors and seamstresses, and of saleswomen who had treasured their address books from before the war. We had no cloth, so we cut brown paper into what became new models. The war was a long time dying. In February 1946 American buyers came over before we were ready with a collection. They bought everything. New York was hungry for European clothes.

We attempted to make London into a centre of fashion, impertinently comparing it with Paris. By specialising in English suits, we, for a season or two, became part of the European scene. But Paris quickly reformed its industry of cloth merchants, flower-makers, embroiderers and armies of nimble-fingered workers, and drew back into its arms the chic rich and discerning of Europe and later the world. In my century, England lacked financiers who liked and understood fashion. It lacked the support of a scent industry backed by the rose and lavender fields of Grasse.

My century saw long skirts disappear from the streets — not during the 1914-18 war but in the Twenties, culminating in 1926. It was then that they were shorter than they ever had been, just around the knee. They never went above the knee until recently. Women have usually only accepted a difference of an inch from one year to another. I cannot see this, my cen- tury, ending with long skirts. I think it will all settle down around the knee rather than round the ankle or the crutch.

The reign of the short skirt was rudely interrupted by that of Dior and his New Look. It was a time of beautiful clothes and plain accessories. It ultimately had to change because it did not take into account the power of sport.

My century is ferociously interested in sport. Young girls dress like sportswomen. Matrons look as if they played tennis or golf. All go to the gym. The Queen, whose custom came to us as early as 1950 when she was still Princess Elizabeth, has always made it clear that she wished to be dressed as correctly as possible, with hat, gloves and handbag. It seemed like a kind of exquisite politeness, but it looked strange next to the hatless Mrs Jackie Kennedy.

I asked my brilliant friend and contem- porary, Enoch Powell, at one of his 80th

birthday parties, to tell me what was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in his life. 'Flying to Australia,' he said quickly. I have flown there about 20 times. The journey has no fears for me. I am now pretty clear as to the shape and size of the earth.

It is now evident that I think that my century is a pretty stunning one. I do not wish to knock it. But I can't let my fellow inhabitants of the globe get away with everything. We went to the moon. (No one talks any more about that. I can't remem- ber the date.) We created Concorde to fly to New York. Rather feeble arrangements to fly Concorde to Australia quickly petered out. Too expensive.

Travel abroad has brought new tastes into the mouth of my century. With these sensations came an interest in cooking. One of my Egerias — ladies I consult about manners they have been brought up to respect — admits that they were not allowed to discuss food at table. They are happy to do so today.

When it isn't food, it's gardening. My century has seen the arrival and the tri- umph of the garden centre. The Chelsea Flower Show is an annual Great Exhibi- tion. Let us rejoice. Gardens do not make revolutionaries. It would be a good idea to encourage those Serbs and Croats to take to growing roses.

In my century, inflation has truly become inflated. To give examples is to encourage bores. I am fascinated by the statements of politicians that they have plans to control inflation. Looking at my century, I can see that a man now demands for his work many more things than he did when I was born. He requires a centrally heated house, a garden, a television set, a motor-car and holidays abroad. Washing-machines are as common as water-closets. To truly stop inflation you would have to ban all adver- tising.

I ask my Egerias for their favourite devel- opments in my century. 'The elimination of fog.' In second place they reply, 'Televi- sion, the companion of maiden ladies in the country.' Early in my century one snatched a crystal with a cat's whisker. Now television is the voice of my century.

This autumn I shall go to Sydney. At meal-times, listening to the classical music channel, I shall think of the Revd Sydney Smith: 'My idea of heaven is eating pats de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.' Only in my century can you do just that at the height of 30,000 feet.

'I think we're in for some graphic testimony today.'