Carnaby Street: One-Time Capital of Cool
Look! Here they come! The dolly birds in miniskirts, jumper dresses, and herringbone tights, and all that Jean Shrimpton blowout hair! And Twiggy pixie cuts! Look at the dandies, too, making the scene in velvet trousers, Edwardian jackets, top hats, and Chelsea boots. Pop stars, models, mods on motor scooters, Carnaby Street is bustling with shoppers and tourists and all things fab.
London was happening in the sixties, baby. Fashion didn’t take its cues from the Champs-Élysées anymore. A backstreet in Soho set the trends now. Carnaby Street, three blocks long, two hundred yards from end to end, influenced fashion worldwide.
By the early 1960s, Paris seemed so last decade. Even Brigitte Bardot, the personification of French chic, eventually made shopping excursions to Carnaby Street. Brigitte Bardot! The capital of cool had moved from the City of Lights to drab, button-down London, only London wasn’t button-down and drab any longer. The British economy had boomed in the years following the war and by the time the sixties rolled around, the UK had been shaken by a youthquake, an explosion of creativity in the arts, music, and fashion. War babies had money in their pockets, and they spent a bunch of it on records and gear.
Dolly birds and dandies didn’t shop in dull department stores like Harrods and Selfridges. Boutiques were the thing now, super little shops that offered the latest pop fashions. And Carnaby Street was the hub for up-to-the-minute trends, thanks to the vision of a young designer named John Stephen.
Stephen couldn’t have picked a more off-the-grid spot for his first menswear shop. Carnaby was a rundown road with vacant storefronts, a dairy, a newstand, an electric power plant, and a few tailor and tobacconist shops. Then in 1958, Stephen moved into the neighborhood and set up his mod outpost. He named the shop His Clothes, painted it canary yellow, played pop music for the customers, and presented apparel of his own design: pink tab-collar shirts, hip-hugging trousers, and paisley and polka dot ties. He designed collarless suits years before they were popularized by The Beatles. It wasn’t long before young Londoners beat a path to Stephen’s shop.
Entrepreneurs followed and opened more boutiques, such as Lady Jane, Kleptomania, Carnaby Girl, Topper, and I Was Lord Kitchner’s Valet, the go-to shop for Victorian guardsman jackets and other vintage military gear. According to Carnaby lore, the shop was the inspiration for the outfits worn by Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Boutiques popped up like dandelions and it wasn’t long before the once dreary street had burst into a riot of color.
John Stephen went on to open more than a dozen shops and became known as the “King of Carnaby Street.” Pop groups looked for clothes on Carnaby Street, or had their outfits customed tailored. Among the groups Stephen outfitted were The Who, Rolling Stones, Bee Gees, and Kinks. The combustion of music and fashion made Carnaby Street the heart of Swinging London and a symbol of the Swinging Sixties.
Swinging London is long gone now, along with the mods and the hippies. Gone, too, are Carnaby Street’s quirky shops. And there’s no need to dodge MGs and motor scooters. The street became a pedestrian mall years ago.
Today Carnaby Street is one of fourteen streets in a lively shopping district called (yes, you guessed it) Carnaby, containing roughly one hundred shops and sixty restaurants, bars, and cafés. If you’re looking for the Carnaby Street of the 1960s, you’ll need to dive into your imagination. And that’s cool, because for those of us who came of age on this side of the pond, Carnaby Street had always been a place in the imagination, as much a street in London.
