Boutique London: A History: King's Road to Carnaby Street Hardcover – 30 Sept. 2010

Fab book.

This is a book about a time not that long ago, that is now sadly gone forever. It’s about a significant period of great originality that involved the groovy London fashion scene from the late 50's to the mid-1960's. This is a beautiful, fun book about the long gone highly individual fashion Boutique. This was a time that allowed individual small businesses to flourish, a time when the high street was full of original little boutiques that really were like dressing up boxes; so unlike today when every high street in every town has the same multi nationally owned shops all selling the same thing (you all know the ones/names I mean!). The same can also be said for the top designer stores with their eye watering price tags.This book features vintage shopping maps of London with great images inside the boutiques of the day, which gives a rare viewing as there are little visual records around today of the 1960's boutique. The beauty of the 60’s boutiques is that it was new, affordable and it had never been done before; it performed solely for the younger generation waving goodbye to the old ways of dressing and retail shopping. In addition, this wasn't just about the ladies, a revolution in menswear was also taking place and later we would start to see unisex clothing and unisex boutiques.This book captures the spirit of the sixties in all its exuberance; it chronicles the explosion of creativity–in art, music and fashion–and the revolutions–sexual, social and political–that reshaped the world. It’s about the wild clothing shops on Carnaby Street and the King's Road which were the hippest thoroughfares in the world.It was a time of daring experimentation with the transformation of rock 'n' roll by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the new aesthetics introduced by fashion designers like Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki for Biba, Ossie Clark, Celia Birtwell and Alice Pollock; hairdressers like Vidal Sassoon and Leonard, models like Jean Shrimpton, Penelope Tree, Veruschka and Twiggy and photographers like David Bailey. In fact Mary Quant opened her first trend setting boutique 'Bazaar' on the Kings Road in 1955. She opened her second boutique with an interior designed by Sir Terence Conran in 1957. As we moved further into the 60's names like Zandra Rhodes, Bill Gibb, Jean Muir and Thea Porter would start to appear.This book is historical and is about a time of optimism, individuality and creativity in fashion, a time that I can never imagine happening again in our fast paced digital and global multinational age. If you were there at the time this will be a trip down memory lane. For others it's a fascinating insight into a totally brilliant and original period of fashion innovation, not only in design but fashion retailing and also the 60's lifestyle. The boutiques in this book are used to tell a fascinating story. Halcyon days of optimism.