“Nell studied Davina’s long and voluminous black skirt,
dusty black sweater with a high neck, and the various huge pieces of metal
hanging from her wrists, ears and throat, and remembered seeing Gardis
similarly festooned. Evidently this was Fashion.”
Stella Gibbons’ Here Be Dragons was published in 1956 and,
like all my favourite books, offers a visual snapshot of the time in which it
was written. Here we are in 1950s London bohemia. Teenage rebellion is begin to stir, but
the movement is fuelled by coffee shops and jazz, rather than the imminent rock n roll
explosion.
A change in family circumstance takes Nell from her sleepy
village and thrusts her into the heart of Hampstead. Although Gibbons is most
famous for Cold Comfort Farm, many more of her books are set in Hampstead,
where Gibbons lived for many years. In the 1950s, it seems, it was facing an
invasion of the bohemians:
“Hampstead showed increasing signs of being given over to
Bohemia; the pavement echoed with flapping sandals and the clapping of
Continental clogs there were tights and striped blue and white jeans to be seen
loitering around the Underground station.”
Bohemian style idol, Eva Barok. Image source.
Nell arrives in a respectable suit, but is swiftly
given a sartorial lecture from her layabout cousin John. She needs to buy a
beret and “if you can’t afford proper clothes, long full skirts and low heels
and metal jewellery, you should copy Eva Bartok. She knows how to make horrible
little suits like the one you’re wearing and old raincoats look marvellously
romantic.”
John himself dresses in what’s described as “an
extraordinary collection of clothes “. One ensemble includes an immaculate
striped blazer, blue denim trousers, a gaudy American shirt.” I love this sense
of improvisation, which reminds me of the improvisation of Ken Russell’s teddy girls.
But, as with any subculture, en masse the bohemian dress and habits turn out to
be no less strictly governed that those of their parents they rebel against.
They party, dancing with naked feet in pools of cider while candles burn in –
of course – Chianti bottles.
Enter one of their café haunts and:
“There they sat: the large calm, dirty girls in flowing
skirts and lead jewellery, and the dreamers in drain-pipes and duffel coats,
the spinners of fantastic plans for making fortunes brooding silently over
newspapers, with unwashed hair falling across (in the case of the girls, who
believed in living naturally) unpowdered faces.”
The Troubadour cafe, London, 1950s. Image source.
Gibbons is seemingly quite fixated on their cleanliness (or
lack of), perhaps the most evident characteristic they were rebelling against
the “cleanliness is next to godliness mantra” of previous generations. In
another café, Nell encounters the “dirty faces of the Espresso drinkers, set off by brilliant
checked shirts, white jackets fastened by wooden links, black ‘jumpers’ (as
Nell called them) and, in the case of the women, exaggeratedly severe or
flowing manner of arranging the hair. Coiffures and beards played a large part
in the exhibiting of their personalities, and did not always look quite clean.”
It’s not only ‘jumpers’ that need an explanation, but the
whole notion of separates. When Nell tells her mum she needs some to look
modern, her mother responds “need what?” And she’s even more surprised when
Nell tells her she’s spotted a top “for less than a pound and a skirt for less
than 30 shillings” on Oxford Street, because “No ‘top’ or skirt costing as
ridiculously little as the sums Nell had mentioned could be anything but bad
style.” Not only are the ways of dressing and shopping on the cards, it’s
obvious that there is a shift in generational styles – perhaps something that’s
usually more closely associated with the 1960s. Here Be Dragons captures these transitions, and revealed some of these details that normally would get overlooked in a survey of how fashions, and even teens, changed postwar.
Leon Bell and the Bell Cats and some hand-jivers. Image source.
Over the course of the book, Nell comes ‘chic’ and, in a real sign of the times, moves from tea shop to running her own espresso shop. How her business survives the Swinging Sixties remains unknown.
Here Be Dragons is full of wonderful details that make you
feel like you could be living in London in the mid-1950s, and it’s perhaps a
better book if you read it for these details, rather than the plot itself. But
what vintage fashion nerd could resist a book that includes the following
description of Cecil Beaton’s Glass of Fashion (first published in 1954)? It
comes straight from the mouth of Nell’s debuntante school friend: “It’s all about
pre-1914 tarts, with drawings of them in saucy hats.” Quite.Follow my blog with Bloglovin