Faded Elegance
Aspiring to look like Proper Hippies, we knew that we had to get some velvet and floaty stuff with psychedelic type patterns to wear. There were some pretty cool shops in the Toon, but they were expensive. Well, there was Elle where they would make you a velvet coat for £25. Some rich mates had them.
We also had to do something about the School Uniform. Young Men from Dabs, St Custards and the Argees tended to favour RAF greatcoats to offset the album under their arms as they strolled between bus stops. At least we just had to find a suitable navy or black alternative – girls at Grand Central and SSSh had to wear brown or green. Duffel coats had been banned, probably because we were making such a good stab at looking like wee tramps in them. I found the shoe solution though: round toed clark’s sandals with tee bar and a flower design for summer and clunky lace-up crepe soled, round toed shoes for winter. As listed on the lower school uniform list – ha!
My mam had a job where she had to wear certain colours, and she got a clothing allowance of £2 a month. (2 quid, the cost of an album). So me and my brother managed to get her to agree to the same deal for us. Basically the plan was to buy albums. Mam’s sister, Auntie Nelly, worked as a cleaner at the university and she heard there were some really good jumble sales going on, especially in Gosforth and Jesmond. She bought me some proper ski pants with straps under the feet and lots of useful fabric for making proggy mats. (she made me a mat for my room when I went to uni too).
The late 60s must have been the time when many of the mature ladies of Newcastle decided that the finery they’d worn before the war may never come back into fashion and it was time to embrace the polyester revolution. We certainly found some amazing clothes and accessories. I still have some of them.
There were some tricks to learn of course. We learned to spot silk by feel under piles of tat, know our cashmere from our mohair and wool from acrylic. There’s a knack to using your elbows so it doesn’t look as if you’re barging people out of the way. When you see something nice, cover it up quickly and work it out from under the pile before anyone notices. Ask for the price and look pathetic. If it’s expensive, collect a few things together and ask for a bulk deal, or hide it and ask again at the end when they’re keen to clear everything before the rag men come in. Parents don’t like the idea of infestation. Wash everything as soon as you get it home. If it isn’t washable it probably is more trouble that it’s worth, but if you really must keep it, get a hot iron and press all the seams hard (pop pop). One of the aunties really didn’t like jumble. She’d throw good stuff onto a garden fire and shout about lice. We just hid stuff and the cousin got dressed away from home – simple. Quite a lot of the clothes were shared between us anyway.
Some favourites:
Utility crepe frocks in real 40’s sexy styles.
A black and rainbow print crepe de chine tea dress with flared hem and low neck
A devore velvet + satin number in black with a brown background and silver lurex threads.
Victorian Nightdresses (laying –out shrouds the aunties said. It was the custom to have a really nice one ready for your demise)
A high waisted coat with blue velvet skirt and wine red crushed velvet bodice.
Two silk kimonos. One in black with a multicoloured splodgy print and the other pink satin with a red dragon embroidered down the back.
An embroidered cream silk shirt
A Navy (school!) barrathea full skirted coat with huge shawl collar and Pinched waist
A wide brimmed green nun-style hat.
A collection of silk scarves I still have and wear regularly
Flowers made from felt and feathers
Hand knitted fairisle jumpers
Beads in all shapes and sizes.
We also bought anything embroidered, like bedspreads to use as shawls or make skirts. More often we just draped them around our rooms to absorb the joss stick smoke.
Sometimes we did a bit of sewing. We had to to make things fit, change the length or patch them up. Tina and I made coats from curtain fabric (Farnon’s Sale). Hers was beautiful, rust coloured brocade. Later I made another from a pair of printed chenille curtains. I carried a bag made of 2 prayer mats and some tape for years.
It wasn’t just us either. We met a guy who’d moved into a new flat.
“The landlord said like it’s all yours, so I made these trousers out of the curtains, man” (picture Neil in The Young Ones)
I once came home late in my Zig-zag wanderer coat, which was a kind of plasticine green barathea with the buttons on the points of a zigzag down the front. My father opened the door and said “you look a right clip”. No, I don’t know either, but it was even more fetching from behind where I’d strung felt flowers on a cord tied between the belt loops to take in some of its vast bulk. The epitome of cool I'd've said.
The legacy of all this is I still have a hankering for decent fabric. When I see it in a sale I buy it, along with lots of patterns. I now have a fabric Mountain, starting with some viyella bought in Bury market in 1975, Oh and the sari lengths from a Newcastle jumble sale around 1968. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maybe we should have a moral on every blog.
We also had to do something about the School Uniform. Young Men from Dabs, St Custards and the Argees tended to favour RAF greatcoats to offset the album under their arms as they strolled between bus stops. At least we just had to find a suitable navy or black alternative – girls at Grand Central and SSSh had to wear brown or green. Duffel coats had been banned, probably because we were making such a good stab at looking like wee tramps in them. I found the shoe solution though: round toed clark’s sandals with tee bar and a flower design for summer and clunky lace-up crepe soled, round toed shoes for winter. As listed on the lower school uniform list – ha!
My mam had a job where she had to wear certain colours, and she got a clothing allowance of £2 a month. (2 quid, the cost of an album). So me and my brother managed to get her to agree to the same deal for us. Basically the plan was to buy albums. Mam’s sister, Auntie Nelly, worked as a cleaner at the university and she heard there were some really good jumble sales going on, especially in Gosforth and Jesmond. She bought me some proper ski pants with straps under the feet and lots of useful fabric for making proggy mats. (she made me a mat for my room when I went to uni too).
The late 60s must have been the time when many of the mature ladies of Newcastle decided that the finery they’d worn before the war may never come back into fashion and it was time to embrace the polyester revolution. We certainly found some amazing clothes and accessories. I still have some of them.
There were some tricks to learn of course. We learned to spot silk by feel under piles of tat, know our cashmere from our mohair and wool from acrylic. There’s a knack to using your elbows so it doesn’t look as if you’re barging people out of the way. When you see something nice, cover it up quickly and work it out from under the pile before anyone notices. Ask for the price and look pathetic. If it’s expensive, collect a few things together and ask for a bulk deal, or hide it and ask again at the end when they’re keen to clear everything before the rag men come in. Parents don’t like the idea of infestation. Wash everything as soon as you get it home. If it isn’t washable it probably is more trouble that it’s worth, but if you really must keep it, get a hot iron and press all the seams hard (pop pop). One of the aunties really didn’t like jumble. She’d throw good stuff onto a garden fire and shout about lice. We just hid stuff and the cousin got dressed away from home – simple. Quite a lot of the clothes were shared between us anyway.
Some favourites:
Utility crepe frocks in real 40’s sexy styles.
A black and rainbow print crepe de chine tea dress with flared hem and low neck
A devore velvet + satin number in black with a brown background and silver lurex threads.
Victorian Nightdresses (laying –out shrouds the aunties said. It was the custom to have a really nice one ready for your demise)
A high waisted coat with blue velvet skirt and wine red crushed velvet bodice.
Two silk kimonos. One in black with a multicoloured splodgy print and the other pink satin with a red dragon embroidered down the back.
An embroidered cream silk shirt
A Navy (school!) barrathea full skirted coat with huge shawl collar and Pinched waist
A wide brimmed green nun-style hat.
A collection of silk scarves I still have and wear regularly
Flowers made from felt and feathers
Hand knitted fairisle jumpers
Beads in all shapes and sizes.
We also bought anything embroidered, like bedspreads to use as shawls or make skirts. More often we just draped them around our rooms to absorb the joss stick smoke.
Sometimes we did a bit of sewing. We had to to make things fit, change the length or patch them up. Tina and I made coats from curtain fabric (Farnon’s Sale). Hers was beautiful, rust coloured brocade. Later I made another from a pair of printed chenille curtains. I carried a bag made of 2 prayer mats and some tape for years.
It wasn’t just us either. We met a guy who’d moved into a new flat.
“The landlord said like it’s all yours, so I made these trousers out of the curtains, man” (picture Neil in The Young Ones)
I once came home late in my Zig-zag wanderer coat, which was a kind of plasticine green barathea with the buttons on the points of a zigzag down the front. My father opened the door and said “you look a right clip”. No, I don’t know either, but it was even more fetching from behind where I’d strung felt flowers on a cord tied between the belt loops to take in some of its vast bulk. The epitome of cool I'd've said.
The legacy of all this is I still have a hankering for decent fabric. When I see it in a sale I buy it, along with lots of patterns. I now have a fabric Mountain, starting with some viyella bought in Bury market in 1975, Oh and the sari lengths from a Newcastle jumble sale around 1968. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maybe we should have a moral on every blog.
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