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"Jeeves" will be away during 10 days / Greetings.
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Lady Chatterley's Lover: Trailer - BBC One
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They changed the world. Not the shirt – GANT Global Brand Campaign
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GANT HERITAGE from GANT AB on Vimeo.
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Encouraged by his sons, Bernard Gantmacher establishes GANT Inc – and starts to make shirts under the company’s own label. At the time the town of New Haven was one of America’s capitals of clothing manufacture. One reason for this was that it had a large community of Italian immigrants, many of whom were talented garment workers.
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Dreaming of a better life, Bernard Gantmacher – a Ukrainian immigrant – set sail for America to find it. Not only did he seize and fulfill his dream, he also forever changed the course of American fashion.
Featured in this short film is our very own Christopher Bastin, the Creative Director at GANT, for whom this story and heritage is priceless. "It gives you a platform and security as a brand,” he says.
The untold stories, the nuanced details, the styled precision – these are what make GANT designs come to life and why we continue to be inspired by some of our most beloved and original pieces.
Then and now – it’s how we stay relevant in today’s modern wardrobe.
Encouraged by his sons, Bernard Gantmacher establishes GANT Inc – and starts to make shirts under the company’s own label. At the time the town of New Haven was one of America’s capitals of clothing manufacture. One reason for this was that it had a large community of Italian immigrants, many of whom were talented garment workers.
Times were good for the Gantmachers. The business grew – and so did the family. Two of Bernard and Rebecca’s children, Marty and Elliot, would go on to spur GANT to great success. The boys, born in 1921 and 1926, grew up in New Haven and helped at the shirt factory by sweeping floors and fusing collars. They were also aware of what was happening on the campus of nearby Yale University, which would change the course of American fashion.
The outbreak of World War II interrupted their careers and both sons enlisted in the army. Upon returning home in the 1940s they studied at the University of Connecticut. Marty specialized in business administration while Elliot majored in marketing. Then, armed with their new skills, they went back into the family business.
The brothers saw that America was entering a period of rapid and profound change. The war had blown away many old traditions. New kinds of art, music and fashion were spreading across the nation. Marty and Elliot saw an opportunity – and seized it. They convinced their father the time was right to leave Par-Ex and the contracting business behind. Instead of making clothing for other labels, they would sell perfectly tailored shirts under their own label.
In April 1949, GANT Inc. was born.
From the outset, GANT was known for the quality of its shirts. In the early days, when the company was in the business of supplying shirts to other retailers, a discreet GANT trademark was added: a little diamond with a “G” in it stamped on the tail of the shirt. This mark was the customer’s assurance of quality just as much as the retailer’s label inside the collar. By the mid-1950s, the Diamond G had become part of the American menswear history – a distinctive sign of superior quality that helped make the signature shirts coveted best sellers, with demand far outstripping supply.
“I’m not entirely sure why they chose to put a diamond around the G, or if it even was intentionally symbolizing a diamond. But whatever the reasons, it led to people no longer caring about what the neck label said and only looking for the G," explains Christopher Bastin, the Creative Director at GANT.
The 1950s was a time of unprecedented growth in America and GANT shirts helped define the casual-yet-smart look that dominated in the post-war years. GANT’s detailed craftsmanship and effortless American style appealed to a generation of men who had spent years wearing military issue clothing and who had now returned home to take their place in the booming middle class.
They appreciated the perfect roll of a GANT collar, and the quality of fabric one could expect with a GANT shirt. And soon they would appreciate another quality that GANT pioneered: color. For decades the plain white shirt had dominated in menswear but that was all about to change forever. An explosion of color was coming – and that explosion sparked in the town of New Haven, Connecticut.
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THE FEZ HAT / VÍDEO: How To Make a Fez - Doctor Who Cosplay - GEEK WEEK
In 1826 Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire suppressed the Janissaries and began sweeping reforms of the military. His modernized military adopted Western style uniforms and, as hats, the fez with a cloth wrapped around it. In 1829 the Sultan ordered his civil officials to wear the plain fez, and also banned the wearing of turbans. The intention was to coerce the populace at large to update to the fez, and the plan was successful. This was a radically egalitarian measure, which replaced the elaborate sumptuary laws that signaled rank, religion, and occupation, allowing prosperous non-Muslims to express their wealth in competitions with Muslims, foreshadowing the Tanzimat reforms. Although tradesmen and artisans generally rejected the fez, it became a symbol of modernity throughout the Near East, inspiring similar decrees in other nations (such as Iran
To meet escalating demand, skilled fez makers were induced to immigrate from North Africa to Constantinople , where factories were established in the neighborhood of Eyup. Styles soon multiplied, with nuances of shape, height, material, and hue competing in the market. The striking scarlet and merlot colors of the Fez Strakonice , Czech Republic
The 1908 Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina resulted in a boycott of Austrian goods, which became known as the "Fez Boycott" due to the near monopoly the Austrians then held on production of the hat. Although the hat survived, the year-long boycott brought the end of its universality in the Ottoman Empire as other styles became socially acceptable.
Initially a symbol of Ottoman modernity, the fez over time came to be seen as part of an "Oriental" cultural identity. Seen as exotic and romantic in the west, it enjoyed a vogue as part of men's luxury smoking outfit in the United States and the UK Turkey
The fez was initially a brimless bonnet of red, white, or black with a turban woven around. Later the turban was eliminated, the bonnet shortened, and the color fixed to red. Praying while wearing a fez—instead of a hat with brim—was easier because Muslims put their foreheads on the ground many times during the prayer sessions.
A version of the fez was used as an arming cap for the 1400–1700s version of the mail armour head protector (a round metal plate or skull-cap, around which hung a curtain of mail to protect the neck and upper shoulder).
The red fez with blue tassel was the standard headdress of the Turkish Army from the 1840s until the introduction of a khaki service dress and peakless sun helmet in 1910. The only significant exceptions were cavalry and some artillery units who wore a lambskin hat with coloured cloth tops. Albanian levies wore a white version of the fez. During World War I the fez was still worn by some naval reserve units and occasionally by soldiers when off duty.
The Evzones (light infantry) regiments of the Greek Army wore their own distinctive version of the fez from 1837 until World War II. It now survives in the parade uniform of the Presidential Guard in Athens
From the mid-19th century on the fez was widely adopted as the headdress of locally recruited "native" soldiers among the various colonial troops of the world. The French North African regiments (Zouaves, Tirailleurs, and Spahis) wore wide, red fezzes with detachable tassels of various colours. It was an off-duty affectation of the Zouaves to wear their fezzes at different angles according to the regiment; French officers of North African units during the 1930s often wore the same fez as their men, with rank insignia attached. The Libyan battalions and squadrons of the Italian colonial forces wore lower, red fezzes over white skull caps. Somali and Eritrean regiments in Italian service wore high red fezzes with coloured tufts that varied according to the unit. German askaris in East Africa wore their fezzes with khaki covers on nearly all occasions. The Belgian Force Publique in the Congo East Africa ) wore high straight-sided fezzes in either red or black, while the West African Frontier Force wore a low red version. The Egyptian Army wore the classic Turkish model until 1950. The West India Regiment of the British Army wore a fez as part of its Zouave-style full dress until this unit was disbanded in 1928. The tradition is continued in the full dress of the band of the Barbados Regiment, with a white turban wrapped around the base.
While the fez was a colourful and picturesque item of uniform it was in several ways an impractical headdress. If worn without a drab cover it made the head a target for enemy fire, and it provided little protection from the sun. As a result, it was increasingly relegated to parade or off-duty wear by World War II, although France
Post-independence armies in Africa quickly discarded the fez as a colonial relic. It is, however, still worn by the ceremonial Gardes Rouge in Senegal Melilla , in North Africa , retain a parade uniform that includes the fez and white cloaks. Filipino units organised in the early days of US
The largely Bosniak Muslim 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, which was recruited from Bosnia, used a red or field grey fez with Waffen SS cap insignia during the latter half of World War II. Bosnian infantry regiments in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire had also been distinguished by wearing the fez until the end of World War I.
Two regiments of the Indian Army recruited from Muslim areas wore fezzes under British rule (although the turban was the nearly-universal headdress among Hindu and Muslim sepoys and sowars). A green fez was worn by the Bahawalpur Lancers of Pakistan as late as the 1960s.
Many volunteer Zouave regiments wore the French North African version of the fez during the American Civil War.
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BBC 1 / Coming next Monday : All Change at Longleat.
Episode 1
All Change at Longleat
Episode 1 of 3
Next Monday
21:00
BBC ONE EXCEPT SCOTLAND , SCOTLAND
Lord Bath has handed control of the £190 million estate to his son, Ceawlin, but the handover isn't going smoothly. Ceawlin upset his father when he moved back in, and the pair are no longer on speaking terms. In the village on the estate, there's further unrest after Ceawlin puts up the villagers' rents.
Meanwhile, Ceawlin's wife Emma is settling into life as Lady Weymouth. She now has her own servants and the run of the 130-room historic house - but she must get used to sharing her home with a daily stream of visitors.
In the safari park, the animal keepers watch the family from afar and wonder how Ceawlin will compare to his father. Lord Bath was a flamboyant, controversial figure. Although now in retirement, he continues to enjoy a famously open marriage. Various 'wifelets' still visit when his wife is away.
All Change At Longleat sees a new couple take over one of the country’s most extraordinary aristocratic estates. As the ever-flamboyant owner, Lord Bath, winds down his involvement, his eldest son has moved in downstairs, along with his new wife, Emma, who will be Britain
Built in 1580, the stately home of Longleat has been in the same aristocratic family for 14 generations. In the 1960s, Lord Bath’s father opened the first safari park outside of Africa after it became increasingly difficult to afford the upkeep of Longleat. He installed a menagerie of wild animals in the gardens, including lions, hippos and chimpanzees. Today, a host of exotic animals continue to prowl the grounds.
This national treasure is now theirs to enjoy. But challenges lie ahead, as Lord and Lady Bath take on a staff of hundreds, two villages and a safari park, along with the enormous but fragile Elizabethan stately home filled with priceless antiquities. As they try to adjust to their new responsibilities, some of their decisions aren’t welcomed by everyone...
This series is an intimate upstairs-downstairs portrait of an aristocratic family at a time of transition, and the colourful characters that work for and serve them.
Ceawlin, 41, arrived separately at last month's fayre with wife Emma, 12 years his junior, who will become Britain
The family pictured on the grounds of their Giraffe Park
Why the big beasts of Longleat are at war AGAIN! How a battle over the 'wall colour' at the stately home of Lord Bath has reopened the wounds in his aristocratic family
Lord Bath and his son Ceawlin in dispute over colour of Longleat House
Pair ignore each other, with businessman Ceawlin already avoiding mother
It's said family only speak through lawyers, with estate atmosphere 'tense'
Extraordinary state of affairs will feature in new BBC series about changes at Longleat
By ALISON BOSHOFF FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 22:16 GMT, 2 September 2015 | UPDATED: 23:30 GMT, 2 September 2015
There was all manner of entertainment to be had at this year’s June summer fayre, held in the Longleat Estate village of Horningsham — hook-a-duck, Morris dancers and an exhibition of vintage cars.
But the most enjoyable diversion was surely provided by the spectacle of Lord Bath, 83, that most libidinous and eccentric sprig of the aristocracy, smiling benignly at the villagers while apparently cheerily avoiding his son, daughter-in-law and new grandson.
The family have once again fallen out, it seems. This time, the row is ostensibly over a new paint colour being used on the walls of their magnificent Elizabethan stately home, Longleat House.
In reality, however, the tensions are more fundamental: whether Lord Bath will ever approve of the way the 10,000-acre estate and safari park in Wiltshire is being run by his heir, Ceawlin, to whom he ceded control in 2010.
On the day of the Fayre, this meant that for much of the afternoon the various family members kept their distance. Lord Bath was ferried around the event in a motorised buggy — he is increasingly infirm, though still dressed for the day in a magnificent patchwork waistcoat, his tangle of long grey hair only slightly tamed by a neat Alice
There was no sign of his wife, Anna, who has been caught up in the new Longleat feud.
Meanwhile Ceawlin, 41, arrived separately with wife Emma, 12 years his junior, who will become Britain
And well she might. Her baby will, in time, himself inherit Longleat — and Emma must surely be praying that little John’s relationship with his dad is far less fractured than that of Ceawlin and his father, Alexander, 7th Marquess of Bath.
As the afternoon wore on, it seemed to dawn on Lord Bath that he could scarcely ignore his son completely. He drove over for a chat in front of locals who, having heard all about the fresh tension between the pair, were naturally agog.
I’m told that there was brief contact, on terms that appeared ‘friendly enough’, before both went their separate ways back to Longleat.
Since then, they have apparently maintained their mutual policy of ignoring each other — a sulk which persists even though their Longleat apartments are within roaring distance.
The extraordinary state of affairs will no doubt bubble uncomfortably to the surface in a forthcoming three-part BBC series, All Change At Longleat, about the aristocratic family and the future of its glorious estate.
One family member familiar with the estate’s internal politics confirms that the atmosphere at Longleat is tense to say the least. As well as falling out with his father, Ceawlin is not on speaking terms with his mother following an argument two years ago and ‘works hard to avoid her’ when she visits Longleat from her home in Paris.
The marriage of the octogenarian Lord Bath is famously elastic: over the years, he has maintained a string of ‘wifelets’ in a series of cottages on the estate. Anna, his Hungarian-born wife, traditionally opted to stay away and allow him to dabble in peace for much of the year.
Now even though all the wifelets have died or moved on, Anna remains semi-detached. But as the Mail revealed on Friday, even without her, the atmosphere is decidedly dicey.
‘Everything within the family is so touchy,’ says one observer. ‘They feel if you want to speak to other people, you have to do it through lawyers. And there are no family values. They never all sit down together for Sunday lunch and say “hello” to each other like normal families do. In fact, generally, they don’t talk to each other.’
Back in 2010, Lord Bath was suffering from type 2 diabetes and generally feeling his age. He decided to hand over the reins to his son, Ceawlin, Lord Weymouth, who had grown up at Longleat believing his childhood was ‘absolutely normal’.
As a boy he would walk a tiger on a lead and wake up to hear the famous lions in the safari park roaring. Matters were scarcely less exotic in the house, with his father, known as the ‘Loins of Longleat’, bringing home his string of young women to live there for as long as they took his fancy.
One biographer asserted that Lord Bath required a woman to sleep either side of him in the four poster bed. He immortalised all his ‘wifelets’ in lurid paintings, daubed on panelling at Longleat, reaching a final total of 74.
Ceawlin told an interviewer he ‘rather treasured’ his father’s eccentricity while also saying he ‘blanked’ the girlfriends as a matter of course.
Ceawlin was sent to the local comprehensive school by his Old Etonian father, who thought that a spot of social equality would do him good. In an act of rebellion, Ceawlin dipped into his trust fund and sent himself to Bedales instead.
Soon after, he was expelled for smoking cannabis and apparently set out to be as wild as his father. He opened a nightclub called Debbie Does Dallas in London , then moved to the Himalayas to find himself.
Eventually, though, he left hippiedom behind and built an international chain of upmarket hostels. By the time he was asked to take over at Longleat he had worked in hotels in Europe , and was prepared for the task.
‘I was always cognisant it was coming,’ he explained when he took control. His father had given him some ‘sage pointers’, he added, and said he felt that Lord Bath would be relaxed about what transpired. ‘My father is a big man. He doesn’t suffer from that old bull/young bull neurosis.’
How wrong he was. Relations between the men were so bad that Lord Bath missed Ceawlin and Emma’s wedding in 2013. Many of Ceawlin’s management initiatives were reversed owing to his father’s disapproval. One of Ceawlin’s first measures as chairman of Longleat Enterprises Limited was to appoint the former Legoland boss David Bradley in a senior role. Bradley, a bracing influence, set about trying to ‘modernise’ the place.
Dog owners were astonished to be asked to pay a full admission fee for using what was known as the ‘Pleasure Walk’ on the estate. Locals were told that if they wanted to picnic, they would have to buy a day ticket.
The practice of discounting tickets for anyone living within a 20-minute drive of Longleat was also axed. Longleat started demanding market rents for properties on the estate.
And 27 long-serving members of staff aged over 65 — many of them guides who had been showing visitors around for 40 years — departed.
On a positive note, two new attractions were opened and the ‘tired’ safari park was given a revamp.
But such was the controversy over the changes, that Bradley was suspended in mysterious circumstances, and then resigned a month later, in October 2013. At that point, the local discounts came back, as did the practice of allowing dog walkers to roam.
Next came the damaging revelation that Longleat had put down a number of lions after there was overbreeding in the pride.
Ceawlin admitted that on his watch there had been an unsustainable expansion of the lion population at Longleat to ensure there were always cubs on view for visitors — a practice he was now ending.
Amid all of this conflict and upheaval, Ceawlin made what must at the time have seemed the least dramatic decision: to move some murals painted on panels by his father for Ceawlin and his older sister, Lenka.
The brightly coloured images of children and animals were spread across three former nursery rooms and a corridor. And when Ceawlin moved into the rooms with Emma, the daughter of a Nigerian oil tycoon, he took some of the panels down and stored them.
He reasoned that his father had, essentially, covered 12 rooms, two corridors, two large hallways and two staircases which, he said, was ‘nearly all the space on the private side of the house that can sensibly be occupied’.
He added: ‘If, when pushing 40, you’re looking at the same walls you were looking at when you were four, you can understand that a moment can arise when you snap.
‘I need to make this space relevant to who I am now, not harking back to the four-year-old child.’ Promising that he was preserving the murals in storage he vowed not to touch his father’s Kama Sutra mural, Lord Bath’s pride and joy. However, enormous upset was caused.
Lord Bath sniffed: ‘I suppose I just have to accept what has happened. But my relationship with Ceawlin will not be the same again.
‘I only found out once the removal had started. It’s my life’s work…it’s killed my relationship with him and I don’t feel inclined to pay any interest in his wedding.’ Instead, he and wife Anna went to a different wedding, of a friend in Hampshire.
It transpired that Lady Bath, who was a soft porn actress in her past, did not wholly approve of publicity-loving Emma, an aspiring celebrity chef, and had asked Ceawlin to call the match off.
I suppose I just have to accept what has happened. But my relationship with Ceawlin will not be the same again.
Lord Bath
To what could she object? Well, the future Marchioness is an ambitious young woman who appears bent on achieving fame in her own right.
She told an interviewer that she was toying with the idea of styling herself Emma Thynn [the family surname] rather than Lady Weymouth, noting: ‘Thynn could be useful in building up my brand — it’s a funny and lucky coincidence that it fits so well with the philosophy on food that I have developed through my blog.’
She added: ‘The sky is the limit — product-wise — with the name Thynn. Thynn Truffles, Thynn Cocktails, Thynn Ketchup. And there is definitely room for a Thynn Cookbook.’
Nevertheless, Ceawlin told a local paper last year that, slowly, he and his father were patching up a relationship.
‘We’ve had something of a rapprochement and have had dinner a couple of times recently.
‘It was just a case of swallowing a tiny bit of pride,’ he revealed.
‘I think my father was genuinely very hurt when the paintings were taken down. If I could go back and do it differently, I would.’
But the rapprochement was short-lived. It seems the older man is happy to throw his weight around whenever a decision is made of which he doesn’t approve — however minor.
The men have once again fallen out over interior design — this time because Ceawlin apparently approved a paint colour without consulting his father. There’s an old lion at Longleat, it seems, who still can’t give up his position at the head of the pride.
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63 Years of Duty.
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Goodwood Revival 2014 Race Highlights | St Mary's Trophy part 1
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Goodwood 73rd Members Meeting 2015
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GOODWOOD REVIVAL: 11-13 SEPTEMBER 2015
REVIVAL 2015 – DATES ANNOUNCED!
OCT 20, 2014 AUTHOR: PABLO SMITHSON SECTION: GOODWOOD REVIVAL
GOODWOOD REVIVAL: 11-13 SEPTEMBER 2015
We are delighted to announce that the Goodwood Revival will take place over the weekend of 11-13th September* in 2015, and that tickets will go on sale from 6th November.
You can call the ticket office on +44 (0)1243 755055 (from 6th Nov), but as we’re expecting the usual high volume of calls we recommend that you buy your tickets online instead.
Please visit our ticketing website (from 6th Nov) to make your purchases.
Meanwhile look out for more news on our 2015 events by keeping an eye on the website and our social media channels.
*This date is subject to final confirmation
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Iris trailer
Iris review – vibrant sartorial documentary
4 / 5 stars
Iris Apfel, the beloved 93-year-old New York fashion icon, is a fitting subject for Albert Maysles’s penultimate film
Jonathan Romney
Sunday 2 August 2015 07.59 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/02/iris-review-vibrant-sartorial-documentary
Edna Mode, the hi-tech fashionista of The Incredibles, may have had Anna Wintour’s hair, but more distinctively, she had the porthole-sized spectacles of Iris Apfel, the 93-year-old subject of this documentary. A beloved New York fashion icon and self-styled “geriatric starlet”, Mrs Apfel is famous for dressing with delirious, eye-searing panache. “I like to improvise,” she says, “try this, try that, as though I’m playing jazz” – her jazz presumably being of the bacchanalian free-improv variety, rather than black polo-neck cool school.
Albert Maysles’s film follows Apfel on her shopping expeditions; explores the clutter-filled Aladdin’s cave of a home she shares with her husband and interior-design partner Carl, now 101; and shows her imparting brittle and generous wisdom to younger and more earnest fashionistas.
Given that she has made a lifelong three-ring circus out of her dress sense, it would be easy to dismiss Apfel as an eccentric show-off rather than exalt her as a permanent performance artist. But she emerges here as a down-to-earth, self-mocking, savvy philosopher, a one-off combination of Madame de Pompadour and a borscht-belt standup: it’s not just Iris’s glasses that recall George Burns, but her wit too.
Albert Maysles – who died in March aged 88, and whose penultimate film this is – is best known for the verite-style documentaries he made with his late brother David, notably Grey Gardens (1975), a deeper, darker portrait of two somewhat more troubled grandes dames. Iris is a slight, conventional affair by Maysles’s standards, and a touch repetitive – endless bolts of fabric and panoplies of costume jewellery laid out for our appreciation. And you can’t help thinking that a socialite who can afford to indulge her style might by nature be less interesting than those people who manage to fuel their sartorial fancies on a shoestring. But Iris Apfel’s whole being – like this entertaining study – is a bracing advert for the pleasures of living large, and loud, into old age.
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Time morph: All the British monarchs from 1603 to QEII
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Stetson Hats - VÍDEO / Cut Sewn - How Flat Caps And Newsboy Caps Are Made
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With the advent of “hipster” fashion, dress hats enjoy a resurgence. |
STETSON TIMELINE
CELEBRATING
150 YEARS
1830 - 1864
A Young Man Goes West
John Batterson Stetson is born in 1830 in Orange, NJ, the seventh of twelve children. His father, Stephen, is a successful hatter who founded the No Name Hat Company. With little formal schooling, young John B. Stetson is taught to read and write by his mother and the hatter’s trade by his father. Contracting tuberculosis in his twenties, Stetson ventures west.
1865 - 1869
Return to Philadelphia
Stetson reaches Pikes Peak and regains his health but does not strike it rich. In 1865 he returns to Philadelphia, borrows $60 from his sister and rents a room at Seventh and Callowhill Streets, launching his own hat business. With many hat makers in the city, Stetson struggles to compete, until he gambles on his instinct for a market out west…
1870 - 1875
Factory is Established
In 1870, less than a year after making his first “Boss of the Plains”, John B. Stetson purchases a building on the northern outskirts of Philadelphia, establishing what would become the largest hat factory in America. Stetson builds his legacy as a business innovator, steward of a company as concerned for the welfare of its employees as in its commercial output.
1876 - 1900
In the Twilight of a Century
As America celebrates its 100th birthday, Stetson is renowned as an established industrial power, collecting awards, admirers in many fields and international attention.
1901 - 1919
Industrial Evolution
As the century dawns, John B. Stetson shepherds the company to unimagined success. Combining an instinct for marketing that is ahead of its time with traditional yet innovative techniques, his leadership makes Stetson a household name and its hats the embodiment of American quality. Sadly, this also marks the time of the founder’s death.
1920 - 1929
The Roaring Twenties
Stetson rides the wave of the Jazz Age, creating new and fashionable hats to align with the major Hollywood stars – and politicians – as well as the high living and trendy “swells” of this generation.
1930 - 1939
Hard Times, New Opportunities
In the extreme hardship felt by all during the Great Depression, Stetson thrives by continuing to innovate: expanding manufacturing and variety of product to meet the aspirational hopes as well as the practical needs of a struggling nation.
1940 - 1949
The Forties
Stetson readily joins the war effort in World War II, producing tens of thousands of hats for the military, contributing enlistees, labor and materials – and launching an intriguing ad campaign based on the importance of discretion during times of war.
1950 - 1959
The Fifties
In tune with postwar optimism, Stetson creates “The World’s Most Expensive Hat”, taking it on a worldwide publicity tour. Closer to home, Americans enjoy peace and upward mobility, reflected in the advertisements of the time.
1960 - 1969
The Sixties: a Hatless President and LBJ
Decline in hat sales begins in the fifties, and John F. Kennedy’s universally seen hatless inauguration in January, 1961 delivers a near-fatal blow. However, his successor, a hat-wearing Texan, exemplifies both the legacy and direction of Stetson for the next decades, as Stetson celebrates its first one hundred years.
1970 - 1979
Major Transitions
With hats no longer a required accessory, many hat makers fold and Stetson ceases production in the Philadelphia factory. The land is donated to the city in 1977. Manufacturing continues in the St. Joseph, MO factory, primarily servicing the flourishing Western market.
1980 - 1999
A Second Century Draws to a Close
Stetson divests from manufacturing and moves to licensed production, establishing itself as a lifestyle brand, extending merchandising to fragrances and eyewear. Films such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Urban Cowboy” spark hat sales.
2000 - 2014
The Dawn of the 21st Century
Defining the Stetson lifestyle: product additions include apparel, footwear and home. License is inked for Europe. A salute to history with a limited edition collector’s Colt® revolver. At the same time, with the advent of “hipster” fashion, dress hats enjoy a resurgence.
2015 -
Today and Tomorrow
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The Elegant Male (1957)
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Saville Row / The Past. The Present . The Future / VÍDEO:Saville Row (1946)
20TH CENTURY (POST 1950)
1952: Douglas Fairbanks Jr declares, ‘Savile Row has recaptured the tailoring supremacy of the world.’ Fairbanks Jr is one of the 20th century heroes of Savile Row. It is recorded in Anderson & Sheppard’s ledgers that he recommended Marlene Dietrich to the firm when she was in England making the Russian revolution epic Knight Without Armour.
1953: Queen Elizabeth II is crowned with the tailoring firms Wilkinson & Son (owned by J. Dege & Sons) and Ede & Ravenscroft in attendance at Westminster Abbey to dress the monarch, visiting royals and peers of the realm for what is the most elaborate ceremonial occasion in the nation’s calendar. The military uniforms, the ambassadors’ court dress and national and colonial liveries on display show off the mastery of the grand old Savile Row houses of Henry Poole, Davies & Son and Welsh & Jeffries.
1955: Hardy Amies is granted The Queen’s Royal Warrant and remains court dressmaker until his retirement in 2002. Stanley Lock takes over C E Phipps, which was founded in 1898 to produce embroideries for the burgeoning fashion industry.
1958: G.J. Cleverley & Co, Savile Row’s preferred bespoke shoemaker, opens at 27 Cork Street in Mayfair. The firm goes on to make shoes for Sir Winston Churchill, Laurence Olivier, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and Sir John Gielgud.
1959: Kilgour, French & Stanbury create Cary Grant’s iconic suits for Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Savile Row is recognised as the pinnacle of masculine elegance by cinema goers worldwide and North by North West and Grant achieve for bespoke Savile Row tailoring what Audrey Hepburn and Breakfast at Tiffany’s did for haute couture and ‘the little black dress’ two years later in 1961.
1961: Tragedy strikes Henry Poole & Co. The lease expires on Poole’s Savile Row palace and the company is forced to relocate to Cork Street. Despite protests in The Daily Telegraph, Poole’s inexplicably unlisted building is raised to the ground. Lost during this period are the patterns cut for iconic Poole customers Napoleon III, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Edward VII. Mercifully, the firm’s ledgers survive. Hawes & Curtis predict a glowing future as a ‘first class tailor’ for apprentice John Pearse. Instead, Pearse drops out, tours Europe, then opens the infamous boutique ‘Granny Takes A Trip’ in the Kings Road in 1965, where he dresses Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
1963: Maurice Sedwell opens his shop on Savile Row.
1966: H. Huntsman & Sons is invited to make bespoke suits for the England football team which wins the World Cup.
1967: Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton meet as salesboy and cutter respectively at Donaldson, Williams & Ward in Burlington Arcade. They will go on to form the most creative partnership in Savile Row’s history.
1969: Nutters of Savile Row opens on Valentine’s Day and unleashes the Tommy Nutter/Edward Sexton style on swinging London. Backed by Cilla Black and The Beatles’ record company Apple’s executive Peter Brown, Nutters of Savile Row dresses the entire social spectrum from the Duke of Bedford and Lord Montagu to Mick and Bianca Jagger and The Beatles. Nutters is the first shop on Savile Row to pioneer ‘open windows’ and exhibits some wild displays by Simon Doonan. Mount Street bespoke tailor to the stars Douglas Hayward dresses Michael Caine in the famous bullion robbery caper The Italian Job. Caine’s skinny suits and tone-on-tone white shirt and tie combinations set a cocky, sharp tailored style that resonates today.
1971: Maverick screen actress Katherine Hepburn, whose long-term lover Spencer Tracey was a customer of Huntsman, takes the extraordinary step of ordering bespoke denim jeans from her late lover’s Savile Row tailor. Hepburn’s commission foreshadows bespoke denim collections launched in 2006 by Timothy Everest and Evisu. Huntsman’s very stylish Head Cutter Colin Hammick tops Savile Row devotees Rex Harrison, Lord Snowdon and the Duke of Windsor in Tailor & Cutter magazine’s prestigious best dressed list.
1973: Robert Redford stars in the definitive film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a dedicated customer of Jermyn Street bespoke shirt maker Turnbull & Asser. The shirts that reduce The Great Gatsby’s socialite heroine Daisy (Mia Farrow) to tears with their beauty in the film all bear the Turnbull & Asser bespoke label.
1974: Gieves Ltd acquires Hawkes (and the precious freehold of No 1 Savile Row) and becomes Gieves & Hawkes.Tommy Nutter seeks sanctuary at Kilgour, French & Stanbury after his acrimonious exit from Nutters of Savile Row. Kilgour also incorporates the famed hunt tailoring specialist Bernard Weatherill. Nutters of Savile Row continues with Sexton, Roy Chittleborough and Joseph Morgan. Maurice Sedwell hires Trinidad-born Andrew Ramroop who will go on to become Managing Director and a Professor of tailoring at the London College of Fashion.
1976: Gieves & Hawkes and Anderson & Sheppard alumnus Anthony Hewitt opens his own bespoke tailoring shop on Savile Row, A.J.Hewitt. The company prospers thanks to the Middle Eastern oil boom and the advent of young cutters Ravi Tailor and James Levett in 1979.
1978: 007 actor Roger Moore becomes a tax exile and invites his friend and tailor Douglas Hayward to his Cote d’Azur villa to dress him for the next James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. It is acknowledged that Hayward’s back-to-classic navy pinstripe three-piece suit is Bond at his sartorial best.
1979: Davies & Son is forced to leave its handsome Hanover Street townhouse where a private room had been set aside for King George V that was fitted with a tube not dissimilar to a hose pipe to communicate with the tailors upstairs. While clearing out the attic sets, which were reserved as places of assignation for titled customers to meet their mistresses, the firm discovers a bill for Sir Robert Peel (founder of London’s first police force) from 1829.
1980: A year into Margaret Thatcher’s reign as British Prime Minister, Andrew Ramroop becomes unofficial tailor to half the Tory Cabinet, which restores a pride in Savile Row bespoke tailoring to the corridors of power in the Palace of Westminster.
1981: H.M.Sultan Qaboos of Oman confers his exotic Royal Warrant on J.Dege & Sons. In arguably the most exotic commission conferred on a Savile Row tailor, Sultan Qaboos commanded Dege & Skinner to create uniforms for his Royal Oman Police Camel Pipe Band.
1981: H.R.H. The Prince of Wales marries Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral. Gieves & Hawkes make the uniform for Prince Charles while the pageboys – including Lord Frederick Windsor and Edward van Cutsem – are dressed in Naval Cadet uniforms that were originally made by the firm for Prince Charles’s Grandfather King George VI and his Great Uncle The Duke of Windsor when they served as Royal Navy Cadets aboard H.M.S. Britannia. Roy Chittleborough & Joseph Morgan part company with Edward Sexton and continue trading under their own names. Edward Sexton opens his shop at 37 Savile Row and cements his reputation as Savile Row’s jet setting export, establishing a formidable business in the United States.
1982: Henry Poole MD Angus Cundey brings the firm back to Savile Row after twenty-years in exile on Cork Street.
1984: 24 year old East Ender Mark Powell opens Powell & Co on Soho’s Archer Street. His look – a re-mix of sartorial influences such as Neo-Edwardian, 30s Mobster and 60s Kray twin chic – pays homage to the creativity of Tommy Nutter and paves the way for the new generation of Savile Row tailors of the 1990s.
1985: After an encounter with Federico Fellini in Rome and a subsequent career as a maverick filmmaker, John Pearse returns to tailoring and opens a shop on Soho’s Meard Street.
1990: H.R.H. The Prince of Wales appoints Welsh & Jeffries his military tailor.
1991: Former Tommy Nutter apprentice Timothy Everest – who answered Nutter’s newspaper advertisement for a ‘Boy Wanted’ – opens his first bespoke tailoring shop in an East End Georgian townhouse declaring, ‘Opening a shop on Savile Row would be like moving in with my parents.’
1992: Richard James, the first of the ‘New Generation’ tailors, opens a shop on Savile Row. James introduces Saturday opening (a revolution on Savile Row) and a fashionable edge not seen since the house of Nutter’s glory days. Tommy Nutter dies. As a fitting epitaph, the outlandish purple suit Jack Nicholson wears playing The Joker, which was one of Nutter’s final commissions, appears on screen in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.
1996: Ozwald Boateng unleashes his exotic, electric concept of Bespoke Couture on Savile Row from his new shop at No 9 Vigo Street.
1997: Ozwald Boateng, Richard James and Timothy Everest are christened ‘The New Generation’ on Savile Row and photographed by Michael Roberts for the London Swings Again issue of Vanity Fair. Alan Bennett buys Davies & Son, and incorporates Johns & Pegg, James & James, and Wells of Mayfair. Gianni Versace is shot dead outside his Miami palazzo. It emerges that in his later years the designer had become a bespoke customer at J. Dege & Sons (now Dege & Skinner), in addition to buying made-to-measure from Richard James. Diana, Princess of Wales is tragically killed in a car accident with Dodi Al Fayed in Paris on August 30th. Orders under construction for the Princess that were never collected are still held by Maurice Sedwell on Savile Row, John Lobb on St James’s Street and Turnbull & Asser on Jermyn Street.
1998: A.J. Hewitt acquires the colonial bespoke tailoring specialist Airey & Wheeler.
21ST CENTURY
2000: Richard James acquires the biggest shop space on Savile Row at No 29. The ‘goldfish bowl’ glass windows slice Savile Row and Clifford Street at right angles like a breathtaking infinity pool of bespoke, made-to-measure and ready-to-wear Richard James.
2001: Former Huntsman head cutter Richard Anderson opens his bespoke tailoring house at No 13 Savile Row. His partner and co-founder is Brian Lishak, a Huntsman man with half a century of experience on the Row. Having apprenticed while still at St Martin’s fashion college with Edward Sexton, Stella McCartney invites Sexton to develop the tailoring for her debut as creative director of Chloe. On the embroidery front, S. Lock and M. Hand come together to form Hand & Lock.
2002: In an intriguing collaboration, former Anderson & Sheppard apprentice and enfant terrible of British fashion Alexander McQueen unveils a bespoke collection made by H. Huntsman & Sons. The exquisite but prohibitively costly enterprise is quietly terminated. Nick Hart opens Spencer Hart at 36 Savile Row, combining a bespoke sensibility with the severe chic of old school Prada, Jil Sander and Helmut Lang. He goes on to dress David Bowie, Jay-Z, Jamie Foxx and Kanye West.
2003: After a management buyout, Kilgour drops the French & Stanbury and appoints Carlo Brandelli as creative director. The house sets about ‘sexing-up’ Savile Row in a strategy not dissimilar to Tom Ford’s at Gucci in 1995. Sir Hardy Amies, a Savile Row legend and one of its greatest patrons, dies. He is succeeded by his protégée Ian Garlant, who remains creative director of the house.
2004: The Savile Row Bespoke Association, the organisation designed to represent bespoke tailors’ interests on the Row, is formed. Founder members include the Royal Family of bespoke tailoring: Anderson & Sheppard, Dege & Skinner, Gieves & Hawkes and Henry Poole. Having flirted with liquidation, H. Huntsman & Sons is saved by four sympathetic investors including present MD David Coleridge. The Savile Row Bespoke Association acts to protect the craft and good name of Savile Row and ward off interlopers by registering the Savile Row Bespoke Association label. The label is to appear in each of the Savile Row Bespoke Association members’ bespoke garments and serves as a guarantee to the customer that he or she is in receipt of a genuine, bespoke, made on Savile Row piece of clothing.
2005: Anderson & Sheppard is forced to vacate No 30 Savile Row and relocate to 32 Old Burlington Street. Gieves & Hawkes make morning coats for The Princes William and Harry to wear at the wedding of their father Prince Charles to Camilla Parker-Bowles (now Duchess of Cornwall). Timothy Everest edges closer to Savile Row with a bespoke and made-to-measure studio on Bruton Place in Mayfair. Young entrepreneur Patrick Grant and his investors acquire Norton & Sons from the Granger family. Tom Ford exits Gucci Group as creative director and commissions Anderson & Sheppard to make white tie and tails for a defiant photo shoot in W magazine to publicise the launch of his own bespoke tailoring house. Embroiderers Hand & Lock move to Margaret Street.
2006: Gieves, the fashion-led boutique brand within Gieves & Hawkes designed by Joe Casely-Hayford, is shown on the catwalk during Paris Fashion Week for the first time. Henry Poole’s Savile Row lease is signed for a further 15 years and both shop and workshops are gutted and refurbished to bring Poole’s into the 21st Century. Ozwald Boateng’s US reality TV show The House of Boateng is aired on Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel and brings his vision of New Generation Savile Row dandyism to the cable generation. Chittleborough & Morgan open a new space in the basement of No 12 Savile Row. Richard Anderson rocks the Row with a black sequin dinner jacket that is ordered by Bryan Ferry and photographed worldwide. Douglas Hayward’s daughter Polly succeeds her father as MD of the company.
2007: Florentine fashion foundation Pitti Immagine Uomo commission the first major exhibition dedicated to Savile Row bespoke tailoring. Titled The London Cut, The exhibition runs for a month at Palazzo Pitti and is accompanied by a book written by the curator James Sherwood. The Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture invites Savile Row to bring The London Cut to the British Ambassador’s residence in Paris during July Couture Week. Richard James opens a new shop on Clifford Street dedicated entirely to his bespoke service while Ozwald Boateng takes Anderson & Sheppard’s old site at No 30 Savile Row for his first flagship store and cutting room. After a brief, unhappy marriage between Japanese jeans brand Evisu and Anthony J Hewitt, Hewitt MD Ravi Tailor leaves the Row to work from L.G. Wilkinson on St George’s Street. Robert Gieve, the fifth and last generation of the family to serve Gieves & Hawkes, dies.
2008: The legendary celebrity tailor Douglas (The Italian Job) Hayward dies. A new Archive Room at Gieves & Hawkes at No 1 Savile Row is curated by James Sherwood and inaugurated in honour of the late Robert Gieve. In March 2008 The London Cut exhibition is invited to show at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo. A satellite exhibition then travels to Isetan in Tokyo where Savile Row dominates the prestigious store’s windows and exhibition space. A three one-hour episide documentary mapping a year in the life of Savile Row is aired on BBC4 while BBC2 follows The London Cut to Tokyo for a further British fashion series to be aired in the autumn. One of the Row’s best dressed men, former Huntsman Head Cutter Brian Hammick, sadly dies.
2009: Queues form when Savile Row puts on its revealing ‘Below the Row’ show for one of the Victoria & Albert museum’s Friday Late exhibitions. Curated in conjunction with the V&A by students Chris Pollard and Susan Paisley, the exhibition shines light on the ‘dark art’ of bespoke tailoring by creating a working tailor’s shop and rarely seen subterranean workshop. The public’s increasing interest in the inner goings on of the Row is served with the publication of Richard Anderson’s fascinating book Bespoke: Savile Row Ripped & Smooth.
2010: Savile Row gathers en masse at the vibrantly refurbished Savoy hotel in London to celebrate the publication of James Sherwood’s definitive study of the Row’s inhabitants and their craft, Savile Row: The Master Tailors of British Bespoke. To help the occasion along, the Savoy invents the Savile Row Collins, a fine, stealthy gin based cocktail. Onlookers are agog as sheep appear on a grassed over Row for the hugely successful Savile Row Field Day, which is held in support of the Campaign for Wool, whose aim it is to increase demand and awareness of the wool industry.
2011: Another insider’s account of life on the Row as Michael Skinner’s (he of Dege & Skinner) enthralling book The Savile Row Cutter is published. The 150th anniversary of the tuxedo is celebrated by its inventor Henry Poole & Co and students of the London College of Fashion, who, in conjunction with fabric supplier Dormeuil, set about re-inventing the iconic jacket. The 21st century tuxedos go on display in Harrods and Burlington Arcade in London before appearing at the tuxedo historical society in New York. Does any other jacket have its own historical society?
2012: Emma Martin of Dege & Skinner wins BBC3’s jazz themed Young Tailor of the Year award, with her Oxford Bags wowing the judges. Savile Row is the scene of a very well dressed protest as scores of readers of The Chap magazine assemble outside No. 3 to protest against Abercrombie & Fitch’s plans to take over the building. June, and the tailors of the Row play their part in the British Fashion Council’s inaugural London Collections: Men by hosting Savile Row Open Day (see the News section) and a stunning cocktail party in Burlington Arcade.
2013: Savile Row’s stunning contribution to the second London Collections: Men is The English Gentleman at Spencer House. Sixty models are dressed by the Row’s tailors and effortlessly demonstrate that Savile Row remains the centre of classic men’s style. March, and the Savile Row Room opens at The Campaign For Wool’s Wool House exhibition at Somerset House with queues quickly forming for the cutting and tailoring masterclass demonstrations. An exciting new chapter begins for Huntsman as internationally acclaimed couturier Roubi L’Roubi takes the reins of this most venerable of Savile Row houses as owner and Creative Director.
2014: The Row makes its own inimitable contribution to London Collections: Men men’s fashion week with its brilliantly original The English Gentleman presentation at The Cabinet War Rooms in January and the fascinating Meet Me in Rio film in July. May sees Open Row, as our members work together with our partners Chivas to open their doors and give 300 style-conscious individuals a never before behind-the-scenes look at the workings of our famous street.
2015: The year gets off to a flying start with Savile Row’s The English Gentleman taking up the prestigious closing spot of January’s London Collections: Men with another eye-catching presentation of the art of bespoke tailoring and contemporary men’s style, this time at Apsley House, the palatial London home of the Duke of Wellington. To coincide with LC:M, the revered Huntsman opens an in-house pop-up store at 11 Savile Row to showcase the collection of clothing inspired by the role of a fictional spy HQ that it plays in the major new feature film Kingsman: The Secret Service.
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All Change at Longleat reviews /All Change At Longleat Trailer - BBC One
All Change at Longleat review – there’s nothing like watching poshos feuding in their natural habitat
This documentary about the Marquess of Bath’s handover of his £190m estate to his son Ceawlin had a family on a ‘British ranch’ pumping privilege instead of oil
All Change at Longleat
Lucy Mangan
Tuesday 15 September 2015 07.09 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/sep/15/all-change-at-longleat-tv-review
You can read about mad poshos all you want, and I do – Nancy Mitford novels, Evelyn Waugh, anything with Harold Nicolson – but there’s nothing like seeing them in their natural habitat. And so to All Change at Longleat, BBC1’s new documentary about the gradual handover of the £190m estate by Alexander Thynn, aka Marquess of Bath, aka the one with the wifelets, coloured waistcoats and worse murals, and long one of England’s most irritating eccentrics – to his son Ceawlin.
The pair are on no-speaks, because Ceawlin – pronounced, pleasingly in this tale of a feuding family on what is basically a British ranch pumping privilege instead of oil, “Sue Ellen” – has removed as much of his father’s grotesque artwork as possible from the apartments he has taken over. Lord Bath now lives in the top flat, visited by various wifelets, while Lady Bath spends much of her time in France. I wouldn’t consider that nearly far enough away myself, but the rich are indeed different.
Though this is not mentioned in the programme, according to the papers, Sue Ellen is also on no-speaks with his mother because – he claims, she denies it – she objected to him marrying Emma, the daughter of a Nigerian oil tycoon, and adulterating “the bloodline”. As Sue Ellen has no discernible chin or forehead, I say they should all be grateful for any new DNA they can get. Otherwise, by 2050, Longleat is going to be full of giant noses being wheeled round by staff until they realise they can just tip the family into the lion enclosure and take over the place themselves. Emma herself has the gimlet eye, composure and self-confidence that bodes well for her and Longleat’s survival
There are moments when you almost warm to Sue Ellen. He grew up with his awful father, the wifelets – his mother was already mostly abroad – and, of course, those murals. Was it a happy childhood, he is asked. “Y …aaaah,” he says uncomfortably. “Happy bits … not such happy bits. It was what it was.” When he was very young, he says, he envied his friends, who lived in the village. “Two-up, two-down, ordinary parents?” his questioner suggests. “Yah,” he says, visibly torn between truth and family loyalty. “It would have been a very different life.”
A shame, then, that he has chosen to hike village rents, formerly subsidised by the estate, to commercial levels, forcing many long-time residents and farmers out. This has clearly caused more anguish and hostility than the programme wants, or has been permitted by the family, to acknowledge. The new liaison officer from the Longleat management team, Michael, is sent to a village meeting, after relations with the previous lot broke down. One resident explains that there was a great lack of communication between the two sides. “Mmm,” says Michael, uncommunicatively. “Communication.” Another mentions the need for affordable housing. “Yup,” says Michael, making a note of – you suspect – precisely nothing on his pad. Because the rents have gone up so much that the people working on the estate cannot afford to live there, someone else explains. “Mmm,” says Michael.
Mmm. What is the point of having one’s own village on one’s own essentially self-sufficient estate, if one cannot use it to avoid having to do shitty things to one’s fellow human beings? Is that not the minimum price to be paid for privilege? If we’re still going to have lords with tenants-for-life on their land, if we’re still going to have 70% of the country owned by the 160,000 families who found themselves on the right side of history in 1067 (as we do), then can’t we – at the very least – keep the noblesse oblige element too? Or must the Thynn family and their ilk wax ever fatter?
Sex, feuds, a barmy aristo... how did the Beeb make this so boring? : CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV
By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:58 GMT, 15 September 2015 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3234669/Sex-feuds-barmy-aristo-did-Beeb-make-boring-CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-night-s-TV.html
This ought to be a godsend for any documentary maker. England’s most flamboyant and eccentric aristocrat invites you into his stately home, the backdrop for gargantuan feuds and sexual extravaganzas.
He offers access to the mansion’s most secret corners. His heir co-operates with enthusiasm, even though father and son are not actually talking.
And if this extraordinary upper-class soap opera isn’t enthralling enough, there are lions and hippos outside the window. And Neko, a 53-year-old gorilla, so magnificently disdainful that he deserves a seat in the Lords himself.
We were hauled into a Horningsham parish meeting, where villagers were sounding off and the estates manager was dutifully writing things down in a notebook.
The last ten minutes were spent dragging round Horningsham fete. Even Lord Bath, slumped in a deckchair, looked bored out of his skull.
This was dire stuff. And yet the good material was there, just waiting to be plucked. The documentary started with a look inside Lord Bath’s ‘penthouse’, an annexe at the top of Longleat House where the 83-year-old peer retreats and refuses to emerge when his wife is at home.
He showed off his office, an antique desk onto which several binbags of paper had apparently been emptied. ‘This is the urgent section,’ he explained, indicating a heap of documents under a fruit bowl.
Lord Bath has been on the frostiest of terms with his son ever since the boy and his new bride moved back into Longleat and dismantled one of his famous murals.
It’s hard to blame Ceawlin: the wall paintings are done in oils, an inch thick, and they stink — literally and artistically. Many of them are obscene beyond description, too.
But it’s also hard to blame the Marquess for feeling so outraged. Ceawlin and Emma have replaced the murals with shiny gold wallpaper. If once the rooms looked like a Moroccan drugs den, now they seem to be modelled on an Indian restaurant in Bromley.
With his taste for the psychedelic and surreal, Lord Bath would have enjoyed Britain As Seen On ITV (ITV) which felt like nostalgia on LSD.
Of all the weird snippets discovered in the telly archives, nothing was stranger than the sight of a very young Richard Madeley in bow tie and tuxedo, sashaying down a staircase at a nightclub in Leeds to interview Marc Almond of Soft Cell about the New Romantic fad for lace and mascara on boys.
Compilations like these are dependent on their researchers. An obsession with the bizarre and a twisted sense of humour are essential, and someone here has those qualities in sackfuls.
We saw a Sixties news report about a school for trainee rock ’n’ rollers, run by a trouper from the music halls, and Swedish guitar teacher Ulf, who had his own morning show in the Seventies.
There were singing milkmen, a Wurlitzer organ in a car showroom, and a disco dancing contest with lotharios in gold lamé.
Mostly culled from local news, TV reports like these always did feature eccentrics and oddities. A few decades on, just like Lord Bath, they look even nuttier.
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Classic police Wolseley 6/110
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Wolseley 6/90 Revival #10 - Driving on the Open Road
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Wolseley 6/90 Revival #5 - Wiring, Instruments & Dashboard Fitted, start...
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The Wolseley affair with the British Police . Just a question of Love.
The Wolseley 4/50 and similar 6/80 were Wolseley Motors' first post-war automobiles. They were rushed into production in 1948 and were based on the Morris Oxford MO and the Morris Six MS respectively. The 4-cylinder 4/50 used a 1476 cc 50 hp (37 kW; 51 PS) version of the 6/80 engine, while the 6/80 used a 2215 cc 72 hp (54 kW; 73 PS) straight-6 single overhead cam.
The cars were well equipped and looked impressive, with a round Morris rear end and upright Wolseley grille and were used extensively by the Police at the time - the 6/80 particularly.
The Wolseley 6/99 was the final large Wolseley car. Styled by Pininfarina with additions by BMC staff sylists, the basic vehicle was also sold under two of BMC's other marques as the Austin A99 Westminster and Vanden Plas Princess 3-Litre. Production began in 1959 and the cars were updated and renamed for 1961. The Wolseley remained in production as the Wolseley 6/110 through to 1968. Many police officers consider the "6/110" as the finest "area car" ever employed by the London Metropolitan Police Force.
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