![]() ![]() Photograph: Ernest Allen/ANL/Rex/ShutterstockĪfter minor adventures elsewhere in the rag trade, Bates was funded by investors who had given up on Sidon ever supplying boutique merchandise his label Jean Varon had a difficult start, supplying wholesale dresses to the department store Fenwick, before the upmarket fashion chain Wallis commissioned a complete collection. John Bates in May 1965 with models wearing his designs. ![]() Bates learned from Sidon that clothes for theatrical or film leads need a single, easily grasped, concept that is best expressed as a silhouette. Sidon’s Sloane Street salon was known for debutante ballgowns and stage outfits. He showed the old sketches to friends, who secured him an informal apprenticeship with the fashion designer Herbert Sidon. He left school at 15, learned shorthand in the hope of a job on a Newcastle newspaper, failed, and left for London, where he then did his national service in the War Office. He and his two hearty brothers were sons of a miner in Dinnington, Ponteland, near Newcastle unlike his siblings, he was a keen reader, and intended to be a journalist. (Kangol’s target beret cost 19s 11d.) The original clothes – they were wearable clothes, never “costumes” – were on screen for only the 26-episode series, but Bates’s look remains the encapsulation of fashion’s mid-1960s turn to youth, media and the UK.īates began his life’s interest by sewing little dresses out of his mother’s dusters, and drawing frocks for her that she would never own, though he did give her, at her request, an op art fur coat for Christmas in 1965. John bates license#Trehearne staged the show’s press launch and promotional pictures as a fashion show, so the publicity promoted Bates’s decision to license British manufacturers to make a range of the clothes and accessories for a young, middle-price, audience. (Although Bates persuaded Rigg to lose weight the better to display his designs, he emphasised her non-model shape.) Trehearne defended him against US backers panicked by minis and bare midriffs and he cut and finished Rigg’s skirts precisely to their intended length, so there was no hem that could be let down. He used inexpensive synthetics such as PVC and stretch fabrics, as well as furs and lace, to fill the capsule wardrobe head to toe, from a beret appliqued with a bullseye target to striped tights, added trouser suits – then fairly new for women – and above-the-knee skirts, cut away the shell of the fighting suit and popped a soft blouse beneath. John Bates came up with a strong theme for Emma Peel’s outfits – mostly black-and-white graphics to capitalise on the monochrome filming and the fashion for op art. Bates had a label, Jean Varon, for the same sort of customer base, and in four days he came up with a strong theme for Emma Peel – mostly black-and-white graphics to capitalise on the monochrome filming and the current chic of op art.ĭiana Rigg as Emma Peel with Patrick Macnee as John Steed in The Avengers, 1965. Muir accepted, but could not meet the show’s deadline. She recommended Jean Muir, whose label, Jane & Jane, was popular among well-off young people for its cleverly cut dresses. ![]() Anne Trehearne, then fashion editor of the glossy magazine Queen, was urgently called in for a restyle. The casting choice was Rigg, a decade younger, and also taller, rangier and larkier, than Blackman.Īll those involved realised that the costume design, even the leathers, had lost their edge in the 18 months between series, and felt dangerously genteel. John bates series#Male television executives were more excited by the leathers, and when in 1965 the show’s parent company, ABC TV, proposed to shoot a new series not in grey video but in black-and-white film, for distribution in the US, its buyers insisted that Blackman’s replacement should retain them. Female viewers responded to the beat outfits, and a few copies were tentatively marketed. ![]()
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