Hardy Amies on "What Makes Fashion?"

The Queen's Dressmaker on the Fashion Industry, 1964

“I come to the chair tonight hot-foot, if I may say so, from Paris Collection Week, a week which the clever French have stretched into eight full working days and nights. The only rival attraction to the Collection in Paris is the Beatles. I naturally covered both events and it seems peculiarly appropriate for me to fly back to London to introduce another famous English group. Hardy Amies is surely the one-man band of fashion. And what is more, he performs without electronic amplification. Mr. Amies designs for both women and men. For women he designs ready-to-wear and made-to-order collections and knitwear and blouses as well. For men the list is even longer, but I am sure that no slight is intended. For men he designs outerwear, knitwear, shirts, ties, handkerchiefs, sweaters, socks, shoes, boots, even toiletries as well. And with a sharp eye to future customers, he even once took a fling at designing maternity wear.

Added to those many talents Mr. Amies also has one that is rare: a sharp sense of the practical. Mainbocher, the doyen of couturiers, once said to me that the worst thing a designer can hear from a customer is, 'When would I wear that?' This never happens at one of Mr. Amies' collections. He knows exactly when and where his clothes should be worn. In fact, he is so far-sighted that over a year before he even knew he was speaking here tonight, he designed the dress and jacket in which I thought it appropriate to take the Chair.

Paris Collection Week, as you probably know, is preceded by the high fashion showings in Rome, Florence and London, so in less than two weeks I have seen some four thousand garments, give or take a coat or two. This is apt to produce a bead and embroidery hangover, a tendency to see furs swimming before your eyes. It also produces a tremendous confusion of mind, so perhaps I even more than you am looking forward tonight to hearing Mr. Amies clarify 'What makes fashion.’”

On February 5^th, 1964, the English fashion designer Hardy Amies presented a paper to the Royal Society of Arts titled “What Makes Fashion?” He was introduced by Ernestine Carter, the American-born Woman's Editor of the British newspaper The Sunday Times, who—as you read above—provided a concise description of how one feels after watching all of the fashion collections: “a bead and embroidery hangover, a tendency to see furs swimming before your eyes… a tremendous confusion of mind.” She also highlighted one of his main talents, an innate practicality in designing clothes, which she hoped he would also bring to this question—and thereby, possibly alleviate some of that “confusion of mind” around dress.

Hardy Amies at home. Maclean’s, June 1952.