John Bates (fashion designer)
John Bates (* 1938 in Ponteland , Northumberland ) is a British fashion designer . Bates was one of the leading fashion designers at Youthquake in London in the 1960s. Whether he, Mary Quant or Courrèges should be considered the inventor of the miniskirt remains controversial.
Bates was born in 1938 to a family of miners in Northumberland, northern England, but showed little inclination like his father and brothers to seek work underground. After his military service, where he came into contact with the couturier Herbert Sidon through a friend , Bates trained as a designer under Gerard Pipart in his fashion house in Sloane Street in London from 1957. As a freelance draftsman, he also made fashion sketches for designer Belinda Bellville during this time. In 1959 he started his own business and from then on sold his designs under the name of Jean Varon .
Bates' modernist designs - he introduced plastic dresses as early as 1962 - soon attracted attention. Marit Allen , from 1961 journalist with Queen magazine and from 1964 fashion editor with British Vogue , not only promoted him journalistically, but also wore his creations. Some of his works from this time were to have a considerable impact, inasmuch as he designed some of the outfits that Diana Rigg used in her role as Emma Peel in the British television series " The Avengers " (German title: "Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone") ) were worn, including a black and white Op Art mini coat, a black leather dress and various accessories . Not only was he the or one of the inventors of the miniskirt, he was also a pioneer in other ways. So he propagated the renouncement of bras and was the first to show waist-free dresses.
From 1970 he began to use his own name as a label and worked for ladies of the royals , including the princesses Margaret and Alexandra , for film stars and actresses, including Maggie Smith , Siân Phillips and Julie Christie and for the singers Cleo Laine and Dusty Springfield .
In 1980 he had to close his fashion house due to financial difficulties. In 1989 he moved to Wales. He has lived there with his partner John Siggins since 2002. Occasionally he still works as a freelance designer; he also draws and paints. In 2006 the Fashion Museum in Bath showed a retrospective of his work.
literature
- Richard Lester: John Bates: Fashion Designer. Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk 2008, ISBN 978-1-85149-570-2 .
- Ingrid Loschek : Reclam's fashion and costume lexicon. 5th edition Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-010577-3 , p. 517.
- NJ Stevenson: The History of Fashion. Styles, trends and stars. Haupt, Bern et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-258-60032-1 , p. 179.
Web links
- Materially different , article by Brenda Polan, July 2, 2006 in The Telegraph
Individual evidence
- ^ Garments worn by Marit Allen , Victoria and Albert Museum
- ↑ John Bates on fashionmodeldirectory.com
- ↑ John Bates ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Fashion Museum, Bath
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bates, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Varon, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British fashion designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ponteland , Northumberland |