Bohemian style

In modern usage, the term "Bohemian" (sometimes shortened to "boho") is applied to people who live unconventional, usually artistic, lives. The adherents of the "Bloomsbury Group", which formed around the Stephen sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in the early 20th century, are probably the best-known examples. The original "Bohemians" were travelers or refugees from central Europe (hence, the French "bohémien", for "gypsy"). Reflecting on the fashion style of "boho-chic" in the early years of the 21st century, the "Sunday Times" thought it ironic that "fashionable girls wore ruffly floral skirts in the hope of looking bohemian, nomadic, spirited and non-bourgeois", whereas "gypsy girls themselves ... are sexy and delightful precisely because they do not give a hoot for fashion" ["Sunday Times Style", 19 June 2005] . By contrast, in the first half of the 20th century, aspects of Bohemian fashion reflected the lifestyle itself.

Early 20th century

Among female Bohemians in the early 20th century, the "gypsy look" was a recurring theme, popularised by, among others, Dorothy "Dorelia" McNeil (1881-1969), muse and lover of the painter Augustus John (1878-1961), whose full skirts and bright colours gave rise to the so-called "Dorelia look" [Virginia Nicholson (2002) "Among the Bohemians"] . One description of McNeil noted her "tight fitting, hand-sewn, canary coloured bodice above a dark gathered flowing skirt, and her hair very black and gleaming, emphasiz [ing] the long silver earrings which were her only adornment" [See Juliet Nicholson (2006) "The Perfect Summer"] .

By contrast, short bobbed hair was often a Bohemian trait, having originated in Paris "c."1909 and been adopted by students at the Slade School of Art in London [Gilbert Cannan (1916) "Mendel"] several years before film actresses such as Colleen Moore and Louise Brooks became associated with it in the mid 1920s. This style was plainly discernible on a woodblock self-portrait of 1916 by Dora Carrington, who had entered the Slade in 1910 [Gretchen Gerzine (1989) "Carrington"] . On her arrival in Tilling (Rye) in E F Benson's comic novel "Mapp and Lucia" (1931), Lucia described "Quaint" Irene as "a girl with no hat and an Eton crop. She was dressed in a fisherman's jersey and knickerbockers".

Trousers for women, sometimes worn mannishly as an expression of sexuality (as by Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 film, "Morocco") became popular in the 1920s and 30s, as did aspects of what many years later would sometimes be referred to as "shabby chic". Winston Churchill's niece Clarissa was among those who wore a tailored suit in the late 1930s. [Clarissa Eden (2007) "A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden"] As early as 1907 the American heiress Natalie Barney (1875-1972) was leading like-minded women in sapphic dances in her Parisian garden [See Diana Souhami (2004) "Wild Girls"] , photographs of which look little different from scenes at Woodstock in 1969 and other “pop” festivals of the late 1960s and early 70s.

Post-Liberation Paris

After the Second World War Christian Dior's "New Look", launched in Paris in 1947, set the pattern for women's fashion generally until the 1960s. American influences had been discouraged during the Nazi occupation, but, notably in the form of be-bop and other types of jazz, were strong among intellectual café society in the mid to late 1940s [See Dan Halpern in "The New Yorker", 25 December 2006] . In 1947 "Samedi-Soir" lifted the lid on what it called the "troglodytes of Saint-Germain" ["Samedi-Soir", 3 May 1947] , namely bohemians of the Parisian district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who appeared to cluster around existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. These included Roger Vadim (who married and launched the career of actress Brigitte Bardot in the 1950s), novelist Boris Vian (since described as "the epitome of Left Bank bohemia, standing at the center of its postwar rehabilitation" [Dan Halpern, "The New Yorker", 25 December 2006] ) and singer Juliette Gréco.

In contrast to the New Look (which itself scandalised some Parisennes), the clothes of the post-war bohemians were predominantly black: when Gréco first performed outside Saint-Germain she affronted some of her audience by wearing "black trousers, her bare feet slipped into golden sandals" [Anthony Beevor & Artemis Cooper (1994) "Paris After the Liberation"] . Performing in London over fifty years later, Gréco was described as "still ooz [ing] bohemian style" ["The Times", 27 June 2000] .

aint-Germain in retrospect

Capturing the spirit of the time, David Profumo has written of how his mother, the actress Valerie Hobson, was entranced by Vadim's flatmate, the director Marc Allégret, while she was filming "Blanche Fury" in 1947:

Allégret's apparently bohemian lifestyle appealed sharply to her romantic side ... and she revelled in the Left Bank milieu to which he introduced her during script discussions in Paris. There were meals with André Gide, Jean Cocteau and the long-legged Zizi Jeanmaire. For an attractive British woman who felt deprived of attention ... this was an ideal situation for some sort of reawakening. [David Profumo (2006) "Bringing the House Down". In contrast to Vadim, who had not turned twenty, Allégret (1900-73) was in middle age when he directed Hobson. He had been married to the daughter of French "Vogue", who left him after the war for a theatrical agent, André Bernham, taking their daughter with her "(ibid)."]

This period was also recalled fondly in 2007 when France introduced a ban on smoking in public places. The aroma of Gauloises and Gitanes was, for many years, thought to be an inseparable feature of Parisian café society, but the owner of Les Deux Magots, once frequented by Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and other writers, observed that "things have changed. The writers of today are not so addicted to cigarettes". [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6319133.stm BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Bidding goodbye to the Gauloises ] ]

America: the beat generation and flower power

In the United States adherents of the "beat" counter-culture (probably best defined by Jack Kerouac's novel, "On the Road", set in the late 1940s, written in 1952 and published in 1957) were associated with black polo-neck (or turtle neck) sweaters, blue denim jeans and sandals. The influence of this movement could be seen in the persona and songs of Bob Dylan in the early to mid 1960s, "road" films like "Easy Rider" (1969) and the punk-oriented "New Wave" of the mid 1970s, which, among other things, produced a boho style icon in Deborah Harry of the New York band Blondie.

The "beatniks" (as they came to be known by the late 1950s) were, in many ways, the antecedents of the hippie movement that formed on the West Coast of the USA in the mid 1960s and came to the fore as the first post-war baby-boomers reached the age of majority in the so-called "Summer of Love" of 1967. The Monterey pop festival was a major landmark of that year, which was associated also with "flowerpower", psychedelia, opposition to the Vietnam war and the inventive music and flowing, colourful fashions of, among others, Jimi Hendrix, The Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane and the British group, the Beatles, whose album, "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", is said to have caused the guru of psychedelia, Timothy Leary, to remark that "my work is finished" [See "The New Yorker", 26 June 2006] . For men's fashion, neckties went out as muttonchops and teashades came in, and by the time of the Chicago 7 trial (late 1969), hair over the collars had become so commonplace that it was beginning to transcend bohemian style, taking on a mass popularity in the 70s.

London in the 1950s

Although the annual "Saturday Book" recorded in 1956 a view that "London's now nothing but flash coffee bars, with teddies and little bits of girls in jeans" ["Saturday Book", vol 16, 1956] , the "Edwardian" ("teddy boy") look of the times did not coincide with Bohemian tastes. The Bohemian foci during this period were the jazz clubs and espresso bars of Soho and Fitzrovia. Their habitués usually wore polo necks; in the words of one social historian, “thousands of pale, duffel-coat-clad students were hunched in coffee bars over their copies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Jack Kerouac” [Dominic Sandbrook (2005) "Never Had It So Good"] . The image was more a male, than a female, one (the same being true of the literary phenomenon of the so-called "Angry Young Men" from 1956 onwards).

Continental influences

In Iris Murdoch's novel, "The Bell" (1958), an art student named Dora Greenfield bought "big multi-coloured skirts and jazz records and sandals". However, as Britain emerged from post-war austerity, some Bohemian women found influences from continental Europe, adopting, for example, the "gamine look", with its black jersies and short, almost boyish hairstyles associated with film actresses Audrey Hepburn ("Sabrina", 1954, and "Funny Face", 1957) and Jean Seberg ("Bonjour Tristesse", 1957 and "A bout de souffle", 1960), as well as the French novelist Françoise Sagan, who, as one critic put it, "was celebrated for the variety of her partners and for driving fast sports cars in bare feet as an example of the free life" [Peter Lewis (1978) "The 50s"] .

Others favoured the lower-cut, tighter styles of continental stars such as Bardot or Gina Lollobrigida; and, more generally, European tastes - including the Lambretta motor scooter and Italian and French cuisine, which the widely travelled cookery writer Elizabeth David, herself a bit of a Bohemian, did much to promote [For example, "A Book of Mediterranean Food" (1950)] - not only began to pervade Bohemian circles, but offered a contrast, from 1955 onwards, with the brasher Americanism of rock 'n' roll, with its predominantly teenage associations.

Hamburg and Beatlemania

In 1960, when the Beatles (then an obscure Liverpudlian combo with five, as opposed to their eventual "fab" four, members) were working in Hamburg, West Germany, they were influenced by a Bohemian "art school" set known as "Exis" (for "existentialists"). The "Exis" were roughly equivalent to what in France became known as "les beats" and included photographer Astrid Kirchherr (for whom the "fifth Beatle" Stuart Sutcliffe left the group) and artist and musician Klaus Voormann (who designed the cover for the Beatles' album "Revolver" in 1966).

As a result the Beatles acquired black leather jackets, as well as fringed hairstyles that were the prototype of the "mop-top" cuts associated with "Beatlemania" in 1963-4 [See, for example, Sandbrook, "op.cit."] . The latter coincided with the revival of the bobbed style for women (as adopted, for example, by singers Cilla Black and Billie Davis and fashion designers Mary Quant and Jean Muir). However, when longer blonde hair (associated with, among many others, Julie Christie, Samantha Juste and a fashion model named Lorna McDonald, who, at the end of each edition of the BBC's "Dee Time", jumped into Simon Dee's open E-type Jaguar [Richard Wiseman (2006) "Whatever Happened to Simon Dee?"] ) came to typify the "sixties" look, advertisers turned to the Bohemenian world for inspiration: through its use of herbs, Sunsilk shampoo was said to have "stolen something from the gypsies" [TV advertisement of 1966: "Washes Whiter" (BBC2, 1990)] .

Swinging London

By the mid 1960s, British pop music had stimulated the fashion boom of what "Time" called “swinging London” ["Time", 15 April 1966] . Associated initially with such "mod" designs as Quant’s mini-skirt, this soon embraced a range of essentially Bohemian styles. These included the military and Victorian fashions popularised by stars who frequented boutiques such as Granny Takes a Trip, which opened in the King's Road, Chelsea in January 1966 [See "Times Magazine", 24 June 2006] , and, by 1967, the hippie look imported from America.

This fusion of influences was discernible in two black-and-white productions for BBC television in 1966: the series "Adam Adamant Lives!", starring Gerald Harper as an Edwardian adventurer who had been cryopreserved in time and Juliet Harmer as Georgina Jones, a stylish "mod" who befriended him, and Jonathan Miller's dreamy, rather Gothic production of Lewis Carroll's mid-Victorian children's fantasy "Alice in Wonderland". (Confirming the aspiration, Sydney Newman, the BBC's Head of Television Drama in the 1960s, reflected of "Adam Adamant" that " [they] could never quite get [the] Victorian mentality to contrast with the '60s" [Andrew Pixley (2006) DVD viewing notes for "Adam Adamant Lives!"] .)

Notes