Among the mere mortals who found themselves dazzled by Plunket-Greene’s antics at Goldsmith’s was Quant, a pixie-sized but blunt and strong-willed student who’d been raised variously, as her parents followed schoolteaching careers, in Kent, Wales, and, after the war, in Blackheath, south of Greenwich, which would always be, in her mind, home. Quant, who was born in 1934, was attending Goldsmith’s out of a compromise arrangement with her exasperated family, who thought they could channel her penchant for designing and sewing her own clothes into a useful career: teaching art or some such. But she found herself swept into an exciting new way of life by Plunket-Greene, with whom she became romantically involved, and she abandoned the chance to get a teaching certificate for a life of gadding about with her new boyfriend and the ragtag bunch who came to be known as the Chelsea Set.
As much as the Jazz Age and the Beat Generation (and, later, Swinging London), the Chelsea Set was a creation of myth and media that nevertheless had a basis in the real lives of its so-called members. The Chelsea Set was invented by gossip columnists – or promoted and publicised and brought to the public’s attention that way,’ according to Christopher Gibbs, the antique dealer and scene-maker who seemed always to be at the heart of the groovy and the new. But there was, for the truth of that, something going on.
In the mid-’50s, at a few pubs, clubs and coffee bars, mainly along the King’s Road, various restless and creative young people – many from old families, some with money – began to hang out, live fast and look for kinkier diversions than the norms of the day allowed. The first real instance of jeunesse dorée in England since the Bright Young Things of Waugh’s ‘20s, they dressed outrageously, partied hedonistically, consorted with rough types, including gangsters, and courted headlines beyond the usual society page notices reserved for the activities of young people of their background and breeding. Chelsea Set folks did sensational things like holding a maverick drinking party on the Circle Line of the London Underground that climaxed in a chaotic free-for-all, or throwing a pyjama party at a Soho nightclub which, again, ended in near riot. They became famous – the men, especially – for what they were seen wearing: ethnic outfits from colonial outposts, exaggerated versions of gentlemen’s clothes from previous generations of English fashion; colourful, form-fitting trousers and flowing shirts, even blue jeans, then generally worn mainly by labourers.
They had good educations and trust funds and other advantages. Perhaps that’s why they were among the first to act out their frustrations with the long post-war malaise that gripped the country. Some of them had jobs – they kept small shops or photo studios or worked in advertising or public relations or the media – but mostly they gave themselves over to scene-making and the husbandry of outrage in others. ‘We were all very spoiled and very tiresome,’ recalled Simon Hodgson, who ran with the Chelsea Set. ‘Most of us were subsidised by our families and our lives were built around going to parties and getting drunk and meeting gangsters. Nobody had ever spoken to gangsters before – they seemed rather chic. But we were really frightfully snobbish. Everyone had to be rich, funny or famous, or at least notorious.’
‘Chelsea was very much removed from the rest of London,’ remembered Christopher Gibbs. ‘There were people who hung out in Chelsea who might not go east of Sloane Square for months. West of Sloane Square was a kind of dark land. You went perhaps to an amusing Italian restaurant or a snappy coffee bar. It was a very bohemian world. It had long-established, well-off people who were living on Cheyne Walk and such. It was a daytime culture, really; there weren’t any nightclubs in Chelsea.’
For those sorts of entertainment, Chelsea Setters gravitated towards the bohemian enclave of Soho, where you could feel some of the upsurging change – or, rather, feel an energy that was distinct from the prosperous after-dinner hum that Harold Macmillan bragged about. Soho was, along with Chelsea, the one place in London you could count on running into artists, writers, drunks, loons, and the daft on a regular basis – with the difference that in Soho you also rubbed shoulders with gangsters, pimps, hookers, strippers, pornographers and slumming actors from nearby West End theatres rather than the aged soldiers and genteel shopkeepers of the King’s Road. Soho was hardcore bohemia, a place where foreigners ran the restaurants and pubs, where homosexuals felt relatively safe, where vice businesses were permitted if not free rein, then certainly lots of elbow room. ‘Soho was more louche and more cross-fertilised,’ remembered Gibbs. There were East End kids coming up for a good time in the West End. There were jazz clubs and night spots and coffee bars and a sprinkling of gay bars and such. It drew a lot of people from the provinces and east London.’
The best jazz music could be heard in Soho, often in tiny little basements that had been converted, with self-avowed grandness, into clubs. There were a number of after-hours (and, given the erratic licensing hours of the era, afternoon) drinking clubs in the area. And it was the best neighbourhood to haunt in search of ethnic food other than haute cuisine: French, Italian, Jewish and Chinese families in particular did substantial business there as restaurateurs.
But if you had the right spirit, daytime in Chelsea offered sufficient opportunities. ‘The world was full of chancers from all over the place,’ Gibbs recalled, ‘a lot of wild colonial boys from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribbean. You could live on £10 a week. You could take a taxi ride to Hampstead for seven shillings. Just as in the nineteenth century you could live the life of a gentleman on £700 a year, you could skate by on not very much.’
Mary Quant, who hadn’t been raised with money or privilege and was, perhaps, less jaded, had a slightly different take on the scene: ‘I think it grew out of something in the air which developed into a serious effort to break away from the Establishment. It was the first real indication of a complete change of outlook.’ For her, the Chelsea Set – or the loose group of people who went by that name in the papers – was like a genial extension of art school: 'We felt very much a sort of isolated group because there was so little else in Chelsea. So as a group, the Chelsea lot would sort of hang together.’ She saw the humour and the essential frivolity of the scene, as evidenced in her pleasure in recounting the story of the elderly publican at the Markham Arms who thought that the newspapers had been referring to the ‘Chelsea Six’, and had reckoned that Quant, Plunket-Greene and a couple of their drinking buddies constituted the entire gang.
But then, Quant probably felt kinder towards the idea of the Chelsea Set because she stood so distinctly apart from it, distinguished by her raw talent and by ideas that no one else had ever had. Ever since girlhood, Quant had designed her own clothes in pursuit of a Peter Pan-ish idea about what constituted – or ought to constitute – women’s fashion: ‘I grew up not wanting to grow up,’ she explained. ‘Growing up seemed terrible. It meant having candy-floss hair, stiletto heels, girdles and great boobs. To me it was awful; children were free and sane and grown-ups were hideous.’ Even as she hit her 20s, she still refused to kowtow to fashion diktats that she evolve into some sort of stoic, matronly mannequin. When, in mid-'55, she and Plunket-Greene had the idea to go into business together, they agreed to open a boutique for young Chelsea women that offered the sorts of gear that Quant couldn’t find anywhere else for herself: jewellery, clothes, accessories and the hats that Quant had been designing and selling to a handful of other shops and friends. They discussed the idea with Archie McNair, one of their set, a fellow who had a track record of succeeding with unlikely inspirations.
McNair was the owner of the Fantasy, a rising King’s Road hot spot – the first coffee bar in the district and one of the first anywhere in London outside of Soho. In the early ‘50s, Soho had become the centre of a trend that would serve as an important catalyst to the lifestyle changes of the following decade – the vogue for Italian-style coffee bars. In 1953, Frith Street became home to the first Gaggia espresso machine imported into