CUT THE RIBBON, HARDY AMIES

Posted on May 13, 2013 by admin

Sir Hardy Amies, born in London in 1909, was maybe the most successful and long-lived English couturier. His never ending interest for design and good manners emerged in his teen years and were mainly inspired by his mother a saleswoman for Madame Gray at Machinka & May, London. He was so in love with his “fashion” mum that he soon adopted his mother’s maiden name, Hardy – and always cited her as the inspiration for his chosen professional path. What is making this man an unique designer and consequently a Cut The Ribbon ? To start with, his being wonderfully snob and wicked sense of humor gifted . Then because he was HM Queen Elizabeth II dresser from her accession to his retirement in 1989. But also because he was one of the founders of ready to wear clothing for men: in 1961, Amies made fashion history by staging the first men’s ready-to-wear catwalk shows, at the Savoy Hotel in London.  In 1967, Amies was also commissioned by director Stanley Kubrick to design the costumes for  film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, you are reading it well. It was him that collaborated in making that film a classic and a futuristic example of style. Hyper active “English man” also found time,  between running his Fashion house, the men line and several licences, to  wrote a regular column for Esquire magazine about men’s fashion that in 1964 was published  as a book: “ABC of Men’s Fashion” , a pearl of wisdom that Victoria & Albert Museum reissued after July 2009, the date when the Hardy Amies designer archive was opened and his legacy, once more, spread.

“A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and the forgotten all about them”