Item 2018.168 - Irvine Sellars Fringed Brocade Jacket

Identity area

Reference code

2018.168

Title

Irvine Sellars Fringed Brocade Jacket

Date(s)

  • 1967 (Creation)

Level of description

Item

Extent and medium

1

Context area

Name of creator

Irvine Sellars
(1962-1982)

Administrative history

Irvine Sellar (1934–2017) left school at the age of sixteen to take over the running of his father’s glove shop in St Albans. He began selling clothing on market stalls outside London in about 1957 and later relocated to Petticoat Lane in London’s East End. His first store opened in St Albans, followed by another in Wood Green and a third on Wardour Street in Soho, all of which sold mid-priced post–Teddy Boy clothing. In the early 1960s, Sellar and his wife Elizabeth spotted the potential of Carnaby Street, where they converted a greengrocer’s and a laundry into Irvine Sellars Menswear. The basement of number 27 was used for womenswear. After struggling to get clothing manufacturers to produce his designs, he began producing them himself; in 1969, his company produced 70 per cent of the menswear he sold. By 1969, Irvine Sellars had established a chain of twenty-four boutiques, including Mates by Irvine Sellars, which claimed to be the first chain store to offer men’s and women’s clothing under one roof, and a blueprint for modern retailing. Mates had grown to ninety stores by 1981, at which point Sellar sold the company to a South African investment group. However, by 1982 the chain had gone into receivership.
Sources: Property Week; The Express; The Independent.

Repository

Westminster Menswear Archive

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Content and structure area

Scope and content

Single-breasted long jacket constructed from an ornate green and gold heavy brocade furnishing fabric, embellished with bright gold tassels along the sleeves and hem. The jacket fastens with four square gold plastic buttons featuring crest detailing, along with an additional popper closure. It features a mod-style mandarin collar, which can be worn either upright or rolled down. The construction is simple, with two side vents, and the jacket is unlined.
Country of Design: England
Country of Manufacture: England

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      Physical characteristics and technical requirements

      Mixed synthetic fibres, cotton
      Colour/Print: multi - green and gold brocade
      Label: Irvine Sellars of Carnaby St, London W.1. 'International Fashion Group'. No care label.
      Measurements: 955mm back turned up collar to hem x 520mm flat chest x 5mm deep

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      Note

      Invisible Men exhibition label:

      VELVET TASSELLED JACKET
      Irvine Sellars
      1967

      One of Britain’s most successful retailers of the 1960s, Irvine Sellars took the Carnaby Street style of the period and sold it to a mass market. This tailored jacket is constructed in a heavy figured velvet furnishing fabric and was likely to make the wearer disappear in a similarly patterned domestic setting.

      Mixed synthetic fibres
      Archive no. 2018.168

      Note

      From Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive:

      FRINGED BROCADE JACKET
      Irvine Sellars
      1967
      One of Britain’s most successful retailers of the 1960s, Irvine Sellars took the Carnaby Street style of the period and sold it to a mass market. This tailored jacket is made of furnishing fabric, utilizing the ornamentation and material that would have been found on the sofa or wallpaper of a 1960s suburban living room. As such, it could be considered a type of crypsis, a form of camouflage that makes use of colour and pattern to blend into the surrounding environment and avoid detection. It fastens with four square gold plastic crest-adorned buttons and a small popper closure. It features a mandarin collar that can be worn upright or rolled down, a very simple construction and finish, two side vents, and is unlined.
      Mixed Synthetic Fibres
      Archive no. 2018.168

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          Sources

          Photograph in: Bethan Bide and Lucie Whitmore, Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners shaped global style (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2023), p. 164.

          Accession area