It’s only frock ’n’ roll — but we liked it
This month the Rolling Stones returned to London’s Hyde Park, Mick Brown remembers ‘that dress’ from the legendary 1969 concert
I S there a single item of clothing more redolent of the spirit of the ’60s — the madness, the exhilaration — than the dress Mick Jagger wore at the Rolling Stones’ free concert on July 5 1969?
call it a dress, because that’s how it has gone down in history. As we shall see, that’s not quite right. But first, let us picture the scene. It is a warm summer day and 250 000 people have assembled in Hyde Park to see the Stones’ first concert in two years. A party, then. But wait. Brian Jones, the group’s founder, died two days ago, in the swimming pool at his home. So, also a wake.
In search of a fitting requiem for his pal, Jagger has settled on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Adonais. “He is not dead, he doth not sleep,” Jagger tells the tearful crowd. “He hath awaken’d from the dream of life.”
Beside him, boxes of white butterflies are thrown open. A few flutter to heaven. Most are already there, having suffocated during their long confinement. “There were casualties,” Charlie Watts later noted sadly.
But what is Jagger wearing? It is a smock: white voile, with “bishop’s sleeves”, ruffled at the wrists, a ruffled neck and a bow-laced front. You might call it a “poet’s blouse”. So, not really a dress at all then.
The outfit was by Michael Fish, the most fashionable shirtmaker in London. A working-class boy from Essex, Fish served his apprenticeship on Jermyn Street before opening his own boutique, Mr Fish, in 1966.
Fish came to define the dandyism of the period: his clothes were ornate confections in velvet, silk and satin, garlanded with bows, ruffles and furbelows, and sold at appropriately luxurious prices: up to 20 guineas for a shirt (£205 in today’s money). He sold to the actors, aristos and musicians who made up the moneyed end of Swinging London: Peter Sellers, Sammy Davis Jnr and David Bailey were among his customers.
In 1969, on holiday in Greece, Fish was much taken by the fustanelle, the skirt-like costume worn by the Presidential Guard. Back home, he fashioned a similar outfit — a three-piece with a tunic, trousers and a waistcoat, in a white voile.
The week before the concert, Jagger visited Mr Fish and his eye fell upon the Grecian tunic. It was priced at 85 guineas. Jagger bought it but asked for a discount, Fish would remember, because it had been worn.
So it was that he came to be wearing it at Hyde Park, albeit not for long. Shortly after reading Adonais, Jagger removed the tunic, doing the rest of the show in a purple T-shirt and white loon pants. Bill Wyman later said the singer had made fashion history as “the first man to take off a dress in public”.
Jagger greeted the furore over his choice by saying it was “just another frock”. Sammy Davis, meanwhile, liked it so much he bought three — “in black, brown and champagne”.
Jagger recently said he still had “the frock”. He even thought of giving it another airing at Hyde Park. “I tend to choose my dresses at the last minute,” he said. —©