Michael Rainey
Fashion designer who sold colourful suits and frilly shirts to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones
MICHAEL RAINEY, who has died aged 76, was the British fashion trail-blazer who kick-started the worldwide trend for psychedelic stores by opening the “hippie boutique for young bucks”, Hung On You, in Chelsea in 1965.
Rainey’s shop, based in a premises at 22 Cale Street, specialised in innovative tailoring and the use of colourful fabrics with an emphasis on retailing as an ecstatic experience (his assistants handed out “smiles on sticks” when not lounging and smoking marijuana in public view).
He pioneered the Byronic dandified look of frilly-fronted shirts with beautifully tailored suits which revolutionised Britain’s previously staid menswear business. Also crucial to the shop’s direction was Rainey’s wife, Jane Ormsby-Gore, the daughter of Lord Harlech. “Michael would find lovely materials, all made in London in the East End by proper old-fashioned tailors,” she later recalled. “He was a great stickler. The Stones and Beatles would come in and say, ‘We want four of those…’”
Rainey’s popularity with the top echelon of pop was confirmed by his appearance in a garishly-coloured portrait on the cover of the 1966 compilation LP A Collection Of Beatles Oldies But Goldies.
Musicians were particularly keen on Hung On You’s famous suits in such colours as pistachio green, caramel and pink. “I came up with the idea of suits for the beach in a range of colours, like Smarties, so that a group of guys could each wear one,” Rainey explained. Soon Hung On You gave rise to such higher-profile outlets as Granny Takes A Trip and Dandie Fashions, both in the neighbouring Kings Road, where Rainey and Jane Ormsby-Gore were to subsequently occupy the address at 430, where Vivienne Westwood now has her shop.
With pop art lettering dominating the façade and an interior wallpapered in faux Aubrey Beardsley style, Hung on You was described by the Evening Standard as “a dipsomaniac’s nightmare”. Rainey was unfazed, telling Town magazine: “We’re not tailors but we will make things up for people if we think the ideas are good.”
Michael Sean O’Dare Rainey was born on January 21 1941 in Sydney, the son of the Major Sean Rainey of the Seaforth Highlanders and Joyce Marion Wallace, who became known as Marion Wrottesley after her divorce and subsequent marriage to Lord Wrotteseley.
The breakdown of this union and an inheritance prompted Rainey’s mother to move with him and his sister Sheelagh – later to marry Gargoyle Club founder David Tennant – to Majorca, Torremelinos and Tangiers. Eventually Marion Wrotteseley divided her time between Spain and London as the partner of Evelyn Waugh’s novelist brother Alec.
Educated at Eton College, Michael Rainey soon became a member of the young Chelsea set which was set then taking London by storm. Having cut his rag trade teeth working at Quorum, Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark’s Chelsea design outlet just off the Kings Road, Rainey opened Hung On You in December 1965, by which time Jane Ormsby-Gore was editor of Vogue’s “Shop Hound” section and renowned for her individual style in adapting second-hand and new clothes with bells, chains, rings and beading.
Initially, Rainey reworked militaria such as guardsman’s trousers and dragoon coats. He also sold quilted Mao jackets called, fittingly, “The Great Leap Forward” and Liberty print mandarin collar shirts. When Jane Ormsby-Gore returned from a trip to India laden with carpets and rugs, the pair directed their shoemaker Gohil to use the material for pairs of exotic boots.
Hung On You had a wild and druggy reputation. In the basement, Rainey was wont to thrash around on a drumkit, dressed like a member of The Byrds with a Brian Jones haircut and oblong-shaped dark glasses.
The clothes, meanwhile, did not come cheap. “Groovers didn’t mind paying triple for a floral chiffon shirt because Mick Jagger had probably bought one like it the day before,” wrote the late Richard Neville, the editor of Oz. Suits sold for 35 guineas – equal to two weeks’ wages – while shirts in silver, wine, gold, pink and red satin were marked up at six-and-ahalf guineas apiece.
But the business was short-lived. “None of us were particularly moneyorientated,” Rainey recalled in 2009. “I was too busy going to Glastonbury in search of the Holy Grail.” As the Sixties closed, Rainey and Jane Ormsby-Gore gave away their possessions and moved to Gozo.
After the dissolution of his marriage to Jane Ormsby-Gore, with whom he had sons Saffron and Gawain and daughters Rose and Ramona, Rainey moved to Australia in the 1980s where he had a relationship with Hermione Lyons. Their son is the film-maker Errol Rainey.
Subsequently he moved to Spain and settled in Granada in a 15th century casa with a view of the Alhambra which he operated as a guesthouse.
He married Monica Andrada-Vanderwilde Borrajo, with whom he had two daughters, in 2001. She and his seven children survive him. Michael Rainey, born January 21 1941; died January 29 2017