AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH FASHION

Michael Southgate

Interviewed by Linda Sandino

C1046/08

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NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION

INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Title Page

Ref. No.: C1046/08/01-10 Playback No.: F14866-73, F14960-1

Collection title: Oral History of British Fashion

Interviewee’s surname: Southgate Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Michael John Sex: Male Occupation: Designer, Managing Director Date of birth: 20.06.1930

Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Family Grocer

Date(s) of recording: 16.03.04, 17.03.04, 18.03.04, 30.03.04

Location of interview: Friends’ London flat (interviewee’s home is in New York)

Name of interviewer: Linda Sandino

Type of recorder: Marantz CP430

Total no. of tapes: 10 Type of tape: D60

Mono or stereo: Stereo Speed: N/A

Noise reduction: Dolby B Original or copy: Original

Additional material:

Copyright/Clearance: Tapes 6 side B, Tape 7 sides A and B and Tape 8 side A closed for 30 years

Interviewer’s comments:

Michael Southgate Page 1 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)

Tape 1 Side A (track 1)

…name and your date and place of birth.

Okay. My full name is Michael John Southgate. I was born in Ipswich, in Norwich Road, over the family grocer shop, and my father was a family grocer. And I was born in, June the twentieth, 1930. Not the best time to be born. My father’s parents were both country grocers. They had shops in and around Suffolk and I think when my father came out of the First World War, and by that time he’d married my mother, they decided to set him up in business in Ipswich, which was the main town. Didn’t turn out to be a very good idea, because it was in a working class area and it was at the time of tremendous unemployment, it was the slump and in those days people were allowed to run up bills, you know, put it on the bill, put it on the bill – everybody hoping they were gonna get a job next week and of course weeks went to months, months went to years in many cases. And my father didn’t in fact get declared bankrupt, but they lost the business simply because the debts were so enormous, you know people just didn’t have any money. And I think there was a post office as well, adjoined to the shop, which kept the whole thing floating. Anyway, they got out. And so I don’t remember any of that, because I was literally born there and I think by the time I was a year old, or certainly by two, they’d bought a semi-detached house in the suburbs and we moved there. And that’s where I was brought up. Had a hideous education because just as I was about to go to school, the war broke out. I think I was – my two brothers, I had two brothers; one was ten years older than me, one was twelve. I didn’t know them very well either, because by the time I was old enough they were at boarding school, and then as they came out of boarding school I went to school and then as I came out of school they were in the air force and the army, because they got into the Second World War. So we really didn’t ever know each other. But it was, the schooling I remember so vividly because I think the teachers that I had, had also taught my father because they’d all been brought back to teach because the younger ones had all gone to the war. I can remember a couple, called the Miss Malletts who were completely Edwardian. I mean they looked like Queen Mary. They had high collars and little dangly earrings and they lived together. And we used to get taught the Bible and an awful lot of stress was put on to handwriting. I think some of them were very good at handwriting. And history, and nature – I think we had a lot of nature walks and plant dissecting [laughing] but nothing that was really any good to you at all. So we somehow

Michael Southgate Page 2 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) got through all that and then when I went to boarding school things did get a bit better, but even that was very austere and the teachers were very old. And then we used to do a lot of ‘digging for victory’. We used to go out and spend hours in the garden, then we’d have hours off because the air raids were going over - and you think in Suffolk it was very rural, but in actual fact, it was the path from the Continent coming to London. So we used to get the Doodlebugs going over and the bombers going over at night and then if they had any bombs left that they hadn’t dropped on London, they used to get rid of them before they went home and we used to get quite a lot in Suffolk [laughing] so we did know quite a lot about the war. And at the end of where we were living there was a large farm and that became an anti-aircraft base. And the noise of the guns going off was much more frightening than the bombs in actual fact, as a child, because they really felt like they were in the same room with you. But it was an interesting time to grow up and of course we didn’t know that we were, we rather liked the fact that we used to have weeks when the schools were closed because they couldn’t open ‘em because of the bombs. Didn’t get much of an education and lots of digging and, yes, it was funny. We used to go mushrooming at seven o’clock in the morning and of course all the fields had great reels of barbed wire unravelled so that planes couldn’t land, was the idea, and the mushrooms used to grow very well inside, inside these spirals of barbed wire because the cows couldn’t stand on them and break them. So I used to, because I was quite small, I used to get popped in the barbed wire and used to crawl up the middle picking mushrooms [laughs]. I was thinking about that when we were getting ready to do this and I thought, goodness, I hadn’t thought about that for years.

And who would be with you when you were picking mushrooms?

Other children, you know from the school and yes, we used to go out and bring them home to the housekeeper and that was rather a good thing to supplement the diet with, because it was pretty… lots of tapioca pudding and semolina and all that stuff in those days. Not much meat.

What did you feel about going to boarding school?

I didn’t like it at first, I mean I was seven and I think I screamed for about two days with about three other boys. We were put together to scream our hearts out and after that we

Michael Southgate Page 3 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) couldn’t scream any more, you just got over it. And then after that, never a problem. And later in life I found it was a tremendous advantage. I mean I remember going into the air force, because National Service was still going on at that time. I couldn’t believe that there were eighteen year old boys crying because they’d left home and then they had to send their laun… for some reason there was a lot of laundry sending home, we used to send it back to our mothers or something. And they couldn’t tie a parcel up or didn’t really know how to write a letter or any of the things, and I was running around sort of helping everybody with that stuff ‘cos it was just quite normal to, if you’d been doing it for years. So no, in the long run, it was a good idea. But it was an awful school because we just didn’t have enough authority and our biggest quest was to get out at night, which we weren’t supposed to do, and go to the cinema. Crazy about the cinema. It was, in the forties, the early forties, it was the only glamorous thing really. And I became completely besotted with it, and not just me, there were like three or four of us, but one of them, John Dalzell – and he and I stayed friends all our lives, he died a few years ago – but we were always getting into terrible hot water for going to the cinema.

In Ipswich?

In Woodbridge. It was, we were out in the country and it had a corrugated iron roof so when it rained you couldn’t hear the soundtrack [laughing]. It was really awful. But we were crazy about the musicals and, anything that was escapism. And of course America seemed like a Utopia; soda fountains and wonderful cream cakes and all the things we, we were just the age that we’d never actually seen those things. So the cinema was everything.

Is there a film that stands out for you?

…Many. I discovered very soon that I was gay, but didn’t really know what gay was, I just was gay. We, and my friend John was the same, but everybody always says well how boarding school was and all that. Not for us, it wasn’t. Nothing like that happened for us. But we were escaping into the movies with all that stuff. So it sort of went to two things, it was Betty Grable, the musicals you know, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth or me personally, I don’t think John was like that, but I was always, I loved all the heroes, but not the sophisticated ones, I used to like Tarzan and oh! Errol Flynn in Robin Hood was

Michael Southgate Page 4 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) my big passion at that time. I was very young, I was like about seven. Madly in love with Errol Flynn. So we got through all that, but it was the escapism of what… And of course the clothes! I was absolutely besotted with sequins. Sequins on everything. I’d never even seen a real sequin – well I think I had actually, my mother had some old pre-war evening dresses that used to fascinate me. When I went home I was always looking at them and seeing all these little sequins on them. But then when I finally went to art school and I started doing costume design and theatrical design, everything had to have sequins on it. And they used to say to me, really you know, you’re a bit besotted with sequins. But I was, I just loved sequins. So…

And where was the art school?

I went to Ipswich and then to Brighton. And then I went into the air force.

Sorry, was this before or after art school?

That was after. And then I went back to Central School when I came to London, but that wasn’t fulltime. But before you know, I went from school to art school for a, two years, and I was supposed to come – I could have stayed for the three years and completed my course, but I decided to get my National Service over, and the idea was that I would go back to finish my last year when I came out. But that didn’t happen, because I went into an air force show. I got, I was always, my mother could dance quite well and she used to teach dancing and I used to help sometimes. But truthfully that wasn’t… and then I’d been in lots of amateur plays and done a bit of, when the local rep in Ipswich needed juvenile parts I used to get lent from the school. I did one or two of those.

Could you, just for the sake of the record, tell me your parents’ names?

Sure. My father’s name was Frederick William Southgate. My mother’s name was Esther Marjorie Rogers.

And the name of the school?

Michael Southgate Page 5 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)

Well, the, St Matthew’s and then St Margaret’s and then Framlingham. So I went to like three different ones.

And how did your parents manage to pay for Framlingham?

Well, the reason that was, because my brothers had both gone and although they couldn’t afford it – we were terribly hard up – but they never acted like that, that we really were. I didn’t really know much different because we’d always been hard up in my time, but course my brothers felt it badly. But somehow they scraped through. And truthfully, the war put my father back on his feet. He, because he was a grocer – I don’t know quite how that happened – he was approached by the Ministry of Food, and he became a Ministry of Food inspector for meat – I don’t know quite what they called that. And he had this horrible job, it was in the war, there were these great outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and as an inspector he used to have to go round to farms and condemn whole herds and things like that, and he used to come home terribly upset. And my mother was really a great survivor and she was, oh goodness, she was running a mobile canteen for the WVS and entertaining – lot of entertaining of Polish officers. I think they were to do with the anti-aircraft thing. I think all the women of the group were rather heavy on the Polish officers in those days. And [laughing] my father was a tremendous womaniser, always was. And around that time, practically walked out. He – well I’ll tell you about her, because she comes up later on in the story. He obviously liked young women. I can remember when I used to come home and we used to go into Ipswich quite a lot for, and always, because he would go to the cattle market and then we’d go for coffee with lots of the farmers in this place called the Oriental Café in Ipswich. And it used to embarrass me terribly that my father who was like in his, coming up to fifty I suppose, was chatting up all the waitresses. But it was like a sort of macho thing, they all did it, you know, these farmers used to chat up, chat up these waitresses and I used to be so embarrassed and think well, why do they do that. But I think he did have quite a lot of affairs with young girl, women. But then he had a very important one called Violet. And she was a waitress in the local teashop, at Lyon’s, Lyon’s teashop in London. But he really fell in love this time. And he wanted to leave my mother, and my mother just absolutely freaked out. She said, you’re not leaving me with three boys to take care of. And they were both pretty independent, you know, they’d both been, my father was doing war, what is it? Fire service, as well he was travelling around with his Ministry of Food, she was with her

Michael Southgate Page 6 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) canteen going all over the place. But I don’t think it had ever crossed my mother’s mind that they would ever break up, it just wasn’t in her thinking. But when she did, she put up a tremendous fight and in the end she managed to… but he stayed. Well then of course, I suppose what really brought them together, my eldest brother, at twenty-two, died, in the air force. He wasn’t killed, he got some slight shrapnel wound in his temple and he was at least two or three months in hospital here in England, somewhere down in Cornwall – St Ann’s, I think it was called – and it suddenly got infected in the hospital and mastoids went to the brain and he died straight away. And I think, I was about ten or eleven I suppose, and I think it brought them back together and they got over that and we didn’t hear any more about Violet or the affair. But he was always terribly, he was a real dandy, you know, he was, he used to effect riding breeches and because all the farmers used to wear them, but he wasn’t a farmer and he wasn’t, didn’t ride a horse, but you know, he had that look about him. [laughs]

But did you know about Violet or did you find that out later?

No, I knew. I remember sitting with my two older brothers at the top of the stairs in our house, listening to my mother and father screaming at each other, and absolutely shaking like a leaf. I can remember that vividly. And my older brothers were cuddling me and sort of saying, it’ll be alright, he won’t go. And in the end he didn’t. I don’t remember too much. I remember that as if it was yesterday, but I can’t quite remember how it all got resolved, but I always suspect it was to do with the fact that Norman got killed. Or died. So where do we go from there?

Can I just ask you how Norman’s death affected you?

Hardly at all. Hardly at all. I can remember lots of things about him now. He was very nice to me, my brother next to me, Russell, was not so nice, but he wasn’t bad to me, but he wasn’t… But Norman was particularly nice. I think Russell found it a bore to have a little brother, you know. I was ten years younger and he was like a teen… an older teenager and I was a kid, you know and he wasn’t, he didn’t have time for all that. But Norman was always, when he came home from air force, and before that he was in the Territorials – he often seemed to like things with uniforms for some reason. He was always extreme you know, and I always looked forward to him coming home and so on,

Michael Southgate Page 7 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) but when he actually died, I don’t remember it having a big… I just can remember that, well my mother, they were both absolutely distraught at the time, but my mother pulled herself together. My father must have gone on for a year or so, I used to dread meeting anyone in the street who they hadn’t seen before and then they’d say, ‘Oh we’re so sorry to hear…’ and my father would start crying and great tears would run down his face. I used to just dread it, I used to think, ah, I wish we wouldn’t meet people that keep bringing this up, d’you know? That’s how it affected me. I guess I didn’t like it, truthfully.

So who were you closest to in your family, d’you think?

…Well I don’t think we were a very close family, if you’re talking about… My mother was… very… all engulfing, but it was a bit of a sort of Mother Courage kind of thing, you know, she was so busy making sure we were looked after. I think she was much harder and stronger than my father, who really was, I suppose you know, he was an only child and I think his parents were forty-one or two when he was born and they’d been married since they were eighteen, and she didn’t even realise she was pregnant apparently, my grandmother, but she thought she was having an early change of life, and it turned out to be my father. So of course he was spoilt dreadfully by them. By the time I came along, they were in their eighties and I don’t remember either of them. I just remember my mother’s father, but only just. I think I was three when he died. So although we were, we didn’t certainly have any problems with getting along together, I wouldn’t have called us a close family. I mean I’ve met since then, when I came to London and so on, I’ve met families that have to be in touch with each other every day, brothers and sisters and, we were never like that. Whenever we came together it sort of took us a couple of hours to get relaxed, really, because we didn’t know each other that well.

And what was your mother’s family, what did they do?

They had, she came from I think it was seven girls and one brother. And the, they had a pub, they were, had a pub and, the grandfather. And they all married differently, except one. That’s quite an amusing story really. My aunt Dolly lived with Topsy and I always thought that Topsy was my aunt as well, because in those days they would be typically old maids, they were country people, they looked very country, you know, they never bought

Michael Southgate Page 8 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) a dress, it was always a made dress by a dressmaker and they never dreamt of having… it wasn’t quite nice to buy a dress. And they both looked to me like old ladies. Actually I discovered later that Topsy was like in her thirties, she just looked old. And then of course when the war came, they had a fairly big house so they had soldiers billeted on them. And unknown to anyone, Topsy corresponded with one of these soldiers all through the war and he came from Royston, somewhere in Hertfordshire, I think it is. As soon as the war was over and he was out, he came straight back to Ipswich and married Topsy, and she was forty at the time. And they were like, it was like, I mean I thought they looked like a pair of teenagers, they were so in love. I didn’t think that was quite right either. I was getting on then, I was about fifteen, sixteen by then. But then there was all sorts of things, well, who’s gonna give Topsy away. And it turned out that my mother and father said that they would take over the wedding and that my father would give Topsy away and then of course I started asking questions because I was old enough then. Well it turned out that Topsy was the illegitimate daughter of the oldest of my mother’s sisters, Millicent. And Millicent had gone off and married the Mayor of Chelmsford [laughing] and never dared tell him that she’d got a daughter. So my aunt Dolly had kind of brought her up and I always thought she was my aunt. Turned out she was my cousin. And she only died last year and we kept in touch, she lived till she was ninety-three. And it was a true love affair. They almost immediately had a son who now lives in America not far from – well no, that’s not true, not near – he lives in middle America, but we keep in touch. And that turned out to be a huge success. Then the other sisters, they all dispersed all over the place and I saw very little of them and my father, I think because he was only an only child, he didn’t really like all my mother’s relations. And we only came together at weddings and funerals, you know, that sort of thing and not too many of those. My mother’s funeral was quite amusing. She was, I think the third youngest, but she was one of the first to die, if not the first, and so all the sisters came, from all over, and the cousins. They came from Kent, they came from London, they were all scattered about. And it was after the cremation, we all went back to my father’s house and the usual thing you know, like a sort of wake, they were having drinks and sandwiches and my father and my brother, we were in the kitchen and my father said, ‘Michael, go in and see what everybody’s having’. Because lots of them don’t drink, you know those country ladies always say they don’t drink, they do actually, but they don’t, they say they don’t. So I went to my aunt Dolly, who I love actually, I mean she was always very good to me, and I said, ‘What will you have Dolly?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I think I’d like this chair’. And then turned to Topsy and

Michael Southgate Page 9 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) said, ‘What will you have Topsy?’. And then they all started saying what of my mother’s they would like. And my father just said, ‘Let them take it’. I said, ‘Fred, this is your home’. He said, ‘Doesn’t matter, let them take it’. They put them on top of the cars and they drove off with all this stuff. That’s country people, they’re very odd, they really are. I don’t like them at all. People think that they, they think that they’re the salt of the earth, but they’re really ignorant and greedy, I find. Anyway, that was my mother’s funeral, which was, I’ll never forget it, it was really only surpassed by my father’s [laughing].

What year was that?

When my mother died? I was in my thirties, so it must have been seventy something, about seventy-four or five. And…

So what happened at your father’s?

Well, after my mother died, my father became an absolute misery. I mean, my mother became like Saint Esther, it was your dear mother, dear mother and she really let him have it when she was dying, because she really died of malnutrition. She had a stroke and then she would not eat. She wasn’t, she couldn’t taste anything and the side of her face was numb apparently, and it took her about a year to literally fade away, but her brain was fine all the time. So of course my father, the minute he thought he was gonna be left alone, he adored her. My father could cry quite easily. He’d go and hold her hand and ‘Do you love me dear?’ and she said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I haven’t loved you for years. Silly old fool’, she said to him. [laughing] He couldn’t take it, you know. It was awful. Anyway, we all understood it. So then, Fred went into Ipswich and met Violet, the teashop waitress of nineteen, who was by this time fifty something and he was like seventy-three or four. She had already buried her husband who, had he been alive would have been eighty something, so she obviously liked older men. But she’d done rather well for herself and she was quite well off and quite independent, and it really cheered my father up; he couldn’t wait to tell me, you know, I’ve met Violet. I met her and, she was such a plain woman, I mean you can’t imagine she’d have ever, ever been attractive, but anyway, she really liked him. And, on one of the times that I was home, I used to go home some weekends when I could get off from the theatre ‘cos I was working in the theatre then. And she said, ‘You know, your father will never be lonely while I’m alive, because I’ve

Michael Southgate Page 10 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) always loved him and I’ll make sure he’s alright’. Well Fred messed that up in no time at all. He wanted Violet to marry him. And she said, ‘No, I don’t want to marry you. I’ve already buried one old man and I don’t want to go through that again’. And she just refused and he just drove her crazy. I think she told him, told me that he phoned her up forty something times in one day. So in the end she wouldn’t see him at all. So,

[End of Tape 1 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 11 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2)

Tape 1 Side B (track 2)

So after that, I think Fred just turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost and he died. Out of sheer awkwardness really, he wasn’t really ill or anything, but he just didn’t want to go on. So, I was at the Victoria Palace at that time with Max Bygraves and my brother phoned me up and said Fred had died and they were having the funeral. I said, ‘Well d’you think you could have it in the morning, because I have to get back for the evening show’. And he said, ‘Sure, no problem’. I said, ‘Well, I’ll come to the house’ and I said, ‘Will you take care of flowers and things because…’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, we’ll take care of all that’. So when I got to the house, I was, came straight from the train in Ipswich. It was full of all the sisters, the ones that were left, and the usual family. And again, my brother was in the kitchen getting the stuff ready for the… and he said, ‘Those flowers you sent were magnificent’. I said, ‘What are you talking about? You said you would take care of the flowers’. ‘Well I did’ he said, ‘But then yours came’. I said, ‘Russell, I didn’t send any flowers’. He said, ‘There’s a six foot cross of red roses’. He said, ‘Where’s it come from?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’ll be Violet’. ‘Violet!’ He said, ‘I’ve put it on top of the coffin, it’s an insult to our mother’. I said, ‘You leave it just where it is. Our mother wouldn’t have cared less’. [laughing] So, everybody thinks, because I was in the theatre, that I’d sent these red roses, which were pretty awful actually, I mean they were just so vulgar, and when you go to Ipswich to the crematorium you have to go through Christchurch Park, which is the main park in the middle of town and the cars are all going through, and I look up on the hill and sitting on a bench is Violet. And as the funeral goes by, Violet waves from the top of the hill and Russell said, ‘Did you see her?’ I said, ‘Yes, I saw her’. And she sat up there and just waved goodbye. Fred would have been thrilled to bits with that. So that was quite a nice end to that story. So then, I came out of the air force. Oh! I enjoyed the air force, I really had a very good time and I made lots of contacts in the theatre because I, after going into this one show, I then got put in others and I got sent off to Germany in a kind of entertainment unit, that we were stationed in Lübeck and then in Schifoltendorf [ph]. They used to have leave centres in Germany where, if the airmen got a forty-eight hour pass, it wasn’t big enough for them to come home to England, so they used to get sent off to these leave centres, which were actually old Luftwaffe pleasure places. They were very grand and very nice and they had horse riding and tennis courts, and then we used to put on these shows for them. And so, when I came out of the air force, a lot of the entertainments officers had been in the professional

Michael Southgate Page 12 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) theatre here and I had introductions to a couple of agents and went back to Ipswich to see my mother and father, and by that time I really was the last hope that somebody would go into the business, you know and keep the butcher’s going, ‘cos neither of my brothers had shown any interest in that. In fact we all went into drawing. Russell went into the Drawing Office at Ransome and Rapiers which was a sort of agricultural machinery company and Norman of course did nothing except the air force. So where do we go from there?

Well you were saying that your parents were hoping that you would go into the business?

Oh right. But then I said, no, I’ve got this job in the theatre in London, which was a lie. I didn’t have a job at all. All I had was a couple of letters. So I came to London with ten pounds, I think I had, I seem to remember I had ten pounds. And had a look round the shops [laughs]. I didn’t really know what to do. And then I bought a map and I found out where this agent’s office was in Chandos Place and went there and I had an interview with Joan Collins’s uncle. Her father was an agent, but his brother was also an agent and I had a, I think it was Joe Co… I always forget which one was Joan’s husband, her father, I think Joe Collins is the one I saw. And he said, ‘Well yes, but you’re not tough enough to go on the road’. He took one look at me and just said, he said, ‘You’d never survive’. And that was, he had a big cigar out of one side of his mouth and just didn’t like the look of me at all, he thought I was far too, too sheltered looking, I think. In actual fact, I wasn’t, but that’s how he saw me. I looked too smart for him I think. So then I came out again and I thought, well I don’t know where I’m gonna spend the night. My ten pounds won’t go far if I go to a hotel. So I went to Marshall and Snelgrove’s and I thought well, I’ll go in the teashop. And so I said to the waitress, ‘You don’t know anyone that’s got any rooms to rent?’ and she said, ‘You know, Margaret’s just bought a house, I think she’s looking for a lodger’. Well that was another waitress, and I went home with Margaret. And I went to Stockwell. And she was a marvellous, half Scottish, half Irish lady, with an awful temper. Oh! God, did she have a temper. She used to give hell to her husband and her poor son. But she loved me and held me up as an example to them and it was really rather embarrassing. And I couldn’t put up with that for too long. And then I got, I went back to Central School and I started doing an art course there again with, with set design and then I got a job, doing props for the theatre. And through that job I met Adel Rootstein, who was also a prop maker. Now Adel had come from South Africa and I

Michael Southgate Page 13 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) think she came in 1951, which was the same year that I came to London. You know, when I first came to London it was the Festival of Britain, so I got some freelance work down at the show doing, hanging up paper doves in the Hall of Justice. And Adel was doing stuff down there and then we met again doing these props. And then I went off to Whiteleys in Bayswater, because they wanted someone to build the Christmas grotto and I went there and I met someone called Roy Starling who was the display manager at Whiteleys, and we became great friends. And then it turned out that Roy had been in, doing drag on the stage in Soldiers in Skirts, which you’ve probably never heard of. Well, they go back to the Second World War, but there was an original company in the First World War, which was called Splinters, and it was all men in drag. Supposed to be soldiers and sailors and airmen. And then some, and of course the music halls were still running at those times – there was Finsbury Park Empire and Chelsea Empire and all the, all the circuit, the Moss circuit and, and there was this show called Soldiers in Skirts which was again, people from the Second World War. And in it was Danny la Rue and Mrs Shufflewick and there was quite a few different comedians, I think Arthur English – different people went through there. No very big stars, but quite, it was a well known, on the road, show. And Roy had been in it. So, I said, ‘Well you know, I did a lot of drag when I was in the air force’ and he saw the photos, he said, ‘You know, you really should go into that’. Well, I didn’t ever do that. But then there was a show put on at the Irving Theatre, Leicester Square, which I don’t think exists any more. It’s where Berman’s used to be, on Leicester Square, it’s that little...

The theatrical…

Yes, theatrical costumier there. Well, there used to be a little theatre there called the Irving Theatre, named after Henry Irving whose statue’s just there. And he said, ‘Let’s go for the audition’. And we both went. It wasn’t in drag, and we both got the job. And in it, there was a sketch where everybody wore drag, it was a sort of send up of the biblical epics that were on at the time, The Robe and Quo Vadis and all those. Hollywood Rome was very much in at that time. So everybody in the show was in – I think there was only one man that managed to stay out of drag in that scene – and we were all running around in gold high heels and sort of plastic flowers on our hair being Hollywood Romans. It was a send up of that. But when the crits came out, they said, ‘Oh there’s a new comedy team in the West End, Rogers and Starr’. My stage name was Michael Rogers, which was my

Michael Southgate Page 14 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) mother’s name, Rogers. And Roy, funnily enough, I always thought he was called Starr because his name was, his real name was Starling, but it wasn’t that reason. When he’d been doing drag, he had taken over a double act in pantomime doing ugly sisters, and somebody called Ricky Starr, who was an Australian, was found to not have a work permit, so he had to go out and Roy went in under the same name, and he’d been stuck with that name ever since. So that’s how he got called that. So then the press decided that Rogers and Starr was a comedy team. And it kind of formed a friendship. We didn’t go straight into doing work together, but we, I’ve carried on doing props and things and he was still at Whiteleys and then we, we started writing a show together and we put on our own show. And we did that at the Century Theatre in Notting Hill Gate. And it took off, but truthfully it was mostly friends, you know, that came. It was, it felt like a hit at the time, but it didn’t make any money. I mean, but we covered our… we sort of did everything ourselves, financed ourselves, dressed ourselves. Luckily we were all of a type, we could all make so much. You know, we were that type of people. And there was great emphasis put on costume, because that’s what we were good at. And we did that off and on, not every year, but we sort of tried to do one a year and we became known. And we really became known more than we justified, because we weren’t really earning our living like that, but people thought that we were professional. And then, how did we turn professional? I can’t remember. Oh…

Did you have to get an Equity card?

Well that’s another story. We were actually starring at the Criterion before anyone discovered we didn’t have an Equity card, but that was years later [laughs]. And they said, ‘Well what Eq….’. I said, ‘Well we haven’t got…’ ‘You haven’t got one!’ And they just couldn’t believe it. No, because we’d always been in display as well, and were loath to give up that work because you know, the other work was very patchy, very patchy. So we used to somehow manage to do it as well as, it was mostly… But what we did start doing was cabaret. And we did practically every nightclub, I suppose, in London. I mean we were constantly at the Embassy, at the Aster when that was going. Then we used to, then we graduated to going out on these university shows. We used to go to Coventry. They used to have these weeks of what did they call them? Like rag weeks, aren’t they called? And then they used to have entertainers come from London and do it. We started

Michael Southgate Page 15 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) doing that, then we started doing arts festivals in Harrogate and different places. So suddenly we were a name.

Could you describe your act?

Yes, I think I could. We could look glamorous, but over the top kind of glamorous. We never wore, we didn’t ever have false boobs or any kind of padding, we just used to put dresses on. And [laughing] they used to look very modelly, because models don’t have much figure, you know. It wasn’t your stripper kind of drag, it was always very softly played down. But we usually opened looking as stunning as we could, and then after that, it was all – well we did people like Indira Gandhi and Mrs Chou En Lai and Mrs Nixon and Jilly Cooper and anybody that was topical, anyone that was in the news. And neither of us were impersonators, we really weren’t very good at impersonation I don’t think, with the voice, but we always could get a good look, and then we wrote stuff that appertained to these people. Well then we got people interested in us and we got very good people writing for us as well. Although, right up to the end, what we did best was the stuff that I wrote, because for some reason, we understood that. So…

Did you make your own clothes?

At the beginning, not at the end. I mean, they got very… You see, what happened was this, we then, after we got known in cabaret, we were suddenly asked to do a late night show at Hampstead Theatre Club and we did it for six weeks. And we used to go on at eleven o’clock at night after the play had finished. After the first one it became an absolute sell out and we did it for four or five years running, and they used to sell out before we opened, which they loved. And Vivian Matalon was the director there at that time and – there were lots of different directors that went through there. And, what did you ask me, sorry.

I asked you about your, whether you made your own clothes?

Oh right. So then, and we did make an awful lot of our own clothes, and Roy, his boyfriend was a very good dressmaker, not a professional one, but he just could do, well he could do almost anything. He was a good decorator, he was a good carpenter, but he

Michael Southgate Page 16 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) could also make dresses. And he was rather chained to the sewing machine. I was stuck upstairs writing everything, always at the last minute deadline because I could never write in advance. And Roy used to try on the clothes a lot. [laughs] He’d be flitting about in them saying, ‘Yes, this is very good darling. Yes, I think this is very good’. That was his contribution [laughing]. And so, [distracted by noise]. Oh that’s the post, I think. So then, suddenly after the second one maybe, or the third, Hampstead starting coming up with much more money. They would provide clothes and sets and… whereas at the beginning we used to have to perform in whatever the play set was, with maybe some slight adjustment. Suddenly things got much better. Well what we didn’t find out until afterwards was, that Harold Fielding had been backing it. After he’d seen us a couple of times he said, ‘Look, I think these boys are gonna be ready for the West End and I’d like to put some money into them’. And that’s what he did.

Sorry, I don’t know about Harold Fielding.

Oh, he was a marvellous impresario. He put on rather corny things, I mean he put on Charlie Girl was one of his big successes, at the Adelphi. He did Half a Sixpence with Tommy Steel and Tommy Steel always worked through his management, the whole of his career. He even put on this great flop from Japan, called Gone with the Wind at the Drury Lane, I don’t know if you ever heard of that. They did a musical of Gone with the Wind. It wasn’t bad actually, it was lots and lots of Japanese money in it and I think they did in fact take it to Japan in the end, it was an absolute scream, really. But no, Harold was a… and he was such a nice… he apparently as a youngster he’d been a concert violinist, and he was married to a rather large lady called Dolly. And she was very, very nice. And then there was a secretary woman, whose name I’ve now forgotten. And they ran it like a family business. It was like your old actor management stuff, you know, they really looked after you. So we then, they said, ‘Look, we think you’re ready now for the West End and where would you like to go’. And we said, ‘Well we don’t really want to be in a very big theatre, because we’re much more intimate’, it was an intimate thing. And almost within two or three weeks, the Criterion became vacant. But we had to take it right then, and it was really much too quick and so Harold said, ‘You know, you’ll do a nice cabaret at the Young Vic Theatre and we’ll invite all the writers to come to see you and then ask them to submit stuff’. And we did. We ran through just about everything we… well we did two and a half hours, I think, and at the end of it, in came all this material from people

Michael Southgate Page 17 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) like Peter Wildblood and well… Frank Marcus that used to write lots of stuff. Anyway - Barry Cryer sent in stuff. I can’t explain to you how it went, but they all sort of took the attitude, oh, it’ll be such fun to do Rogers and Starr. So they wrote these outrageously gay sort of skits and that really wasn’t what we did. I mean we did ordinary people, it was the fact that we were men and were outrageously dressed or, that made it funny. But when it came to these incredibly contrived plots, we found that we couldn’t perform it. It just didn’t work for us. And we did two weeks’ try out, before we opened and I think every night, something else got cut. They said, ‘Oh that’s not working for you, that’s not working for you’. So when we did open, we were doing about seventy per cent of our old material, because all the new material had gone out the door, which was a great shame. And I by that time had gone numb with anxiety and I couldn’t seem to write anything. Well, I think what had happened there was, at the beginning of doing the show, first of all it was to star us, then they said, we think you should, you know, you’re gonna be absolutely great but you’re not commercial, so we think we should have something more commercial in with you, and it turned out to be Jimmy Edwards. D’you remember him?

Perhaps you should just say something about him for future generations [laughing].

Well, Jimmy Edwards was a wonderful, big man, who used to have a marvellous music hall act of playing the bassoon, I think it was, or euphonium perhaps it was, it was one of those big brass horny things. And he’d sit there and play this thing and crack jokes at the same time and he had a huge handlebar moustache and he was a sort of gruff, Colonel Blimp type character, which was, and very square, completely square. And it was a strange combination to throw us together, but it was felt it would put in a different… And we said, ‘Well, you can’t put our name above Jimmy Edwards, he’s much more famous than we are’. So we agreed to let them do equal billing, so it was Rogers and Starr, Jimmy Edwards. And then we had a lovely black girl called Chelsea Brown, who had been in something called Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in on television and it was very much the flavour of the month at that time. And she was looking to work here in London, because she’d got a boyfriend here. And so she was the other one on the bill and then we had one or two other people in it as well. It wasn’t a heavenly… Oh, and then we had Frank Dunlop as our director. Now Frank had had huge success doing Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, stuff at the Young Vic, and he really is a very talented director with tact, really. He could take youngsters, old bits of rubbish, and turn it into a show, it

Michael Southgate Page 18 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) was his talent. And he said, ‘Oh I’d love to do Rogers and Starr, I love them’. But when he was confronted with these two six foot, because you know, we used to wear like five inch soles on our heels and six inch heels and then the wigs used to go up and the headdresses used to go up, we were a bit alarming. And it really wasn’t his cup of tea, he didn’t quite know how to handle it. And then we had Ralph Koltai, who was probably the best set designer of his day. He’d been doing things at the National, at the Royal Opera House, mostly opera he did. And Harold just pushed the boat out, whoever… And Ralph said he’d love to do it. Well, because it was the Criterion, you know it’s sort of underground and people had always said it’s a bit like a public loo, so our set was like the most wonderful public loo you have ever seen. They tiled, even the safety curtain came down in white tiles. And then there was this sort of, all these mahogany doors with wonderful brass work and a marble staircase coming down the middle with two brass rails. It just looked like the best public loo you’ve ever seen. And of course, when the curtain went up, it was a huge joke, that here were Rogers and Starr making their debut in the West End in a public loo. But we were stuck with it for the whole show. They couldn’t get rid of it. Because there’s no flies at the… and no wings, at the Criterion. There’s no backstage, virtually. And so, it was a joke that went stale. All the old material, which all the write-ups virtually said the same thing, well you know, we really thought we were gonna see a new Rogers and Starr and we’ve seen it all before, and as good as it is, we thought we would get something new this time. And they all felt that the joke of the set didn’t sustain the show. And it really didn’t, it ran about three or four months and we were out of there.

So when roughly was this?

That was like seventy-four, I think. Yes. And then we were asked to go into something, oh right, called Off the Peg at the Arts Theatre. And that was directed by Victor Spinetti. And we went in as the top of the bill on that and we were quite pleased to do that, because we didn’t really know after Criterion whether we’d ever do anything [laughing] you know, you feel like that [laughing]. And that was quite a hit. It was only a limited, I think it ran about twelve weeks, but that’s all it was meant to, at the Arts they don’t do anything longer than that for a review. But then a nightclub called the Valbonne, which had a swimming pool in it, in Beak Street, they decided they’d like to take the whole show and

Michael Southgate Page 19 C1046/08 Tape 1 Side B (part 2) do it over the swimming pool in this nightclub. So we did that. And we used to jump in the pool in certain numbers, twice a night and… but it was fun, it was a lot of fun.

Had you actually given up the window dressing?

No, no.

[End of Tape 1 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 20 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

Tape 2 Side A (track 3)

So we transferred to the Valbonne and I had already said that I would go to New York to do Adel’s summer exhibition and when we knew that we were transferring to the Valbonne, I had to tell the management, I said, ‘Look’ – because we were only signed for the Arts Theatre you see – I said, ‘I’ll have to leave in June because…’. They said, ‘Well that’s fine’, you know, ‘We’ll cover for you and…’ So that’s what I did, I went to do the exhibition in New York. When I came back, Roy said, ‘Oh we’re going into the Victoria Palace darling, with Max Bygraves’. I said, ‘Really?’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well, how did he see it?’ ‘Well’ he said, ‘He’s never seen you, but he’s…’ Lionel Blair was the director – no. No, Lionel Blair was gonna be the director of the Max Bygraves’ show and he had seen the Victor Spinetti production Off the Peg and he said, ‘You’ve got to have these two’. And Max at that time was looking to kind of update himself and not be quite the old community singing… so he said, he obviously thought, that would be a good move on my part, these two boys are kind of hot at the moment, to have them in the show. So, and he’d never even seen me. So it turns out, we went straight into it. I came back from the States and we went straight into this show and then I had to resign. I had a consultancy at Aquascutum and I had lots of freelance work as well, but I had to resign from that, at that point. And we were in that awful show for a year and a half. And, we did three weeks’ try out at Nottingham – at the Royal, I think it was, at Nottingham – and by the time we came into the Victoria Palace, everything good in the show had been cut, because like many performers, Max had an enormous ego and he didn’t like anyone else getting laughs. He didn’t even think we would be funny. I mean, he hadn’t seen the act really, and so, he was always terribly nice about it, but he would say, ‘You know boys, I think we’ll cut that because it breaks my contact with the audience’. And so, it ended up that we were, we changed sex I think every scene. Mostly we walked on as men in production numbers, you know the big opening, end of the first half, the Hawaiian, the – we were always striding about as men – and then when we did the, we had only two, I was supposed to be Fanny Craddock, which was a character I didn’t feel and it was nothing like anything I would ever, ever have done – I had big false boobs and I had sort of all these stupid things like props, like a plastic chicken and take the lid off and it popped up and, ‘oh this is my spring chicken’, I mean pantomime stuff. But, the saving grace was, Roy was a dead ringer for Princess Anne, he really looked like her. And he was in the box as Princess Anne and then there was a ladder went down and he climbed over in his white boots and a

Michael Southgate Page 21 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3) big hat and he came down on to the stage. And it was just the visual thing of Roy that made that sketch, even get away with it, what I was doing was just awful. And then I did, I used to look – I had special false teeth and I’d done that in the, Off the Peg is where they saw it originally. I used to look exactly like Tommy Steel and something used to happen to me wherever I went, I mean even without the false teeth, just in the street, people would stop me and [laughing]. I once went out, for Equity, we were doing Actors’ Orphanage I think and I had the straw boater and the Half a Sixpence blazer on, you know, and this wonderful little Spanish woman came up and she said, ‘Oh I can’t believe it’s you. Oh I love you, I’m so crazy about you’ and she was giving me a twenty pound note. And I said, ‘It’s not for the charity, it’s for you’ she said. [laughing] I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t Tommy Steel. And another time in New York, I was at the theatre and this woman about four rows behind kept waving at me and so I waved back and Adel said, ‘Who’s that, d’you know them?’ I said, ‘She thinks I’m Tommy Steel, obviously’. ‘Oh’ said Adel. But of course then we went to dinner at Sardi’s – the woman was at the next table, with all her friends. Came rushing over to me, threw her arms round my neck; ‘Tommy, you don’t remember in Marbella, by the pool, we were all together’. I said, ‘Oh yes, yes’. You could know how well she knew Tommy Steel, [laughing] you know. But that sort of thing used to go on an awful lot.

And how did you feel about it?

Oh I didn’t mind. And I mean, I’ve been very often next to Tommy Steel; he’s much taller than I am, we don’t look that much alike, but there’s something, something was very similar in the expression and… I mean once I got these big teeth in and put that big smile on, I mean I really have got photographs, I really do look like him. But no, I didn’t mind. But, I rather got stuck with the Tommy Steel thing after I did Off the Peg. So I used to do that at the Victoria Palace as well. And, that was the only good thing I had actually, in the whole show.

Couldn’t you complain about what you wanted to do?

No, no. Because Max owns that show. He owns everything; he owns the management, he owns – he’s a very rich man, you know. He’s been making money for years and he really, I mean I don’t say it in an unpleasant way, he’s a real star. He’s got control of everything.

Michael Southgate Page 22 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

He just… and he has an enormous public, I mean those buses used to come from Aldershot and from Epping and all the, mostly old age pensioners today, really, used to pile out and half of it is you know, Max singing and sing along with Max.

But what about having to sort of give up your work at Aquascutum?

Well you see, we were earning so much money and Roy – that was one of the partings of the ways with Roy and I. In the middle of the Max Bygraves show, Adel said to me, ‘Michael, we really need someone to go out to run the office in New York’. And truthfully, I was completely off the business by then because I loved doing what we used to do at Hampstead and our cabaret stuff, but I could also see we’d never be able to go back to that, because we’d moved into a completely different price bracket. I mean at Hampstead we didn’t used to earn a lot of money, but here we were earning like I think a thousand a week each, and Roy liked it, it didn’t bother him. It bothered me to death, I used to be embarrassed when anybody came, you know, that I knew. So, halfway through, Adel said, you know, ‘We really need someone to answer to’ and I thought well you know, my stage career has really finished. I was forty-six and so I said, ‘Yes, I’ll go. When the show’s finished, I will go’. And I knew then that we’d got I think, another whole year to go. What I didn’t know at the time was, when it actually came to wind down the show, Roy and I were the only two people that had signed for the run of the show. It turned out, legally that means, Max was taking it six months to Canada, I think six months to Australia, then coming back and doing a summer season at Blackpool. So we were tied for another eighteen months to two years in the same awful show. And I said, ‘Well I’m sorry, but I…’, so I broke my Equity contract. Which meant that neither Roy nor I could work until the show has actually finished. I mean, he could have released us from it, but he didn’t. So, Roy was always, I mean I gave him a year’s notice, he knew all about it, but he never quite got over it. He didn’t feel I betrayed him, but at the same time he resented the fact that because, he really wasn’t an act on his own, he really was not. So that was rather an unfortunate end to the partnership and we cooled off each other for quite a bit, but we ended up good friends in the end.

What did he do – what happened to Roy?

Michael Southgate Page 23 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

Roy, well, he just refused to go for auditions. You see, he really had a great comedy face, he looked, he had one of those chinless faces that could look like Princess Anne, Marjorie Proops, he just looked like an awful lot of people. And Ian Bevan at Talent Artists, who were our agents, he said, ‘Well you know, I really think you’ll do very well in commercials, you’ve just a look that would be very funny for commercials’. He would not go to auditions. And that was because virtually he was nervous on his own. And he’d say, ‘Oh no, no, no dear. I don’t do auditions, if they don’t know Rogers and Starr by now’ and Ian said, ‘But Roy, you’re not Rogers and Starr and you know, anybody does an audition for a commercial, you know, big stars’. But he wouldn’t do them. So he opted out. And he, he, I think he went back to doing some display work. Yes he did, he carried on doing that and then he did it up to, I think it was like sixty-two, three, something like that.

Sixty-two?

Yeah, sixty-two or three.

Right. Sorry, when I asked you earlier about the Bygraves show, I thought you said seventies?

No, Roy was sixty-two years old.

Oh sixty-two years old [laughing].

No, he was carrying on until he was about sixty-two, and then he had a stroke. And he recovered from it, it wasn’t too bad, but he wasn’t quite right and then his friend Keith went out one day and when he came back, Roy had had another stroke and fallen downstairs and fractured his skull and died. He sort of had it at the top of the stairs I think, and fell down. So he died and I still see Keith, that’s the boyfriend. He lives in, something near the airport, with an ‘F’ – Feltham, yes. They had a nice house down there, and so he still lives there.

So how – you’d met Adel at the Central School?

Michael Southgate Page 24 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

Well, I really met Adel when we were doing props, in this prop company and that’s another completely different story. It was the swinging sixties, well actually it was the fifties when we met and Adel had come over here and she was a rather tough looking little creature. She used to smoke like a chimney and she used to use rather awful language – I think she’d come from a sort of arty group in Johannesburg that thought it was, they were revolutionaries and they hated the regime and the Apartheid and the whole thing, and she was a rebel. And she and several other South Africans had come over here together to get out of that country. And she couldn’t get work. She’d been in display in South Africa and she did all the rounds of the department stores and so on and I think truthfully, they didn’t like the look of her. But she went to Aquascutum and she did get the job. And I don’t know how long she was there, about a year, she married her boss, Rick Hopkins. Rick was a very tall, handsome, Irish Canadian and he’d come to England that same year and as a matter of fact we’d known each other, just in passing, working in the Hall of Justice in the Festival of Britain, and he’d met up with someone called Jimmy Cleveland Bell who was rather an important chap at that time, he was on the board of the Cotton Board and Courtaulds I believe, and then also on the board of Aquascutum and Jimmy introduced him to Charles Abrahams who was one of the owners of Aquascutum with his brother Gerald, and Rick had gone there as display manager, because he was, he was talented – he was a good draughtsman, good designer, not a good hands-on person. So he was the display manager, Ada got a job there – Adel, we used to call her Ada. In later life she decided she hated Ada, but we all knew her as that at the beginning. And then he said, ‘Well you can’t work here now if we’re married’. And so she said, ‘Well I’ll have to find a job’. ‘But’ she said, ‘As sure as hell I’m not going round all those manager’s offices again because it’s…’ So she said, ‘I think I’ll set up freelance, on my own’. So Rick said, ‘Well what are you gonna call yourself?’. And she said, ‘Well, Adel Hopkins I suppose, you know, Mrs Hopkins’. He said, ‘Oh no, if you’re gonna fall on your arse, you do it on your own name, you’re not doing it on mine’. Charming. That was a bit what he was like. And he was doing very well at that time, he was a rising star and Adel was absolutely nothing at all. Well, you know, the rest is history as they say. I mean, she just worked, I’d say about fourteen hours a day, for years. Just kept on and on. Started doing props. I knew her and because the theatre work was very patchy, and she sometimes had a job that she had a deadline and she’d say, ‘Michael, come and help. I need help’. So, we had that sort of relationship for quite a few years.

Michael Southgate Page 25 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

And what would you do, sorry, when you went to help her?

Anything. We used to make little figures to sell Schaeffer pens, we used to make Christmas figures, we used to make wigs out of nylon, which was very new, for mannequins at that time – anything. I remember one year we did huge Alice in Wonderland characters for Selfridges and dressed them and you know, all that stuff. So it was just display work.

And where was she based then?

Then, she took a small basement in Earls Court Road and everything was in the basement down there. The shop’s still there – well I suppose the basement’s still there. And…

Who else was there?

Lots of her South African buddies, who were all sort of out of work thespians. Most of them had come over wanting to be in the theatre, or their wives, because Adel was a great one to sort of, ‘Well tell your wife to come and work’, and then there were lots of Polish girls that were sort of misfits. And Adel was, she always thought she was Russian but she never knew whether she was Russian or Polish background. Her parents had left wherever it was, somewhere outside of Minsk, when she was three years old, so she’d been brought up in South Africa. But she had a feeling for these Polish girls and a lot of them are awfully good at that stuff, you know, and some of the men. Well, then in the very early sixties, Rick used to get sent to America to see what the market was doing there in the display business. America was way ahead of us in those days. And on one of the trips, he took Adel with him and they saw that the very best mannequins in the world were made in America and in fact Rick purchased some and we had them at Aquascutum, well I wasn’t at Aquascutum then. And so they were called Mary Brosnan figures.

And why were they so good?

They were streets ahead of anybody else. They were sophisticated, well sculpted, well made up. They looked very upmarket, they were very sporty but, horsey looking women.

Michael Southgate Page 26 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

And they were styled after Mrs Babe Paley or, they all had a sort of, styled after so and so, society women, really.

And what had they been like here?

What would they be like?

Yes, what were the mannequins like here, before then?

Oh, well the ones here were mostly French and they were much more mannequin-y; very, very exaggerated thin waists, very curly sort of hands, very long necks, not normal proportion. But then all mannequins really, from the beginning, started off in that very stylised way. And then the Brosnan mannequin was also stylised, but it was much more real looking. The French ones, which were always the best ones before that – there was Pierre Imans and Schlappi from Germany – they all had a very Continental stylised look, slightly abstract, not much features. So, Adel started making wigs for mannequins. That’s the, when she went, I mean the first thing she did anything to do with mannequins, this nylon, which again she’d found in America, you could make these glamorous looking wigs. And so she started doing that in her studio with the girls. But then they decided, I think Rick and her together, because Rick was still at Aquascutum as the manager and then later on he became a director at Aquascutum, they decided that they would try and make a mannequin. So they found a Frenchman here, who had a mannequin factory and Adel and this Frenchman, who was married to Daphne Purdell who you probably have never heard of, but she’s a broadcaster. They made a partnership and they produced a line of mannequins. But they were still very stylised, because that’s what everybody thought of mannequins. It had to have a longer neck, it had to look terribly grand. But then you see shop windows, which I’ve never understood how that came about, but the department stores dressed windows as if everybody was living in a stately home. The women were always terribly grand, there was always a candelabra, a mirror, a rose, a bottle of perfume – nothing to do with ordinary life and yet, all the office workers and the little secretaries, they were all looking in the windows at these… From Swan and Edgar’s to Bourne and Hollingsworth’s, to Harrod’s, they all did one mannequin, a little group on the floor, all very grand, very controlled. But then there was the mass shop which was just bunged full of everything, no mannequins, just hundreds of things in the window. And those were the

Michael Southgate Page 27 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3) two styles. But if you approached any kind of sophistication then you tried to look as grand as possible. So, what happened was, out of the Royal College came a group of designers who were, been taught by design, by teachers that had come out of the war. We’re now in the late, in the fifties, the mid fifties. And I believe, and of course the teachers never get any credit because we don’t really know who they are, who they were at that time. They infused a completely different feeling into the students at that time. And you suddenly had people like Mary Quant, Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes. There’d never been clothes like that. Up to that time, Paris governed what you wore. And then on the next level down, Vogue magazine. And if Vogue said navy and white, every store window in London was navy and white with the poster of Vogue on the back and women really had to do that. Coffee and cream, that was another big hit. Rose red – I can remember them all. They always brought out a poster and that was what the shops were full of that year. And then suddenly, there was this revolution – mini skirts, kaftans, all sorts of different things. Hot pants, maxis down to the ground with hot pants under them. Well, it was really on the back of the music industry. The American press invented the phrase ‘Swinging London’. London didn’t know it was swinging until the Americans told them. And that was on the back of The Beatles, The Stones, the, Georgie Fame, all the music groups of the period. I mean The Beatles are the most famous, but there were lots and lots of small ones as well. But then, American retailers are really hot to smell anything, they’ll always, the minute they think somewhere is hot they’ll come and find it. So they came to London, but they discovered that the young designers couldn’t sell their clothes to the department stores, nobody would look at them. But they discovered that behind Regent Street, in little cheap lock-up shops, designers had opened their own boutiques which became Carnaby Street. And that was how Carnaby Street came to be because Foal and Tuffin were in there, all sorts of people, I can’t remember all the different… Mr Freedom – they just opened up these little shops to sell their own clothes. The Americans discovered that. Pretty disastrous for a couple of years because they got these wonderful orders from people like Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf, but then they couldn’t get the production through, couldn’t deliver, because they were small, they were cottage industries and they weren’t ready for the kind of quantities want to order. You know, Nieman Marcus with twenty-four different branches. And they buy for that, you know, they don’t buy for one store. So it was a bit, lots and lots of teething troubles – went on for years actually, but the first two or three years were the worst. But then, the English stores suddenly thought, oh, there’s obviously something we’ve missed here, you know.

Michael Southgate Page 28 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side A (part 3)

So then they started buying them and suddenly – and of course in those days, not like today, those young designers weren’t hopping on a plane to see their clothes in New York, they couldn’t afford it, but they did see them go into Dickins and Harrod’s, on these very tall, elegant, horsey models and they looked ridiculous, didn’t work at all. So, Adel had always been very involved with all these young designers because they all needed help at the beginning, you know, they wanted stuff made and things done for a fashion show or something. So they came and said, ‘Look, can’t you make us a mannequin that’s got something to do with what we’re doing? They just look wrong’. So, we tried. When I say we, I wasn’t working for Adel at that time, but I was a friend and we used to do all sorts of things together. Well we did make these two mannequins. They were absolutely awful, they looked like two friendly gorillas, really. But at least they were the right size, they were more of a normal person’s size. You know, you can’t put hot pants or mini skirts on a great, terribly sophisticated looking woman. Didn’t get it right though, but it, we sold about, I think we sold about a hundred of them, we thought that was wonderful.

[End of Tape 2 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 29 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4)

Tape 2 Side B (part 4)

Can you remember how you went about designing that figure?

Yes. Yes. We felt that it had to be an average size, which in actual fact now we don’t make them an average size, they’re all tall again. They’re not as tall as they used to be. What we didn’t understand at the time was it, truthfully, average is not what you want to see a mannequin on in the store. Although people are always saying that that’s what they want, that isn’t what they want. So we ended up with this rather dumpy little couple and it was all measured, because we thought that that was average and, they did sell, but as I say, they weren’t really very successful.

Sorry, so where did you get the idea of average from?

Oh, well I think we, I think we got some statistics from Marks and Spencer’s or something. You know, there are these things that, for manufacturing guides and so on, yes, Board of Trade probably. And so we did those, then we did a couple of other collections – a collection is usually about ten to twelve mannequins. And they got more realistic each time, but they were still mannequins, they were too exaggerated waists and too long in the leg, but that was what mannequins were and although we were trying to break out of it, we were still thinking, well it’s got to be a mannequin. And then, I can’t remember the actual moment, but Adel suddenly said, ‘You know, we’re absolutely out of our minds. If we’re swinging London, we should be doing mannequins of people that are making London swing’. And that was the idea that formed the company that exists today. So we then, in all – I mean there’s a lot of luck to these things – the timing was perfect, at the same time we found a sculptor who really could do portraits, but he also had a fashion feel, and he knew where to not make it like an academic portrait, but like a fashion thing.

And who was…?

His name was John Taylor. And he grew up with the company. He’s absolutely superb today. He wasn’t so great then, but it was the best that was around. And he developed with the company, as we all did. And then Adel had this incredible insight in what was hot, what was next, who was gonna be, what was interesting. She hated pretty, she never

Michael Southgate Page 30 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4) wanted pretty girls, don’t send me pretty girls. We used to phone up the agencies and ask them to send down girls that were… And of course at that time, the dolly bird was an ideal. But she said, ‘Don’t send me the Barbie dolls, send me the quirky ones, the interesting’. She said, ‘Interesting has a much longer life than pretty’. And it’s true. It’s true. So, we did Patty Boyd, who was the fiancé of George Harrison, Jill Kennedy who was a well known model at the time. I can’t remember all the names. And then we did Sandie Shaw, who was the pop singer that used to sing without any shoes or socks on, Puppet on a String – she won the Eurovision Song Contest. But then we saw this strange little girl, she hadn’t broken, she was in some tabloid, I mean like Titbits or something. And Adel said, ‘We should do that girl’. And I said, ‘You know, I don’t think we’d ever sell it’. She was pigeon toed, she bit her nails and she had this clown-like make-up. It was Twiggy. It takes about six months to get the thing on to the market from the time you – you sculpt it in clay, model it in clay, then you sculpt it into plaster, then you turn it to fibreglass. By the time we got her on the market, she was already well known in London and Justin de Villier was on every chat show with her and we took her to the local, the Kensington Palace Hotel, they had a display show and we got Twiggy on the stand and she was just a sensation. And nobody knew the name Adel Rootstein, but we became, ‘Oh that’s the company that did Twiggy’. And then from there, Adel just had a fantastic record of always picking what was the next wave, the next kind of person. And of course we learned an awful lot about body language. And the mannequins really don’t wear out, because they’re fibreglass, they’re very strong. The surface can chip a bit because of the paint, but on the whole, you can just respray them and they’re good as new, but the attitudes completely change – how people stand, how they use their hands. I mean, we started off with any seated figure had to have their legs very closely together or crossed, now they’re like this, they’ve gone wild, it completely changes attitude. And continues to do so. A lot of that comes from fashion photography, more than from the designers I think. The fashion photographers are what push it to the next thing. I mean that’s why we’ve got all these drugged up looking people modelling at the moment and that sort of thing, but it’s something new, it’s something else, and it keeps changing.

And what sort of things, or what sort of, how would you and Adel go about looking for sort of new…?

Michael Southgate Page 31 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4)

Well, the most common way is, we would decide what the theme of the next collection would be – whether it’s gonna be athletic, whether it would be couture, runway, whether it’s for middle, middle America, you know. And then we would usually do what we call go see, the girls come in and you go through them and through them and through them, but the first thing you do is find the key girl. Once you find the one that you really want, the others have to be similar. Similar size, similar feel, there you get a continuity within a collection. You don’t have a short one and a thin one and a, you know. Sometimes they’ve got to be rounder, sometimes they have to be very boyish, depends what the mood is. I mean when we did the group that came out at the same time as the Armani androgynous look, they, the girls were all very masculine looking, I mean the whole collection and at the time we brought them out, people, first customers said, ‘Really Adel, they do look like a lot of lesbians, you know, they look so tough and…’. Biggest selling collection we’ve ever had in the history of the company [laughing] and they’re still around, I see them. And Adel got that feeling that all the hands were clenched, there was not a relaxed hand in the whole… If it was down by their side, it was like that, if it was on the hip it was the same hand. And she would pick something like that and put that throughout the collection and it would make an attitude.

And do you think it’s, that that might have come from a photographer like Helmut Newton maybe?

Very likely. Helmut loved Adel. He loved the mannequins too, you know. We did a, well it was called the Seventies Collection, it actually came out in sixty-nine. And at that time, poses were very big – hands were always out, striding legs. Very exaggerated, everything. And I think they were sort of spaceman poses from, Correge used to do those white space outfits and they were always like with space guns, doing sort of Emma Peel kind of poses really, I think is what it was. And there’s a huge chain in America called Lane Bryant that make only large ladies’ clothes. But of course in, it’s not like Evans outsize here, there, many, many young people are very large and were then, this was in sixty-nine. And so the buyers at Lane Bryant said, ‘This is what our customers want. They don’t want to be these you know, standing very correctly fat ladies’. So purposely for them, she did a, well I mean at their insistence really, I don’t think Adel really wanted to do it that much, she did a collection of sixteen, size sixteen women in those sort of poses. Well, a forty-four hip and a sort of forty-four bust in fibreglass is not the same as

Michael Southgate Page 32 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4) flesh, it looks like so solid, you know, it’s so big. And that was not really as big as these women were, but they looked huge and they just freaked out, the, Lane Bryant when they saw them, they couldn’t believe it. I mean they just, they didn’t know what to say, really.

So you mean in a good way or a…?

No, they hated it. Terrified of it, so big. But they’re nothing like the sizes you sent us, they’re much smaller. We had the same reaction to two big girls that were on the staff – they couldn’t believe that they were bigger than that, but it looked much bigger in fibreglass for some reason. And they were very glamorous, we did, there was a lovely woman called Tessa Welbourn, she was a Rank starlet and she’d put on an awful lot of weight, and she was one of them and, I don’t know who the others… oh, there was one called Primrose, I always remember that, always tickled me, she was a model girl called Primrose and she was so big [laughs]. But Lane Bryant really didn’t know what to do, because they had really instigated the whole thing, so what they did, they put them into their San Francisco store and had people taking polls and asking the customers what they thought and well, the customers absolutely hated them. Hated them. They didn’t lose money because they sold in Germany. The Germans didn’t mind, in fact I don’t think they thought they were so big really. But the person that loved them was Helmut Newton, loved them. ‘Are you sending me another one of my darling Tessa?’ And he used to get them and then he’d have his team work and they’d put pubic hair and the wigs and the underarm hair, absolute reality. And I’ve actually got a set of photographs in New York which he sent me. There’s Tessa, she’s like this, completely naked, in the Arc de Triomphe, floodlit. She’s in the arch. And then other places in Pa…. oh, I think on the side of the Eiffel Tower there’s another one. He’s put them up and photographed them and all at night with sort of hard spotlights. They look fantastic, you can’t tell that they’re not, that they’re mannequins. They just look like these incredibly firmly built, large women [laughs]. He loved them, loved them to death. I was terribly sorry, I spoke to him only a week before he died. He, we weren’t that close, but I had to call him up for something in Las Vegas. They were doing, trying to open a new shop that they wanted more like a gallery. They wanted works of art, photographers, photographers’ books and I said to him, and also they wanted it sexy, because Vegas at the moment is sex crazy, because sex is making more money than the family businesses so they’re all decided to go for those. And I phoned him up and I asked him if he’d be interested and he said, ‘Well

Michael Southgate Page 33 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4) no’. We would not be allowed to sell it, we could buy it and use it as décor, but he couldn’t put his work for sale in a shop, which I understand. And I said, ‘Well no, we could get the, we could have your books’ and he said, ‘Oh yes, get on to my publisher and of course, and they’ll come and…’. Because he loved publicity, he was a real showman. And, week later, dead. I spoke to him in the hotel and he drove out the hotel and crashed the car and… such a shame, awful. He was full of life. Don’t know how old he was, he must have been about eighty something. So yes, that’s the Helmut Newton story. Sorry, don’t know how we got on to that.

No, because I was asking you about…

Oh, about these, yes, exactly. But that name of that collection was called Body Gossip. Don’t know why, but it was. Adel was rather fanciful with her collection names.

Yes because I was going to ask you how you came up with names and things?

I never did. Adel always did it herself. She’d ask everybody, but it was always what she… And it was a bit of a joke. I mean we’ve had Leisure Pleasure Walk Talk, was another one. That was one of her longest I think – Leisure Pleasure Walk Talk. Body Gossip… Runway. I don’t know, there’s so many different ones. But yes, she really did… She always felt it should describe what these mannequins were about so she didn’t mind if it didn’t sort of roll off the tongue. [laughs] The Americans used to be rather fascinated by all that, they couldn’t, ‘cos their marketing is so slick and they could never understand these wordy things that we had [laughs]. Was quite funny. Well then of course, through that, we were involved then with so many designers, because we did their fashion shows, we did their special promotions in certain shops. And Zandra Rhodes was a personal friend of Adel’s and myself and we’ve always been very close to her and anything she does, which is quite a lot, she’s always involved in something. We knew Ossie Clark when he was in his height before he went completely off the rail. Janice Wainwright, Mary Quant, although not ever quite so much. We did know Mary and we did a lot of work for her when she had the Bazaar shop in Knightsbridge, but she wasn’t really a close friend.

And what was the designers’ input into the design of the mannequins?

Michael Southgate Page 34 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4)

The fashion designers?

Mm.

Nothing. No. They would buy them once they were made. But the, what we got from it was being so involved in them, with them and knowing them and knowing which way they way they were going, we could anticipate the next kind of language they would need.

And how would they select the collection or the mannequins that they wanted?

They would go to the Rootstein show, and when you select a mannequin, if you are a professional, you don’t care what it looks like, you look at the body language, the pose. Is it saying what I want to say, is it gonna wear the kind of clothes I want to wear. Then, each one, you see we don’t mass produce anything. Every one is made up, wigged, to each customer’s request. So, for instance, Zandra Rhodes would have her Zandra Rhodes make-up put on, Ossie Clark would have his make-up that he’s gonna use on the runway for that season, we still do it now with John Galliano, he comes over and we do them. So, in that way, that’s why many of the department stores can have the same figures, but they look quite different because they individual store then decides what image they will have. It’s not as easy in America, because in America they’re absolutely hung up on realism. In Europe, they want a fashion statement. They want whatever the fashion statement of the season or that year is. In America, it must relate to the customer. For instance, in the old days at Lord and Taylor, not now, no black mannequins – they all had to be blondes with blue eyes. And it was a policy. You know, they’d say, ‘Oh we like that one, but we can’t have a… can you change the head?’. And Adel would never do that. She said, ‘No, no, no. That’s the girl, we don’t do that. We have a contract to sell her image, we can’t start chopping them up’. In America you can buy any head on any body. But, I’m afraid that since Adel died, that’s the way the business has gone, even for us now, they will change heads. But truthfully, to survive in the American market you have to do that. And it’s like, I mean in Europe, there was a period where if it was for spring, they may have lime green wigs with birds in them or something. They never do, oh, can’t do that in America, the customer would be outraged.

Michael Southgate Page 35 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4)

What, even in New York?

Mm. Most definitely in New York. They have to very groomed and they never risk anything. Bloomingdale’s do a bit. They go a bit more out on a limb, but Saks, they’re always just impeccably groomed. Bergdorf’s they are.

And Barneys – what about them?

Barneys are pretty wild. Yeah, they’ll do, but they don’t… Barneys have a sort of amateur touch to their thing that works for them, you know. It always looks a bit tacky, bit of a nightmare really. Have you ever met Simon? Simon Doonan? Well he’s the, he is a bit mad, but he’s adorable and he’s a true original and does good stuff, but it’s, it’s not really a fashion statement, it’s a statement of the times, more. And it suits Barneys, although it’s getting a bit boring because they’ve been stuck with it for quite some time. They need to make a change a bit now.

So what about, can you just describe what would happen when you were sort of working regularly, or when you left the theatre, I mean what your job was in a way.

Sure. Well, officially I was the Executive Vice President of the American office, so I took America, Canada. I was responsible for the sales team, you know, because we had a sales team that covered the whole sort of the States. And for the figures, to get the sales in. So, a day to day thing would be keeping the agents and the sales people up to scratch and supplying all their things. Being the liaison between the showroom and the factory, because the production was done in a different place, in America, and then we’ve got another production here. Then, I would come back every three months to England and work with Adel on the next collection. And then, while I was here, dress the London showroom and then go back and do the new range in the New York showroom.

And where was the New York showroom?

The New York showroom at the moment is on 19th Street, between Chelsea, between 8th Avenue and 7th. It’s a very nice, big showroom. The one here is in Chelsea, London, in Shawfield Street, it’s just near Antiquarius. It’s a lovely old Georgian building – not ideal

Michael Southgate Page 36 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4) as a showroom because it’s really a lot of wasted space, and it’s got a big terrazzo courtyard in the middle and the whole thing kind of goes round it, but it’s attractive. And, the company moved from Earls Court, it then went in the sixties to Soho Square and it was in the north, north east corner of the square there, there’s some old Georgian houses there and we were in one of those, and went through to a mews at the back, so we had a back entrance where we could do all the trucking and so on. [noise in background] Sorry. [laughs] And then, they wanted to develop the Square and I think Adel, Rick, and Rick made an awful lot of money because they were paid to get out and then they bought Shawfield House in Chelsea and that’s where they’ve been ever since.

What about the property in New York – was that part of your brief to find that?

Yes. Before that we were in a loft in Soho and it was not big enough for us. You know those lofts that they opened up with artists and so on and we had a… [noise in background continuing] I’m sorry about that.

I think we may have to stop.

[break in recording]

[break in recording]

Yes, we had this loft in Soho and it got too small and the access was too difficult. So we then had to sell that property, I had to sell that property and look for another one and found this marvellous… it had been a stationery supply place, so it was just a huge empty space and, snapped it up because it was in such a good location, but then we had tremendous trouble selling the existing property, because although it was very desirable, it was a co-op and the people in it all thought they were very highfaluting artists, very few of them were, actually. And they got very selective about who they would have, I mean I thought it was meant to be artists across the board, but they wouldn’t have singers, they wouldn’t have musicians, they wouldn’t have dancers, they didn’t consider commercial art was right and everything that we, every time we found a buyer they found a reason for not having it. And we ended up with a horrible bridging loan that was eating up all my profit, it was quite ghastly and it took over six months before I could get rid of that and it was one of the

Michael Southgate Page 37 C1046/08 Tape 2 Side B (part 4) worst times of my life, because I kept trying to find these places and… anyway, Adel and… I have to tell you that at the time we purchased, I actually thought I’d got a sale, but then the company, the co-op wouldn’t approve it.

[End of Tape 2 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 38 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5)

Tape 3 Side A (part 5)

…your name.

Michael Southgate.

I wanted to ask you in a way how you learnt about business and how to run a business?

I see, I would say by trial and error, truthfully. And the fact that I was, well more, half of my life at least, self-employed, so of course I had to keep track of my own work and own accounts. And then of course I learned an awful lot from Adel when I joined the business, I’d been working with her for about fifteen years. And of course, only doing exhibitions, visual work, maybe working sometimes on ads and layouts, things like that, but it was all creative stuff. But in the mere association of the couple – don’t forget Adel’s business grew with us, she started it herself, then her husband came into the business later, I’d been in it more or less from the beginning too and we just as friends, planned and done so many things together. And, then of course, after we really started to take off, we employed a fulltime accountant and Adel anyway was just a natural business person. She had this Jewish ability to feel for business. She was the one that really had it. Rick, her husband, he was more academic. If he didn’t know, he learnt it, he made sure he found out how to do something and how, the right way to do it and so on. Adel knew by instinct, she just knew. I think her parents in South Africa had run a hotel originally and she’d grown up helping to run the family hotel and I just think it’s something that goes through some families. I mean I came from a family of shopkeepers, didn’t know anything about that, but of course I didn’t want to know, that was the problem. Adel did want to know. And she understood, if she was going to be successful, then you’ve got to know what you’re doing.

But how did you know how much to charge for your freelance work?

Oh. Well, that was as much as you could get away with. Obviously when you start, you, I used to get like about three pounds I think, to do a window. Then I was a kid, I was, you know I was twenty-one or something and just doing it to get some money. But then, over the years, it didn’t happen overnight, I had a reputation as doing good work and then I got

Michael Southgate Page 39 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5) sought after. Then I ended up with more jobs than I could do. And somehow you do learn on the way. I’ve always been very fortunate, I’m talented; I can draw, paint, make, visualise, but academically I’m awful because I don’t like learning anything. I’m very good at stuff that I can do without any effort, but if I have to get down to it and learn it – that’s why I never was good at school and – not because I was stupid, I really didn’t like it, I found it boring. So, I would say that everything I’ve achieved and can do has come very easily to me. And funnily enough, just recently, at seventy-three last year, I was suddenly approached to do an awful lot of work in Las Vegas and I did it. It started off as one job and it ended up being four – big jobs.

Can you say what they were?

Yes, I had to do Christmas decorations for a shopping mall, it’s called the Retail Shopping Mall and it’s the largest one in Las Vegas – it’s a huge place with sixty foot ceilings and we had to put in these forty foot high, no they were twenty foot in themselves, but they were hanging forty feet in the air, figures, after the style of Erte. And then there was two twenty foot high figures that spanned the escalator well. So everything was on a huge scale. Then we did some very nice work in the Bellagio Hotel in their retail section there, which was a fifty foot high tower of Christmas balls. But the balls were eight foot, six foot and five foot. And then there were mannequins dressed in very glittery evening dresses standing on them. And then we did some pirate sluts for the Treasure Island Hotel. But really what I started to say was, I then had to keep track of the expenditure of each separate job and of course I realised, I’d never done that myself, because I always had people that did that for me. I was the one that, we’ll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll buy this, we’ll buy that, but then I just used to hand all the receipts and the paperwork to the bookkeepers and [laughing] the accountants, and here I was I didn’t have anybody. I found it very difficult. I had like so many boxes, this job went in that box and I forgot which the general supplies were for and oh! Took me forever, it was much harder than doing the actual job. And I suddenly realised how useless I actually was. I thought, how comes I’ve been head of a company for twenty something years [laughing] and I can’t even do, keep these little jobs together. But I think there’s a lot of people like that, particularly creative people, you know they… So, yes, that’s, and as for learning to run a business, if I had any problems, there were so many people to ask. I was a good figurehead. I really didn’t come into my own in the visual market here in London,

Michael Southgate Page 40 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5) although I was very well known, mainly because of my association with Rootstein, and I was known for all this freelance work that I did, I had all the best small shops. But the British Display Industry, that was some sort of association, they never ever offered me any kind of membership or… because I really wasn’t in display, they didn’t quite like me that I wasn’t attached to a big department store and I really was a freelance, I was in the theatre and, so I didn’t get anything. Didn’t worry me.

So normally a display person would be working fulltime for a department store?

Yes, that was the structure in those days. And the freelance people weren’t considered particularly important because they didn’t have the weight of a store behind them. Whereas I ended up with all the best small businesses in town and all of whom did very good windows, they were people that felt well you’ve got to spend money to have a decent window. And so I achieved a reputation, but I didn’t really get any public recognition. Then I went to America to run the company for Adel and I think I got a different award about every year. I mean I suddenly got, in the end, every award that the American industry has to offer, from design houses, from design magazines. I think I was a new flavour, you know, I’d come out of the blue, right into a top job. I think they like English people. I also, because I suppose being on the stage, I didn’t find it any problem to do public speaking and the American display organisations are very organised and they have lots of meetings, they have annual dinners, they honour their members by giving them awards and publicity and I fitted straight into that and they liked me.

What was the name of the American display…

N-A-D-I. National Association of Display Industries. Then there was something called Inspiration Magazine, which is a Swiss magazine that reported on visual work all over the world – it was a very good magazine. And they had something called the Inspiration Academy and I was awarded membership of that straightaway. Then, the DDI – don’t ask me what that stands for – that’s now the British Association and they run a show at Islington every year – oh I think this year it was at Earls Court, actually. They suddenly contacted me and said, ‘Would you be in London in June?’ and I said, ‘No’. And they said, ‘Well could you be, because we’d like to make you our international display

Michael Southgate Page 41 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5) personality of the year’. So I came back and got that. [laughs] And it was all very good for the company, it was terribly good for the company.

So why do you think Americans appreciated display more?

Well they, I mean before the American influence of the seventies, you were a window dresser. Now you’re a visual merchandiser. And they had a peak, I would say in the eighties, it started to go downhill in the nineties and unfortunately now display is not that exciting in America, it’s much the same as London. I would say London is slightly better now. But that’s again a policy change. In the eighties they suddenly realised – or no, in the seventies, the seventies. Fifth Avenue had always been famous for its windows – lovely, lovely windows. And there was a marvellous man called Henry Callahan and he was the Pope of display really. He started off at Lord and Taylor and then he moved after a few years to Saks Fifth Avenue. And really he did the best windows in America at that time.

Sorry, what was it about them d’you think?

Well, you know Americans learn very quickly and they’re great stylists. They don’t originate much, very little, but for instance American decorators I think are the best interior decorators in the world. They do the French look better than the French have ever done it. If you live in America you think that the Japanese pure design, that certain look that Japanese interior decoration has, you can’t find it in Japan. They have the most ghastly floral arrangements of white chrysanthemums and gladioli and ghastly looking things [laughing]. I was looking for all these wonderful little single orchids coming out of a precious jar or, can’t find it anywhere [laughs]. The Americans invented that, in the same way that they’ve invented Italian cooking and all sorts of other things. And for visual, they suddenly, the display manager even, in Europe, was pretty low on the totem pole. The buyers were important, the managing directors were important, but then the Americans suddenly said, ‘We’ve got to get this image out in front of a public’. So the visual director – you never heard of a visual or a window director in England, but suddenly it was a director’s position in America – would travel with the buyers to see the collections in Paris, in Tokyo, so that they would know exactly what was happening. When Bloomingdale’s were doing the big international weeks they do – India one year,

Michael Southgate Page 42 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5)

China another year – the visual people would go as well, which was unheard of in those days. And then air travel became much cheaper and English display managers were sent to see the display shows in New York, the NADI show. And things rubbed off, and then suddenly you heard about visual merchandising in England and people forgot the term, the window dresser, although I have a feeling it’s reverted back a bit. But there was an aggressive movement to lift that whole industry up and the industry benefited from it no end and a great deal of the rise of the Rootstein company was because it came into being just at the time when all those things were happening. Now the first time we went to New York, we only had two different mannequins. One was Twiggy, and there were four poses of her – three standing and one sitting, and another marvellous girl called Donyale Luna who was a black American from Detroit and she was about six foot one or two, and she had the largest hands that ever had been sculpted on a Rootstein mannequin, still to this day. I think we actually shortened her fingers by about half an inch. And she was discovered by a fashion photographer in America, in less than a year she was on the runways of Paris, particularly Paco Rabanne who you know, did those sort of metallic space warrior looking people. Well she was perfect for that, terribly tall, statuesque, thin as can be, wonderful make-up face – not the best looking girl – but with the make-up, was stunning. And she had these, called her lion movements, she used to sort of move with a very catlike way with her. So off we went to America with five Donyale Lunas and four Twiggys and we took a stand at the Coliseum which is like going into say Olympia here, for the display show. And had a very tough time, because we didn’t belong to the NADI. The NADI wouldn’t have us. But we were showing on somebody’s stand that did belong, but they wouldn’t allow us to put our name on, we couldn’t put Adel Rootstein on it because we were not members. And then, it was like the Mafia, there were these great big men walking about with big cigars, who owned the rival mannequin companies. Not, I would add, the Mary Brosnan company, which was called D G Williams, they were aloof from us and they were the best in America at the time, but it was the cheaper people. They got our power cut off, we couldn’t [laughs], we couldn’t get our deliveries off the loading bay. Oh I mean they just did everything they could to stop this happening, which was quite flattering really, because what we had was so way out I’m surprised they saw it as a threat. But of course, Adel was Jewish and she was from Russia and she had a history [laughing] of the pogroms and so… this little face – I mean you know, she was very small, she was like five foot two, never shouted, she had the quietest little voice, but there was a will of iron there. And she was not rich at that time, I mean we were struggling, but she

Michael Southgate Page 43 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5) was throwing money out. She knew exactly how to play these people’s game. She was going, if they got, if the loading bay wouldn’t deliver, she went up there and when she came back, they were delivering. [laughs] She got the electricity put on after it was cut off. And it was really tough, it really was very, very tough. And I always remember that the, we were so behind, everybody else was getting ready. And on the night before the show was due to start on the Saturday morning, we finally got everything in place but, all I had to do, we’d dressed all the mannequins but we hadn’t got them in place because we hadn’t got a stand ready. So I said to Adel, I said, ‘Look, you’ve got to be here at nine o’clock in the morning and there’s no way I’m gonna make it because, it’s silly you staying with me because you can’t do anything else’. So I said, ‘Go home, go to the hotel, and I’ll finish the stand’. Well I finished the stand at half past eight the following morning, absolutely exhausted, Adel turned up and I said, ‘I’ll go back to the hotel’. We were staying at the Algonquin, I’ll always remember. And I said, ‘I’ll have a shower’. Well, I turned on the shower and I must have laid on the bed. I woke up, the room, the whole hotel room was full of steam and it was dark [laughs]. It was winter, I think it was really about four o’clock in the afternoon, but I said I’d be back in an hour. So I turned up at the stand and I told them what had happened. She said, ‘Well don’t worry, we had a wonderful day yesterday’. It wasn’t the [laughing], it wasn’t the same morning. I’d slept completely twenty-four hours and into the next day. And they’d sold quite a few, but it was quite interesting because first of all we had Twiggy, who was five foot two and looked rather like a clown and nobody had seen a make-up anything like that in New York at the time, I mean Swinging London wasn’t heard of in New York then. And then we had this six foot two black girl, and there was no-one in America that had a black mannequin in the window, it was unheard of, you just didn’t do that. So…

But did they have black mannequins at all?

No. I mean not that I saw, perhaps, I doubt it, down south, because not the proper stores, there may have been shops that did, little shops and neighbourhood shops, but nothing that was called – I mean I know D H Holmes in New Orleans, Nieman Marcus in Texas, none of them had ever had a black mannequin. So, I can remember standing listening to the buyers and they’re saying, ‘These people have gotta be crazy’ you know, ‘They’ve got a midget and a giant and one of ‘em’s black’. [laughs] You know. I mean, but we did. But then, I don’t think we sold many. Henry Callahan came from Saks Fifth Avenue; he

Michael Southgate Page 44 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side A (part 5) bought a complete set of Twiggys and two sets of Luna and he put Donyale Luna the whole length of Saks. That broke the back for us. Once somebody’s done it of some repute, Americans soon follow suit. And it opened the door, it was quite a breakthrough.

What did you dress them in?

We dressed Luna in imitation Paco Rabanne, which I made. We – you know, that was the period of mirror, you could buy mirrors in the sixties cut in any shape or size and they used to put them in, hang them on nylons in the windows, everything was mirrors – mirrors was the flavour of the month. And I managed to get this Mylar that looked like a mirror, but it was actually backed on to cardboard, and by cutting it and then jump-ringing it all together, I could reproduce these Paco Rabanne dresses. So we put Luna into those and I think we went out to buy Jean Varon, which was the designer John Bates, for Twiggy, because he did those little girly, just empire line, little very sweet little dresses and suited Twiggy down to the ground. So I seem to remember that those were the two things that we used. So we had knock-off Paco Rabanne and Jean Varon on Twiggy.

Sorry, would you put shoes on as well?

Oh yes. Yes, we have shoes and tights. You know, mannequins are only fibreglass, the more you cover them up, you create a much better illusion. A lot of people don’t understand that, but that’s one of the first lessons I teach people that I’m talking about the mannequin, that they don’t, they are just hard, you’ve got to cheat and give the feeling that there’s a person under there. But in fact, if you just leave them in a little dress or something, they’ll look pretty raw. Which is what the American market were masters at, you know they were always swathing them in furs and velvets and making opulent silhouettes, and it worked very well.

And who would do the make-up?

We have, we had a make-up studio. To start with Adel herself, and I used to do some. But I was never as good as Adel, she was very good at it. Well, she did it every day, I didn’t. And then she trained a group of other girls and boys. Now I would think practically every, well certainly every make-up department in London, all trained at Adel

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Rootstein. That’s one of the problems of having a length of time, that all one’s, the things that give you an edge when you’re a small company, you know when they move on and go into other places and suddenly a lot of your, I wouldn’t say secrets, skills that you’ve had to work out for yourself go with them and it makes it much easier for the competition, but that’s life, everything is like that. [laughs]

And what sort of make-up would you be able to use on fibreglass?

They’re painted exactly like a portrait in oils. And Adel worked out this technique that the whole figure is sprayed, with cellulose paint, so you put the flesh tone on to the figure. But then when you paint the face, with a matching oil paint the whole face is stippled, so that when the eyebrows, the eyes, everything is applied, it’s going on to a moist basis so you don’t get hard edges. Now lots of cheap mannequins, they have transfers that do stock eye, transfer for an eyebrow, you know it’s a different thing. Ours are painted all by hand and they’re painted twice. The reason for that is that the first application dries and then with the second application, the eyebrows get a little raised, you get a little texture, the lips get a little texture. It’s a skilful thing, I mean the make-up artists can earn very good money, very good money.

And can the make-up ever be altered?

Oh at any time. This is what makes the life of the mannequin so good, if you’ve got, fortunately for the mannequin people, the stores don’t look after them very well. In the seventies and the eighties I think most stores got into the habit of every six months sending their mannequins back to be refurbished. I don’t think that happens very much now. Because there were such definite changes to every season in those times and of course it isn’t just the make-up, it’s the skin tone – you can be suntanned, you can be pale, you can be ivory, you can, I mean, so if they were doing a Chinese or an oriental scheme they’d want these very pale skin tones with delicate make-ups and black wigs, then they might go straight from that into bronze and suntans with gold. You, I mean it was an ongoing thing. And they vied with each other that their mannequins for that season were the most stunning. You’d get Harvey Nichols competing with Harrod’s and Peter Robinson’s and… but everybody’s gone slightly different now. The department stores are not the best customer of Rootstein any more.

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[End of Tape 3 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 47 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6)

Tape 3 Side B (part 6)

That’s something else that’s quite interesting. There were characters, both here in England and particularly in America, that were the display directors. There was Wilma Weiss who was a large, fat man with a huge personality, very, very grand with a lot of knowledge of art and techniques and he would come in and then there would be Bob Benzio from Saks who was an Italian, wonderful looking man in a big bear coat and they all seemed to be rather opulent, but I think that’s what American stores liked at that time.

So, and was he before Callahan?

No, he followed Callahan. He followed Callahan. Yes, it was Henry Callahan and then it was Bob Benzio. And Henry Callahan had already left Saks when I got to New York in seventy-six. I met him here, when he used to come to England, he always used to come to Aquascutum where I was display consultant there, and he used to sometimes want to buy props off me, but he’d never pay the money [laughs]. I think he thought I’d give them to him because of who he was [laughs]. So he’d already moved out when I, from Saks, but then Bob got that job. But there were many, I mean not just from New York. There was the man from Nieman Marcus, Stanley Mayfield – he wasn’t so opulent but he was very, had a lot of buying power. Andy Marcopolis from the Dayton Hudson group, lots and lots of stores, so great buying power and he was frightfully grand. So you had these personalities to deal with, I can’t remember why we started talking about them.

I’m quite interested that they’re all men.

Yes. There were very few women. There was at Nieman Marcus a very famous woman called Thelma Molloy and truthfully, she’s the only one that I can think of. Yes, the fashion kingpins would be women – there was Geraldine Stutz at Bendels and, every store had a famous name, but the display directors were all men, not now, that has changed. Although most of them still are men, yes, most of them still are, but there are women.

Can you think why that’s the case?

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Well yes. I mean I think, we’re talking about the seventies and the eighties and in corporate America, I mean women were only just beginning to come a little bit up the ladder. Now they, still most of the big positions are held by men.

I’m not quite clear what exactly they would be in charge of – they would be in charge of…?

Of the men?

Yes, these…

Oh. You don’t know what a visual director does then, really?

I think I don’t.

[laughing]

Well, a visual director would be planning the strategy for twelve years, er, for twelve months, with the buyers. Everything is planned at least twelve months ahead. I mean you know, one season you’re working for the same season in the following year. It’s then up to him to see that the purchasing departments, the people that are buying the fixturing, the people that are buying the mannequins, the people that are buying the props are covering the promotions that they’re gonna have to do for those coming twelve months.

And they would all be different people?

Oh yes. In a large department store, there’s a section head for everything; interiors, shopfitting. Then there’s the merchandising people that work between visual and the buyers. It’s a, they’re forever cross referencing. And then there’s the buying office which is constantly looking for new contractors, so they may say, Fall of next year we’ve got Ralph Lauren coming in, he’s gonna have his own boutique on the main floor and so we’ve got to have antiques for that and we’ve got to have a… and then you must work with the Ralph Lauren people to make sure that they’re happy. And then Chanel is coming in and Chanel won’t let any of the fixtures of the store go in, only what they

Michael Southgate Page 49 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6) approve, so we’ve got to approve everything and on it goes. It gets broken down, it’s very complicated and then you’ll get like a marvellous little woman I know called Joan Dolittle at Dayton Hudson, she only takes care of haberdashery. She knows what fixtures to buy, all those funny hair slides that women wear and elastic bits that go round pony tails and what’s gonna hold it, this bull clip that’s gonna go on a chromium hanger and, I mean it’s an incredible knowledge to know what to get to put hair pins and tape measures and darning wool and to know what kind of fixture you’ve got to have to hold it so the customer can get it and you can keep it tidy. It’s a big job running a store. But unfortunately, the day of the grand department store has gone. And the big customers of Rootstein now are the fashion chains; they are Hennes and Mauritz, Zara, it’s become much more international, Chico, what’s the other Spanish one that’s down here in Regent Street?

Mango.

Mango is another one. And those are the kind of people that buy. Now, whereas every six months we had to do a different show in a completely different looking showroom, change the carpet, change the colour, new clothes, everything to make it look new. They still do that, but truthfully it’s not really necessary. Because you will agonise for about a month with say, Zara, to decide which six models or so they’re gonna add to the models that they already have, the mannequins that they already have. After that, you just get a, you just get something on computer. We need twenty more for Spain, we need twenty for Japan, we need fifty for South America, and so most of that business today, the really personal and the creativity has gone out of it, but the numbers are much bigger. It’s, we probably couldn’t cope today doing each individual thing like we used to, and liked doing. It’s very bad particularly for the artists, the painters. You know, now they sit there, they just don’t even have to think about it. Oh, it’s the Mango make-up or it’s the Zara make- up and they just do it. Whereas before, the display directors would want to go to the make-up department – a little bit more yellow, a bit more pink on the cheek. And of course the artist was much more involved and they felt they’d contributed something. It was much more satisfying in those days. But then everything about display has changed. I mean department stores, well particularly in America, the department store is really the centre of the town, community-wise. Very involved money-wise in the local symphony, the concerts, they sponsor art shows, they have things within the store all the time. But,

Michael Southgate Page 50 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6) the profit margins don’t allow for that any more, because the people like the Zaras and the Hennes and Mauritz of the world have pared down prices to such a rate, that to compete, the department store has had to cut its mark-ups and they can’t build in all that luxury. And that’s one of the reasons you don’t see big displays. I mean I know certain chains in America, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same here, but I don’t know so much about here, where they’d have like seven different paper bags, now they’ve only got two. They have to edit it out and make a decision. Well, we’ll have a large bag and a small bag and there won’t be special bags for this and special little things for perfumery and… So, it’s paring down all the time, which is cheaper and makes things much more available to the consumer, but it also takes a lot of the glamour out of shopping. So, it’s like everything with life, if you gain something, you lose something. [laughs] And now people are quite happy to buy out of catalogues or buy on the internet and they don’t want to go and browse, they haven’t got time, it’s a different time. I mean the majority of women in those days, shopping was one of their main occupations, it filled up their lives.

But has there also been a shift in the way in which visual merchandisers work – I mean is it still people connected to a store, or are there more freelance people?

In America, on 5th Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman for instance, I think have about three people on the permanent staff and then they change their windows at night and they bring in the freelancers who work all night and do that, and then they’ve gone again. Of course freelance is creeping into every form of business, everywhere, because people don’t, the companies don’t want to have their insurance, their tax, they’d rather just pay them, let the people look after that, so yes, that’s happening. Now in, most of the big stores used to have studios, not only did they have the visual people putting it in the window, they had people making the props, painting the background. I don’t think there’s anyone left now with a studio. There isn’t. Harrod’s doesn’t have a studio any more. Selfridges, which had a very large studio for many years, everything is put out now. They find it’s cheap.

What about Harvey Nichols?

No, that’s not made in house, it’s all… Harvey Nichols have a good policy, they use a lot of artists, but it’s all freelance, it’s all freelance.

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When Mango, companies like Mango and Hennes came on the scene, what sort of models did they specify for the sort of global market?

Well, they’ve all ended, I mean I think Zara who is, I would say, the leader of that group. When Zara decided to go with Rootstein, which is a number of years ago now, the others soon followed suit. And they look for a very natural looking young girl. They’re not highly styled. They do a great job on the dressing and they always have the wigs, which are always incredibly simple, but they’re always well kept, groomed and a very good natural make-up and they’re very, very, fussy about them. I mean they will, before they make a decision on the girl, they’ll change this, they’ll change that, they put a lot of work into it, but once it’s set, it’s set. It’s a lovely little lady – actually she reminds me a lot of Adel to look at – called Doris, that’s the head of Zara, and she’s German, and she learnt her trade in, you know in Germany you don’t just become a window dresser, you have to do a three year apprenticeship and go through the whole bit and they all come out of it trained. That doesn’t happen here, never has.

What happens here now then?

Oh, they get jobs, but there aren’t that many display jobs, that’s the trouble, because they’ve all cut back. I mean the sales ladies have to change the clothes if they want to… a few, I mean there’s a few window dressers still with permanent jobs, but they’re very few. I mean I think in Harrod’s they’ve got about one of the bigger staffs. They’ve got an interior team and a window team. They’ve got a pretty big group, but that’s being pared down every day. And the money that they have to work with now is getting less and less all the time.

So do you think Doris’s training…?

Doris’s team are all Spanish and she sends them all over the world. They come here - I don’t know how often they come, only about once a month – go to New York, go to Japan, wherever they’ve got, she finds it’s the only way to keep the control. I mean I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep that going, because they’re constantly opening shops in more and more places. I think they’ve got four now in New York and I don’t know how many they’ve got in London, three or four I think, quite a lot. But at the

Michael Southgate Page 52 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6) moment it’s all done from La Coruña? Some such name. Somewhere not too far from Barcelona.

Could I ask you, when you were starting out, how did people that you were working for treat you, would you say and has that changed over the years?

When I was working, when I started. Well, when I was in the theatre I used to, every time I was out of work, which was quite regularly when I was young, I used to get jobs in department stores. I worked in Barker’s and Derry’s and, almost everywhere really, but it was only for a short time until I got the next job. So I was always just a dresser, but department store life was such a waste time, I mean we used to, we used to clock in at nine and then by nine thirty we were having coffee in the restaurant and then wander back about ten and [laughs] take forever. I mean, sometimes take two days to dress a window [laughs] but not any more, I mean everything is done by the clock now.

And you actually clocked in?

Yes. Oh yes, all the department stores clocked in. But I just loved being there, I mean I was in London, I was in the West End, I was in a department store. Didn’t know anything about business, I didn’t, I mean when I think about it now, I think I’d have sacked all those people, you know, they didn’t [laughing]. And it ran through the whole thing. No wonder they had to charge so much.

But how, how would you go for those jobs?

Oh, just see it in The Standard or something like that you know. It used to say ‘window dresser wanted’.

And what would you have to take along to an interview?

Absolutely nothing. Didn’t have anything to take. I always remember the first time I got a job. I went to Derry and Toms and I thought oh, one dress, a fur cape and a rose, I can do that. Turned up at quarter to nine, somebody who – I don’t know who they were, an office person on the display team – gave me a piece of paper. I’d got refrigerators and

Michael Southgate Page 53 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6) saucepans. [laughs] Had no idea how to do that. Didn’t even ever think of doing a window with refrigerators and saucepans. [laughs] I ran up the road to look at Barker’s and saw what they did, and there was this row of refrigerators on the carpet in the aisle, outside the window. And I thought well how on earth am I supposed to do this? So anyway, I got all these refrigerators in the window, lined up. About half past nine, the display porters turned up, ‘Oh mate, you’ve put them…’ [laughs] ‘You’ve taken our jobs away, that was…’ [laughing] Oh dear, it was so silly. And then you had to go with your trolley to the food department and get jars of pickle and jam to put in these refrigerators and, just so, I just kept running up the road to see what they did and just did the same thing. And I got stuck on that for ages. For ages I was on china and glass, refrigerators, none of the nice little jobs I’d fancied. [laughs]

So were there any sort of policy about the window display?

Yes, I mean it depends where you were. Of course I started off in pretty ordinary places. I mean Derry’s, Barker’s, they weren’t top notch. By the time I got into those places I’d learnt my trade really, but when they don’t get very good window dressers they say you know, ‘We’re very particular about finish. I don’t want to see a pin on the floor, or a speck of dust’. You get all that. So I don’t even worry about the window, because they don’t really know what they’re talking about. So there’s big levels, I mean there’s not that many good visual people in the whole world, there really are not, very few. Because people with really, that could be very good, don’t go into that business, and particularly today. In the fifties it was a desirable business and there were quite a lot of very clever people that went into it. Today, those same people all go to television, or to film, because it’s much higher paid. So after the war, which is, I came along in fifty-one and it was still you know, rationing and everything went on until the fifties, so there was, things were just beginning to creep back. You could get certain things for decoration and there was a rather clever woman called Natasha Kroll at Simpsons and she was doing things with wood and dowel and blocks and it was that sort of fifties contemporary look that was coming in, you know. And things started to evolve at that time.

So, the Festival of Britain had an impact on…

Oh tremendous.

Michael Southgate Page 54 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6)

…on design?

It did, because truthfully there was very little design. That was 1951 and I wouldn’t say that things started to get better until maybe another five or six years, but they were the things… things like the paint – what do they call themselves? There were British standard colours were brought in, I mean smarter, controlled colours that were suddenly the thing to use, you know Thames Green and, I remember that was one of them, it was a group of colouring that they’d sponsored at the thing. Then we had the Design Centre open in Regent Street, that was all a spin-off of that. Then we got English manufacturers of a style that the Scandinavians had pioneered with furniture and so we got G-Plan furniture here and copies of the Scandinavian work, so suddenly design was a thing. Up to the war, most of the manufacturing here was still Victorian based you know, it really was. It didn’t change much, the war did a lot of good in [laughs] getting things moving again. And also, as I was saying yesterday, the teachers in the art schools and the colleges had come back from the war and had seen things, you know people didn’t travel much, it wasn’t everybody that had been to Paris or been to Germany and seen Bauhaus and seen… but because of the war they’d been exposed to it and if they were art teachers and things, of course they were looking for those things. So when they came back, they’d got a firsthand knowledge. And also they didn’t want to be harnessed by conformity. It was like the fashion designers, they went out of their way to do something different to Paris. They didn’t want to be what Paris said, why should they be always right. Even though they have got wonderful taste and finish and… And modern art. They don’t want to paint copies of the old masters. And they pushed to express themselves as any way they could, whether it was through cartoons, or op art or pop art or, it was a marvellous time because everything was new. Everything was new, and at the same time people like Thea Porter and Gina Fratini, they were looking at Moroccan and kaftans and oriental fabrics and I suppose part of the drug culture was all based on the Orient and then India and all that started coming in. And it was such a selection of taste, and of course that was really the first time that women could begin to wear whatever they liked. Up to then you had to really conform, and then suddenly you could, if you wanted a mini skirt or if you wanted a maxi, if you wanted boots, if you wanted… And of course, it also became affordable. Manufacturing changed. And a lot of that was to do with the styles, making it possible to make things much cheaper. Everything was very tailored up to the late fifties, lots of

Michael Southgate Page 55 C1046/08 Tape 3 Side B (part 6) make in everything. I mean crossover drapes and… it was copies of old Paris couture and people like Mansfield and Alexon and Lady in Black, they were making mass produced copies of couture dresses. But then suddenly there was little slips and shifts and hardly any make at all, so they could sell. I mean, I think Biba used to sell a dress for five shillings and three pounds was an expensive Biba dress.

But, sorry, I’ll ask you the question and then go on to another tape, but I’m interested in what actually drove display, you know, what, whether it was the fashion or something cultural or you know, I don’t really have a sense of…

All of those things.

…the windows, if you see what I mean.

[End of Tape 3 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 56 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

People often say, you know, exactly what is display? Well that’s a very difficult question to answer, because it’s everything. I always talk, when I talk with students, I always say that it’s one of the most underpaid jobs in the world, because you really have to know as much as you possibly can. You have to know what art shows are coming up at the museums and what’s gonna maybe cause a feel for, suddenly Rembrandt, suddenly Andy Warhol. You have to know if there’s a major film. Once in a blue moon, they’ll be a film like Annie Hall that has a definite look, you’ve got to know about that, because as soon as it’s out, you’ve got to have it in your window. You’ve got Viva Maria with Brigitte Bardot when, in all this broderie anglaise and flitting about the Brazilian jungle. Suddenly everyone wanted slotted ribbon through anglais underwear and camisoles. You really have to be constantly looking - furniture design, maybe a big theatre production will suddenly have – My Fair Lady – suddenly people were wearing very floralled hats to go to Ascot, I mean, which they hadn’t been wearing them quite, then they went ridiculously large and very big. So, you have to know for instance if, how to put things together; you might get a wonderful black and white prints, and somebody says, ‘Oh, we’d like to feature those’. So you think, well, would Bridget Riley’s paintings… so you’ve got to know who Bridget Riley is and what she looks like, and you’ve got to have this mind that can select and put things together that make a story. So, I would say one of the, one of the things essential is to have an eclectic taste. It doesn’t have to be in depth, but you’ve got to know if somebody suddenly talks about Erte or Wolfe, or… you’ve got to know who they are. You’ve got to know what author they may be talking about, what film they may be talking about. Sometimes a policy evolves with a store. In the seventies, in Bloomingdale’s in New York, there was a girl called Candy Pratts and she was a Puerto Rican girl, and she got the top job. She’d come from Charles Jourdain, where they did rather good windows. And she sort of invented a street theatre in the windows. I mean, I can’t remember what the theme of that one was, but I always remember she had one with a model with a knife stuck through its stomach and a murder had just happened. And I can still remember many of her windows. One was, it was like a gentleman’s club, it was a large corner window and she’d panelled it all in antique wood panelling, very clubby sort of furniture and the dresses that they were featuring were very sort of 1910; they were sort of handkerchief pointed chiffon things. And so there were ladies sitting on these club chairs, behind them were soldiers, but the soldiers were in 1910 uniform and the ladies

Michael Southgate Page 57 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7) were sitting in these handkerchief point dresses and some were standing, but what made it so notable, they were all black. They were all black mannequins. Naturalistic looking ones, and it was so arresting, this image. Another one I remember was a girl in a very good black dress, little black dress, and she was standing and she looked up, the mannequin looked up and she was in a completely empty room and the paint was all peeling off and the carpet was all shabby, no furniture, and a bare light bulb and on the light bulb was a fly. And she’s standing looking at the fly, and at her feet is a packed suitcase. And you looked at this and it was like a Maigret painting, you thought, is she leaving town, has she just arrived or she couldn’t make it in New York and she’s going back and I used to love Candy’s windows. Sometimes they were an absolute scream. I mean she didn’t really like mannequins, she saw what she wanted to see. And I always remember her coming and saying, ‘You’ve got to come and see the window’ and it was suburbia, and there was a lawn, washing on the line and one of those circular blow up children’s pools. And the lady was upside down with her head in the water [laughs] and the wig was all floating about in the water and she said, ‘Isn’t it great?’. I said, ‘What the hell’s she doing – is she committing suicide?’. ‘She’s washing her hair in the garden’ she said. [laughing] The mannequin was sort of a secretary, she sat like this and like that and she was very prim, but she’d turned her upside down, and to Candy, it was working. You know, the lady had her head in the pool so she was washing her hair. But I don’t think anybody quite knew what that was all about.

Would she discuss her scenarios when she came to see you?

No. No, they keep it secret, they don’t like you to know what they’re gonna do. Oh, the biggest secret of all in any store is Christmas. You’re never allowed to know what Christmas is, because everyone competes, you know. But in New York, and here too, the weekly changes, I mean they don’t announce what’s coming next. But now of course they don’t really do schemes.

So taking Candy as an example, how would she order her mannequins?

Oh. Well she, you see, mannequins fit into two categories really; exciting mannequins, which are – when I say that, exciting poses, doing a specific movement. I mean there’s one we did that hung like this from a rope, like an acrobat.

Michael Southgate Page 58 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

So her hand was, sorry, could you just describe…

Yes, the hand was clutching a rope and she was suspended, in the air and she was an acrobat – she could have been a gymnast or something like that, it’s a very specific mannequin. Now that mannequin will last many years because it doesn’t get used very often, but every so often, someone will think of another way of incorporating that into something and it works very well. Then there was a wonderful girl called Mounia, she was the muse for Yves Saint Laurent. Very dramatic – arms always outstretched, lots and lots of attitude, which of course is quite out now. But very definite shapes and some people like that, they think it really is a dramatic statement if you’ve got a wonderful dress. But of course you can’t use a mannequin like that every day. So they have to buy classic mannequins which are sort of reasonably relaxed and straight up and down. You then have to think, well is it a dressy look I’m gonna put on it, or is it sportswear, because the body language is entirely different. So there’s a group that, knees fairly close together, rather soft, sophisticated poses, and then there’s the legs apart, hands on hips, which become much more sporty, very often with flat feet because they want to wear flat shoes. So they’re constantly trying to cover all aspects of the kind of trade they use, and then within that, when they get their ideas for the next window, they’ll say, ‘Oh, we can use that one’ or ‘We can use this one’. And sometimes they have to come out and then buy one particularly for some particular idea, but you try to work up a good library to cover you from all angles. It’s quite a professional job to buy mannequins properly. Small shops are the worst, they’re the nightmares because they always want the most exciting because, ‘Oh I saw that one in Bloomingdale’s’. I said, ‘Yes, but you know, you’ve only got three mannequins, you’re gonna get awfully tired of that one’. I mean I remember one in Florida, a lady, she called up and said, ‘You know Michael, I’m really fed up with Joan Collins’ because we did a mannequin of Joan Collins. And she said, ‘People keep saying to me, ‘oh you’ve still got Joan in the window’’. Well I said, ‘You know, that’s the trouble, when you buy somebody that’s that recognisable’. ‘What can I do with it?’ I said, ‘Well why don’t you put one of those comic balloons sort of coming out of her mouth and write on it something that she did in Dynasty this week’. She used to phone me up, ‘What am I gonna write this week?’, she used [laughing] to phone me every week to find out what to do next. But that was a typical example, whereas Joan, is, I mean we did have, because Adel said that she really must be the most glamorous fifty year old in the

Michael Southgate Page 59 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7) world, that was when she was fifty and she had a big book signing, some beauty book she’d written or something, at Selfridges and Selfridges approached us and said would we do something of Joan because they’d love to have the mannequin at the store when she was there. So truthfully we didn’t have time anyway to sculpt her from beginning, so we just did a head, put it on to an existing mannequin, so she’s about six inches at least, taller than what she really is. But as she has I think, probably the biggest head of anyone we ever sculpted – she’s got a very large head, Joan Collins, I think she’s got a good brain as well [laughs] – and that was a successful relationship. We took her to Düsseldorf with us to Euroshop for a whole week and she was fantastic with the press and really could control the press, because they’re pretty awful that Continental press, they were for ever wanting her to unbutton her blouse, and she couldn’t, she could cope with that beautifully, handled it very well. She’s really a very nice lady under all that brittle stuff.

But can I just ask you, at what point did the idea of sort of themes, cultural themes, you know design themes, come into display?

Well it’s, you see it’s again, it’s a sort of street entertainment isn’t it? You use everything you can to catch the eye. In the…

But was it like that in the late fifties?

No. In the late fifties, well wait a minute, was it? Not to the same degree. Liberty’s in the fifties, there was someone there called Eric Lucking – he was a very, very good fabric draper and he always used to do wonderful drapes. They were actually all yardage, but he’d make them into clothes and that was an art form in itself and he was known there. There was Jay’s on the corner of Oxford Circus and that was like an old French store really, just the mannequins very close up against the glass, but they also sold very expensive stuff, so that had a certain look to it. Aquascutum always had very good quality props. Lot of graphics – they’d have sunbursts and things made out of unusual materials and yes, it was a bit more arty in the fifties, I think. And lots of paper sculpture, was very popular. After the war, suddenly you could get large expanses of white cartridge paper and there was a whole group of people, mostly from Poland and the Czechoslovakian countries, who were terribly skilled at doing wonderful things in paper. And there was an Englishman called Ken Carr, here, who mastered that art and he went on for many years

Michael Southgate Page 60 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7) doing fantastic stuff, all with paper sculpture. So it was a much more arty thing. Then with the sixties…

Sorry, would these sculptures be sort of representational or abstract? I can’t quite get it…

Rather abstract, I’d say. Shapes, with light coming through them and looking like modern sculpture actually, very modern sculpture, but all done in white paper.

So, and then the sixties.

Yes, and then the sixties, I think it all went more theatrical. The sixties, we got the dramatic shapes, the different looks on the runway, the new kind of girl, yes, it changed from windows being, that looked as if it was society, to people that were actually on the street and a lot of that was to do with Adel. I mean she’s been credited many times in changing the look of the high street, throughout the world. Because as I said to you earlier, windows were dressed as if everybody was rich. And I’d never understood that, I can remember as a child, Ponds vanishing cream was always advertised in the newspapers and it was always the Right Honourable Lady somebody Guinness, or the Countess somebody, and I think it was in Woolworth’s for sixpence or something, this Pond’s cream, but they always chose these society beauties to promote that and people liked that association, it was what they’d been to led to believe, you know. So it was really the sixties that changed retail, changed how people thought, and with it those old time buyers that thought they were society you know, and emulated that kind of thing.

And when you were working freelance, how would those scary women buyers [laughs], how would they speak to you?

Ah, well the freelance was not those same women, no, that was quite different. The freelance shops mostly were Continental women, they were usually called Madam something, for some reason, not that my favourite one, Mrs Stiassny in Robelle was called Madam, she was far too sensible, but most of them were and they bought, they bought European, Continental taste to – now don’t forget, most of their clientele was Jewish, oh yes, and most – well they were, I don’t know what, they were the people that could… I

Michael Southgate Page 61 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7) don’t know whether they were richer, I think they were a bit richer, probably, but also they, the women of those fifties, sixties, seventies Jewish families were expected to dress. They dressed, they didn’t look you know, ordinary women weren’t doing it in the… and they dressed with a certain dignity and a certain… so they wanted these Continental copies of French houses. And Mrs Stiassny went every month I think, to Paris. I mean she must have been the most infuriating buyer because I don’t think she ever bought more than three dresses at one place. And every week, now for instance, all the saleswomen at Robelle, most of them were middle aged, towards the end she got a couple of younger ones in, they had a book, in that book they had every address of their customer and they phoned the customer up and said, ‘We’ve had a parcel’, there was this mystery about the parcel. ‘We’re expecting a parcel on Tuesday’ or something. They’d make sure they were there when the p…. so they got in there at the right time. And, ‘Mrs so-and-so, we’ve got a parcel in and this is so you and…’ It was a personal contact thing and all these very well dressed women used to come in. And Mrs Stiassny wouldn’t stock over a twelve, she didn’t want any fat people, ‘Oh I can’t cope with that’ she said. She herself was very petite, small, had been very, very pretty I would think, ‘cos her daughter Hannah was very pretty and I’m sure just looked exactly like her mother. But very dainty, impeccable taste; she taught me so much I can’t tell you.

What sort of things?

Don’t know really. She just sort of said, ‘I don’t think so’ you know, and I’d sort of… it took me a while to learn what she liked. Well, I can, yes, it took me… I learnt to like what she liked, that’s the truth of it. I always remember the first Christmas I did for her and I was so thrilled with these… she used to have one, not a real mannequin, it was like an egghead and an abstract shape, one in each window, and I did these, oh I think one was sort of like a spider’s web with spider, all glittery cobwebs hanging down, I was terribly pleased with it, and I forget what the other one was. And she said, ‘Oh, it is too much. It is not chic’. Oh Lord. Well it was back to the drawing board, I had to take it out, she wouldn’t have it.

Oh you’d actually put it up?

Michael Southgate Page 62 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

Oh I’d brought it along to the shop and it was in there, you know. No she didn’t like that at all. Well of course I could see afterwards, she was quite right, it wasn’t chic. [laughs] She taught me what was chic actually. It was theatrical to me, but it certainly wasn’t chic and it wasn’t fashion. I’d been getting away with a lot of theatricality in stores where they weren’t so well informed, truthfully. English people are not very chic, they don’t have that natural gift for it. But no, she used to just, in the nicest way with sort of saying, ‘Well, I don’t think we can do that’ and ‘Just a little more’, ‘A little less’ and… darling woman. I liked her so much. And I really, through her is how I got all the other work. It was the fact that she was the best one, then all the others, Shirley Leonard in South Audley Street, Robina, who still exists, in New Bond Street, then I did Plaza Nine at Knightsbridge and Castelle on Bond Street. So I ended up with all the upper Jewish clientele shops.

And where was Robelle?

Robelle was on Baker Street, between Dorset Street and Blandford. It’s another shop now, it’s some sort of Middle Eastern… not quite sure what, they have sort of chess sets and kaftans in the window [laughs]. I don’t know quite what they do there. [laughs]

And was it usual then for you to do the window without discussing it with…

Yes, it was. Sometimes we would offer stuff up, but generally they’re not very good at ideas, you know, they don’t know what they want, they only know what they don’t want when they get it, you know [laughs]. And most of them really, one didn’t have any problem with. Mrs Stiassny was always a problem to the very end, but she was always right. Incredibly fussy. And what a wonderful merchant. I mean, she would see a fashion show in Paris and she would walk the streets at night, looking to find where they got that button, where that ribbon that was the binding on the bottom of that dress and she loved it, it was like a detective agency for her, you know. This little woman going round finding, and she had this incredible knowledge of all the suppliers in Paris. And her customers had such faith in her, they really had such faith in her.

So how long were you with her?

Michael Southgate Page 63 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

Oh years. I must have been about ten years. In the end, when I, I still had her when I went to Aquascutum because I went to Aquascutum, Rick Hopkins, Adel’s husband had ended up a director of Aquascutum and he finally left to set up his own design office and they didn’t have anybody and he put me up for it. And I went along and, I think I had to have three or four interviews, seeing this director then that director, and finally I had to see Charles Abrahams and I had to wear a suit and a white shirt and tie to go for the interviewing and I…

Who told you that?

They told me. And you had to wear it to go to work too. So, I’m walking down Oxford Street, or Regent Street I think, because I used to live just around the corner here in, off the top of Marylebone High Street, and I thought, I’m out of my mind, I don’t want this job, I’ve got a job every day of the week as it is, they didn’t take all day to do them, but then I did theatre at night, but Rick had asked me to go and, but by the time I got there, I decided I didn’t want it. So I had to go up to the fifth floor in the lift and the director I’d seen before, John Parker, met me and he said, ‘Oh Michael, I’ll take you in to Sir Charles’. He wasn’t Sir Charles then, he was Charles, Mr Charles. And I said, ‘You know, I’ve got to tell you I’ve decided I don’t want it’. ‘What?’ I said, ‘You know, it’s really not worth it to me, I don’t want to have to wear a suit every day and wear a stiff collar and all this stuff and…’ . ‘Well, wait a minute, because he’ll be terribly upset’ because it was like six o’clock at night or something, it was after the shop was closed. Well, he was the strangest man. He knew exactly how to play you. ‘I understand you don’t really want to come here.’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr Charles, I’ve been thinking about it quite seriously. It’s the fact that I really don’t want the restrictions of having to wear a suit and come every day, because I do have quite a good living this way’. ‘Well, you don’t have to give up your display work, I mean you could come, you could come to us for three days a week and…’. I said, ‘No, I don’t think so’. He said, ‘Is it because we are supposed to have the only straight display team in the West End?’. I said, ‘No’. I said, ‘I know nothing about the display team’. ‘Oh, I suspect it’s that, I mean are you intimidated?’ I said, ‘No, not in the least’. [laughs] Well of course I walked out of there, I took the job. [laughs] And then used to fight with Charles at least every other week from then on for fourteen years. I left, I think, three times, to go into different shows, but he always had me back. And we ended up the very best of friends, of a kind. In fact, his wife, who is now Lady Abrahams,

Michael Southgate Page 64 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side A (part 7)

Louisa sent her chauffeur to meet me at the airport when I arrived here on, last Monday. ‘Oh Michael’, I said, ‘Louisa, don’t do that’ and she said, ‘Don’t be silly. Paid for, why don’t you just…’ I’m in Prague or something, she’s… I mean that’s another whole story, they’re a wonderful, wonderfully, real characters, real characters, all of them.

So what would you fight over?

Oh anything. And Charles is like a big baby. He would, you’d be talking to him quite normally, he had a wonderful voice, he really had a lovely, he could charm you with his voice, he wasn’t an attractive man. But just like that, he’d snap. And he’d pound the desk and sort of blow bubbles… he used to make me laugh quite honestly. And Avis, my friend round the corner, she was head of female staff, and for some reason we always used to get called up together. And the same routine used to go on every time. Avis was, she had this sort of beehive, French woman, she said, ‘I’m not listening to this’ and so she’d get up and start… ‘Avis, come back here!’. And I’d just sit there like this [laughing]. Oh, it was a scream. I mean, those Continental Jewish people, they’re a culture all their own, you know. But it’s never dull. It is never dull. They’re really quite, they’re very funny. I find them very funny. I mean Adel was Jewish, Charles and Louisa was Jewish, then when I went to New York I had an associate called Nelly who was orthodox Jewish, which was another whole world for me, but they’re a lot of fun, not easy, but it’s never dull.

Could you move your hand?

Oh sorry. It’s never dull. [End of Tape 4 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 65 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8)

Tape 4 Side B (part 8)

Did they mind that you weren’t Jewish?

No. Of course, Jewish people always think they’re smarter than Gentiles. That’s just a general rule. In many cases, they’re not. They’re pushier and they’re more aggressive. Not necessarily smart, but oh, they’re not silly either, I mean, and they’ve all got this fantastic business ability.

Were there more Jewish people you know, in the retail business than not?

Always in manufacturing, yes. And still, today I think. In the retail, a good smattering, but not so much. I don’t think retail was well enough paid for the Jewish people to go into it. Lots of the sales assistants, women were, because they’re good sales people generally. But I think the men, they’d go into the manufacturing because I think the profits were much bigger, you know. And they seem to know the rag trade so well, they understand manufacturing. I mean the whole of Marks and Spencer’s was not only the governing board, but every supplier was practically a Jewish manufacturer. And the whole of Great Portland Street, Great Titchfield Street, that whole area, I think it was all the same.

So where were you living? You mentioned that you were living sort of round the corner from here.

Several different places. Of course when I was in the theatre, every time I came back from being in a show or something, I’d have to find another room somewhere. And so, in those days I lived mostly South Ken, or Cromwell Road, round there, where you know, the sort of bedsits of the world. But then, when I started getting a bit more of a regular income and so on, the first flat I had was in Kings Cross and that was when I met a boyfriend and we lived together, in Kings Cross. And then Roy, who was my partner on the stage, while he was still at Whiteleys, in the display team, he got the lease of a house here at the top of Marylebone High Street in a little place called Oldbury Place, it’s a mews. And he couldn’t afford it on his own – well he had a boyfriend too – so we split this mews house and I had the top half and he had the bottom and we lived there for fourteen years. Until in fact, I went to America. And then later on when I started having to come back here so

Michael Southgate Page 66 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) much, when I first used to come I used to stay in Sloane Avenue at something called Nell Gwynn house, it’s a sort of complex there where you can hire a flat for six weeks or something and so I used, I spent several years going there twice a year, because I used to come twice a year. And then I decided to buy a place, so I bought a flat in Crawford Street, just off Baker Street, so I’ve always lived in this area, really, for most of my adult life.

So have you collected sort of furniture and things?

Yes, I have.

Make you feel at home.

But it’s all, oh, well it’s all in America now, ‘cos I shipped it all, I shipped it all to America when I went there and yes, I’ve got stuff even from my parents. My house in Brooklyn, everybody says they don’t feel that they’re in America, they think they’re in England. I don’t know why, but I think it’s possibly because most of the stuff in it is from England, you know.

So where did you sort of shop for things when you were setting up your flat?

Oh. Well when I got the second flat in Baker Street, I bought everything practically, at Harrod’s in the sale. Because I got the flat and I had to move very quickly and the sale was on, so I got the sofa and the armchairs and the… oh, I think I got nearly everything there and what I didn’t get from there I got from John Lewis, because it wasn’t really my main home, I just wanted it nicely furnished, but actually it ended up quite nice. You know, us display people, we can’t help ditzing things up and putting things up and [laughs].

So, is there, so what is the style, would you say?

My own style? Oh no, I don’t have one. I purposely avoid it. I mean, my house in New York is, it’s very antiquey, you know, it’s lots of Osborne and Little papers that I stuffed over there and I have things like grandfather clocks and stuff from home, so yes, it’s quite

Michael Southgate Page 67 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) a traditional, like a modern Victorian house or something, I suppose you’d say. But then the house is Victorian. It’s a hundred years old the house in New York, which is old for New York. Yes, I try to not, I think because we work in so many different styles all the time, that I really try and concentrate to just get a home, a home, a homely feel, you know. Looking reasonably nice, but not that studied decorated look that people that pay to have a decorator get. You know, when they have someone come in and do every last pleat in the curtain and everything for them, it always looks so synthetic in a way. And anyway, having four teenagers running around all the time and so on, it doesn’t stay too immaculate. But it’s fine, it’s nice, I like it. And I’ve got a garden. I love gardening. Do a lot of gardening. It’s funny, because when I lived at home as a child, I used to garden a lot with my father, but then, all the time I lived in London I never had a garden, I mean we didn’t have, I think we had a window box at Oldbury Place and the flat in Crawford Street had no garden. But suddenly when I bought this house in Brooklyn, I had a nice back garden. And I shared it; my next door neighbour was a very famous jazz singer called Betty Carter and Betty and I didn’t have any fence between us and she had no idea how to garden, and I started off saying, ‘D’you mind if I do a bit’ and she said, ‘Oh, I’d love it if you would do it’. But then she got into it and we sort of taught each other. She was, she was a great character, she died a couple of years ago, very suddenly. That was a sad thing, I miss her. But she was quite good, because I used to be away a lot and so she’d look after it, and then she’d go on tour and I’d look after hers, so it was a good relationship.

And so who are your neighbours now?

Well, Betty’s son, Kagel [ph], who is a typical teenager… no longer a teenager, goodness me, no he’s not, he must be in his late thirties, he’s what we call a homeboy, you know, he’s a real black, loud music, video game playing [laughs], but he’s fun and he’s nice, I mean he’s nice, but he’s, he inherited the house and he’s let off part of it to four girls, who are fine. So, but it’s not quite so nice as when Betty was next door.

I wonder if we could just sort of perhaps finish off the Rootstein story, because one thing I wondered about was how and where the mannequins were manufactured, or are manufactured?

Michael Southgate Page 68 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8)

Well, we have a factory, I mean you know. We also have studios where the sculptors work, so up to the point of getting the first one in to fibreglass, it’s an artistic process. The sculptors are artists, the mould makers are extremely skilled; it’s not easy to make moulds. But then you end up with a fibreglass mould. You first of all start with clay, from the clay you put a plaster mould, you loose that when you break it off, but you end up with a plaster positive, so then you refine that, once it’s in plaster you can take out all the clay marks, smooth it down, refine the nostrils, the eyes. Then you make a fibreglass mould. Once you’ve got a fibreglass moulds, you can start to produce fibreglass mannequins. The mould then goes to the factory and then it goes on the production line.

And how did you find the factory?

Well, when we first started manufacturing, we didn’t have a factory, we used to go to another model manufacturer called Models London who still is incorporated with Rootstein today, doing some of their production, but they used to make it for us. But then Models London had their own business and the Rootstein business got so much bigger, particularly once we went into, we opened up agents all over Europe and then into America, so they couldn’t cope with the numbers, so then we had to find our own manufacturing and that was when Rick Hopkins, Adel’s husband, joined the company to run the factory. And so the factory we found is off the Cromwell Road, near North End Road. In fact, as you come up over the bridge, you’ll see the big sign, Adel Rootstein, lit up there and that is the factory. Then after about five or oh, yes I think only about five or six years, that wasn’t big enough and immediately next to the factory was a laundry and that went out of business. And so we bought the laundry as well and turned that into a factory. Then when New York took off, New York couldn’t fulfil orders quick enough out of the Rootstein production, because there was the transporting them then to New York and the New York people were not used to waiting. I mean we had an incredible lead time, we used to say twelve weeks, but it used to work into sixteen, twenty weeks sometimes. But because at the time we were the best that there was, people would wait, but not America. So we then opened up a production in America, in Brooklyn, and… oh no, first of all we did the same thing that we did in England. We went to an existing model maker who then produced our mannequins for us, but they were in a zone called Soho, which is lower Manhattan and suddenly Soho became very residential for artists, all the manufacturing lofts got turned into living spaces for artists and then of course the

Michael Southgate Page 69 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) artists start complaining about the fumes from the manufacturers that had been there in the first place. [laughs] So our manufacturer couldn’t cope with it, in the end he closed up business, he was getting to retiring age. So then we had to buy a factory ourselves, further out in Brooklyn, a place called Sunset Park, and still have that place today, so we have production there too. But from London, all the Continent gets supplied and then you know, Rootstein was sold while Adel was still alive, to the Japanese people who had been our agents in Japan for something like fourteen years, and had proved to be very honourable. We were very worried about it when we first did it, we thought oh, they’ll start knocking us off and producing their own, but they never did. And they liked the prestige of the Rootstein mannequin and so they have production in Kyoto as well, they send moulds out there, so they’re made in three different, well four different places – two in England, one in New York and one in… from England we supply Germany, well the whole of Europe.

What size are the production facilities, would you say, in terms of staff and…?

Oh, well in England here we have about a hundred employees. It fluctuates a little bit, but it’s roughly about a hundred, of which probably eighty are factory and then there’s sales and executives, er, accountants. In New York there are five people in the showroom, two sales, bookkeeper and accounts. And then the factory again, I should think about sixty to seventy people are working there. So it, it used to do roughly about a sort of eight million pound turnover. It’s not a big company and it’s much bigger than Adel ever wanted it. Rick was the one that kept pushing and pushing, because he said the only way to survive is to constantly increase the market. Adel would have much rather have kept it smaller, something that she personally could have controlled. In fact, I think she lost a lot of interest in it when it got so big. She didn’t like that so much.

And where do you get the sculptors from?

Takes a very long time to train them. The, I mean they come from art schools, but most sculptors, well today most of them are abstract anyway, there’s very few that specialise in figurative work. And then there’s a huge percentage of them that are extremely academic and realistic – you know, they love fat women and you know. So to find one that can then adapt to a fashion statement, that’s the trick. And we’ve never got more than… well at the

Michael Southgate Page 70 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) moment I think the company has got, three, three fulltime sculptors. And one of them is quite young now, he’s in his early twenties and he’s been with us since he was about seventeen, eighteen. And he’s really coming on awfully well. But we’ve had others that just don’t work out, you know. It’s not an easy thing to do and truthfully, they’re the real nucleus of the company really. Then of course the make-up people are tremendously important, but the make-up people are not so difficult to find. Well, you can train them, if they can paint at all, you can train a make-up artist, because it’s, truthfully it’s technique. So we don’t have too much problem with make-ups.

And what would their previous training have been, d’you think, most of them?

Art schools. Our best girl here at the moment, I think she came from the Midlands and she used to paint pottery, you know, paint these sort of Wedgwood bits and something like that, roses and flowers. She’s got wonderful control. I mean, that’s the thing, it’s not like painting on a flat canvas, you know, you’re holding a moulded thing and then you have to have a very sure steady hand and yes, Judith is really very, very good at that. And then the girl that trained most of the people here, when we opened in New York, she moved to New York’s, Sonia, she’s with us still in New York and running the make-up department there. I think one of the big things about Adel was that she had a great ability to keep people together. She made them feel very much part of the company and always gave everyone such credit. You know, ‘Oh, it’s not me, it’s Sonia’ or it’s John Taylor, or it’s… It was always somebody else, she certainly never said it was her, although it was her. She was, she was the catalyst that kept everything, and when things got tough, the one that could carry on and get over that hurdle and go to the next thing.

So did the, did or do, staff socialise with each other – was it that sort of company?

Not too much. The majority of the production people are West Indians, the laminators and the finishers. That’s been from almost as soon as we, well I think it came actually from Models London who used to be our only production, they had a lot of West Indians in the staff, because it was, it’s well paid work, but it’s not very nice work. There’s a lot of hazards to it, you know with the fibreglass and the toxic stuff that they use, the gels and so on. And, I think at that time, in the early sixties, people didn’t want dirty jobs, you know. And so the West Indians were looking for work and they went into that, and truthfully, all

Michael Southgate Page 71 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) our best mould makers are West Indians and all our best laminators. But now, of course, a great number of them are getting to retirement age. They’ve been with the company for years. The people that are coming in, I noticed when I was there the other day, they’re not all black and they’re certainly not all West Indian. There’s Australians, there’s a Czech person, but then I think it’s because the EU, you know, the Common Market and people are coming in and there’s much more of that kind of work on the Continent, so they’re not so, it’s difficult to get people here that will go into it.

Could you just explain what laminating and finishing involves?

Yes. [laughs] If you can imagine, a mould is a fibreglass mould like a jelly mould. The cavities are the figure. All the limbs come out of the fibreglass mould, the only thing that’s separate is the head and the hands. The reason for that is that the head is much more detailed, so we have to put a rubber lining into the mould and the head is poured separately. Fibreglass is done by, it looks like a lot of chopped up straw, but it’s actual glass. And then you have a gel coat, it’s a resin jelly and with a brush and by hand, you have to lay the straw matting, you might as well call it, the straw, into the mould and then with your brush and hand, pat it into all the little crevices, in the joins, so that the whole mould gets covered inside. And then, the mould is in sections, you get two halves, you let the halves dry and then you have to bolt it together. And once you’ve bolted it together, you pour more resin into the seams so when you unbolt it, you’ve got a figure that looks like some sort of alien comes out, because it’s got all this, where all the seams are, it’s got all this straw stuff sticking out, so that’s what we call a lamination. Then that hairy looking, rough thing has to go to the finishers. They have hand sanders, electrical sanders, they take off all the salvage, all the stuff that’s… and they smooth out all the blemishes. The nature of fibreglass is, that there’s little picks and holes in it anyway, those all have to be filled and you end up finally with a smooth mannequin, kind of shiny looking, like a shell really. It then goes to be sprayed, into the flesh colour and you end up with a nude figure. Now, it’s a, both of them are skilled work, it’s not a labourer’s job. If the laminators don’t do it properly – and don’t forget, they’re all on piece work, so the temptation is to get through as quickly as possible – but when it comes out the mould, there’s holes, in the joins, bad joints. That’s why, every laminator has his own colour put into the resin. So if you’ve got a yellow mannequin, or if you’ve got a red mannequin,

Michael Southgate Page 72 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8) you know who made it by… and so they can’t really pass off their… [laughs], which they did before we started colouring the moulds. Say, ‘Oh that wasn’t mine’.

So who thought of that – who thought of colouring them?

Rick Hopkins, probably. I’m not sure, but I think probably Rick Hopkins. And then when you get to the finishing stage, an enthusiastic finisher can just get rid of the sculpting in two minutes flat. I mean, we actually put the backbone in, there’s the little bumps of the backbone, the thigh muscles, the rib muscles. Well, if you’ve got a good electric sander you can get rid of that in no time at all, so they have to know and understand what they’re doing. And when you do a new figure, you always have to give them a rundown on what you’ve got to watch for, what you’ve got to do, because otherwise you end up with these soapy looking mannequins that look like they’re sort of made of sausages because there’s no muscle and no definition in the knees and the arms and so on. Once they’ve been sprayed, the torsos only go to wig and make-up, and don’t forget we make every mannequin from life so every one has a different sized head, it’s the head of the girl that’s the model, so we can’t have a sort of – which is what a cheaper mannequin does, they have a stock size head so they can make all their wigs in advance, because any wig will go on any mannequin - ours don’t do that – we make life very difficult for ourselves, actually. But there you go that’s, all of those things are what make the product. So then the wig department take a buckram shape of the head and from that they make up the wig and then that’s done to the style that the customer has ordered – not only the style, the colour, with the streak at the front or whatever. I mean there’s incredible detail on every figure. And then the make-up department, they put on whatever make-up the customer has ordered, it’s painted and then it takes forty-eight hours for them to dry because it’s oil paint.

So how long does it take then to get one mannequin sort of ready?

Well, you see it’s done on a chain, so I mean if you did one, it would be laminated, it has to cure overnight, then it has to be finished the next day – because there’s time… then when it’s sprayed it has to hang for about three or four hours and then it would probably get up to make-up and wigs, so that would be three days – about, I’d say about three and a half days, if one was doing one from the beginning. But of course it isn’t done like that, they’re all in a chain.

Michael Southgate Page 73 C1046/08 Tape 4 Side B (part 8)

And when you say the torso only, what’s, when you’re making a fibreglass mould, is it the torso only?

No. Sorry, I left that out. Incorporated into the mould are all the breaks in a mannequin, for instance the hands have to come off, then it has to come off again at the shoulder. And then the waist, well it’s actually lower, it’s the hipline, comes away from the leg and in some cases, one leg is detachable. Now all of those things are because you can’t dress a figure if the hands are on, or if you can’t get the, you can’t get the arm down the sleeve, so they all have to come apart. So arms, and legs, get wrapped the minute they’re out of the spray to keep them clean, but the torso – and then they’re all coded to their particular one that it was laminated with, because even the same mannequin, each time it’s laminated the changes will be slightly different. So you couldn’t say, an X5 when you just find an X5 arm and put on it, it has to be X5 123, which is what’s on the torso X5…

[End of Tape 4 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 74 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

So each torso has to stay with the particular arm it was finished with, because although it might be the same code number, the sanding will make them vary every time.

And will there be, will one laminator work with one finisher?

No, not necessarily. No, that’s according to speed. The laminators will put their raw mannequins piled up on one side and then a finisher, as soon as he’s finished one will go and get another one. No, they don’t necessarily work together.

And is there a sort of factory hierarchy of you know, whose work is more skilled than another’s?

No, I would say a qualified finisher and a qualified laminator are completely equal, but a mould maker is considered more skilled than either. So the mould department are the sort of hierarchy of the actual factory people. And then there’s a factory manager who really is a progress chaser. And the most hated man in the factory is the quality control. [laughs] He throws it back at them when it’s not right. [laughs] And each mannequin is assembled before it’s packed.

And who does that?

The quality control. And still things slip through, all the time. It always has with mannequins, because they really are a cottage industry. I mean they’re, there’s other ways of making them today. I mean you can make them with computers and rotary moulding, which is much cheaper, but then you can’t get the quality of sculpting because it has to be something that just pops out of a very simple mould.

So how many people work in quality control? Is that as big as the manufacturing?

Oh no. No, no. About three. There’ll be a, someone that assembles the figures, looks for a fault, then the factory manager will pass them and then the guy that hangs them and puts

Michael Southgate Page 75 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9) them together also with another guy does the wrapping, they wrap ‘em up straightaway, because that’s the big thing to keep everything clean all the time.

And what are they wrapped in?

Foam. Foam and then paper over that.

And how do the limbs, how are the attached to the…

Well we have what we call a keyhole fitting. It’s a metal plate, a male and a female, so one goes into the other. And they kind of, they go into a hole, but then like a keyhole, there’s a drop down so that they drop into place, they won’t move then, because you don’t want them… You see a cheap mannequin, every joint is a circle; the wrist, the shoulder, the waist. That means you can put any hand on any arm on any torso on any pair of legs. Well of course they don’t look like people, they look like Barbie dolls, that’s what Barbie doll is made like. I was invited actually to do a full-scale, a life-size Barbie doll for a charity in Germany and it was at the Bauhaus Museum and I was the only artist. It was to do with Mattel, Barbie was having a bad time in Germany, she’s not considered a good influence for children, teaching them to bleach their hair and look like a hooker and, there’s a lot of people against it – you know how the Germans are. And so Barbie did this, Mattel did this – it was their fiftieth anniversary I think, in Germany – they invited artists and all kinds; painters, dress designers, hair dressers, industrial designers, to do what Barbie meant to them. And they invited me as a mannequin designer to design a life-size Barbie and what it meant to them and, to me. So I came up with, I thought Barbie was a sort of icon. Well for a start, the life-size Barbie was one of the most terrifying things you’d ever seen, I mean most peculiar – proportion, shape, huge bust, tiny little waist, funny straight stiff legs. And I decided she was an icon so I dressed her as a very high church Roman Catholic Virgin Mary, in one of those stiff Spanish sort of dresses with stars coming out of her head, you know, those halos with stars, with sort of a triple crown on the top and this very stiff Barbie, shocking pink dress, which had like cartouches of braid making oval frames that went all the way round the… and in each one I put a real Barbie doll, but dressed as something that she had never been, like a pregnant mother, a nun, I can’t remember all the things I found – a lawyer I think, and I dressed all these little Barbies and put them all round it. And it went to Berlin, we had a wonderful time. It was one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever been involved in, it was such

Michael Southgate Page 76 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9) fun. I can’t tell you what they thought of for that thing, I mean there was a marvellous – oh, it must have been about a ten foot high, very realistic King Kong, and in his hand was Barbie like Fay Wray, you know, which was adorable. There was a chandelier that was Barbies in little white shorts and little white tops like a Busby Berkeley effect, you know, how he did those circular things in movies. Oh, there was so many things. There was a sort of Barbie telephone where you sort of spoke up her arse. [laughs] All sorts… Oh, and there was another thing, like a country cupboard, it was a distressed country cupboard and you opened the doors and there were little gingham curtains and you drew them back and there were jars of apricots and plums and then every so often there was Barbie and it was pickled Barbie, she was in a preserving jar and all her hair was swimming about. Lovely, lovely things. And hairdressers wove her hair into the Eiffel Tower, I mean little, real Barbies. I don’t how they did that, with needles and things I should think. But it was, it was a really fun show and…

Was there a catalogue?

Yes, there was a catalogue and lots of publicity and they had a big reception. I met Mrs Mattel – I’ve forgotten her name now, something with an ‘H’. And I also remember the woman who was the head of, the managing director, she had big horn-rimmed glasses and a bun, dark haired, but then for the evening she was Barbie. I mean she, it was still black hair, but she was all blown out and her glasses had gone and she looked just like a Barbie doll. The lady that designed it is dead, she died last year I think, but she said an interesting thing. She said that it’s wonderful to see what all you artists have done, but she said, you know, I only ever had one idea and I had these paper dolls that you took out of books and then you had clothes that were printed and you could fold the tabs round and dress the doll. And I thought for my daughter, wouldn’t it be wonderful if she had an actual doll that she could put clothes on that was like a grown-up, because she said those paper dolls were always grown- ups, it was like fashions. And she said, ‘That was the idea and it’s gone on ever since and I’m amazed to see what you’ve all done now’. And I’m pleased to say that my Barbie was bought by the Baroness von Thyssen, who was apparently a very rich lady, because everything, I think it went to Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam maybe. I was hoping that it would go to America, they would have loved it there. But they then had an option for charity and mine got fifteen thousand pounds, for the life-size Barbie. What the Baroness von Thyssen has done with it, I can’t imagine [laughs] where it’s sitting now. I’d love to know.

Michael Southgate Page 77 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

So how tall was she?

Oh, she was about – well with the crown and everything, she must have been slightly over six foot, yes. And all the hair, I mean the hair was about this wide.

What sort of, about a metre?

Yes. About a metre, yes. Sorry, I got sidetracked there with the Barbie story, sorry.

No, it was a great one. Did everybody use a white Barbie?

Yes. Yes, because I think the black Barbies are not called Barbie anyway. I don’t remember them having any black Barbies in any of the exhibits. Perhaps they weren’t given them, I don’t know.

Because going back to what you were saying earlier about… I’ve forgotten her name.

Those black mannequins.

Yes.

Donyale Luna.

Donyale Luna. What’s the impact, do you think, I mean you mentioned Callahan using her.

Yes.

Did you, did Rootstein Hopkins get more orders for black mannequins after that?

No. No. Not in, well yes, we sold some. It certainly put the seal of approval on the company, but America wasn’t ready for that. But we had no trouble selling them in England or in Europe, none at all. Because there it was a fashion statement, they’d always had black mannequins, models on the runways in Paris and other places, but not in America. But what was interesting there was that we had Donyale and, I don’t think we had another black

Michael Southgate Page 78 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9) mannequin at that time, but then we had the black revolution when all the bricks started going through the windows in Chicago and Los Angeles. Then the world wanted black mannequins. And Adel being Adel, she wouldn’t make any. She said, ‘No, I’m not making mannequins for those reasons’. And she would not make mannequins because were scared that they were gonna get a brick through their window, and absolutely refused. And in fact didn’t make any more black mannequins until the eighties, when they became very much a part of the fashion scene. She would only do things for fashion, she would never do things for political reasons. Quite against her principles. She had very strong principles about certain things. So that was quite interesting that we then actually lost quite a bit of business – I was probably chuntering on, saying I need black mannequins, and of course you can’t make one like a cake, you have to wait quite a long time. [laughing] But suddenly we needed them and we couldn’t get them.

And can you remember who was the model for the next black mannequin?

For the next black mannequin? Ye-es. The next big one we had was a terrific girl called Pat Cleveland who is still around, she runs a model agency somewhere outside of Milan. She’s an American girl and she married a Dutchman and they’ve now settled outside of Milan. She’s one of the best known models in the fashion business. She’s worked for every top designer. And in fact I designed her wedding dress because she just dared not favour one particular designer [laughing] so she said, ‘Would you mind doing it, because’ she said, ‘If I go to Karl, then Claude will be furious’ and so I did it. But, yes, Pat was the next. She’d been modelling since she was, I think something like sixteen years old and she was, really came up with Holsten, when Holsten went on a… and then, I mean at the beginning when she was modelling, she was only modelling for things like Ebony magazine, the black magazines of America. But then she was just the right age. When she was in her early twenties, suddenly Paris, everybody, they were all using her. That was followed by Billie Blair, who was a very well known American model. She was the Virginia Slims girl, the big cigarette campaign, they always used to use a black model. Then, I’m not quite sure in order, but then of course we did, oh then Tookie Smith, who was, the designer’s name was something Smith. What was his name? Willie, Willie Smith was a known American designer at the time and his sister became a model and we did her. And then Mounia, who was the Yves Saint Laurent model, we did a whole collection on her. So now, I mean we always have at least one or two current black girls in the… and also all sorts of other combinations, I mean South

Michael Southgate Page 79 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

Americans and Russians and… we did Lila, who was the first Russian girl to come out of… when the wall came down. She came here and she did very well and, I don’t know where she is now, I think she’s still around probably.

So I was watching this programme, television programme, on Sunday, on Sunday night, When Black Became Beautiful.

Oh yes, I saw that. That was a little bit earlier than us, really. Those people were mostly fifties, weren’t they?

But it was interesting they were arguing that – I can’t remember the name of the model now, but that one of them was acceptable because she was a black version of a white featured…

Yes, in fact she was lovely looking, wasn’t she? Helen somebody. I, she’s before my time.

But did you notice, thinking back, you know, was there anything particular about the type of black models that made it?

Yes. I mean, there’s models on the runways today – Jean Paul Gaultier, they’re what I call very, very African. African not only in face, but body shape and everything, and they would never have been used then. Because they had to wear white clothes and a certain look. No, I mean, Mounia who was Saint Laurent’s chief model, she was definitely had Negro features, she was from Martinique. She just had great presence on a runway, I mean they do, generally speaking, have very good… Now Pat Cleveland I think was, she’s very light skinned, she does look black, but her actual complexion is a wonderful colour, light sort of ivory colour. And probably when she was young, that’s why she was acceptable. Billie Blair was very dark, but she was rather like the lady we were just speaking about on the television, she had a straight nose and a, yes, a controlled, a different kind of face. But now today it doesn’t matter, if they’re right. I mean we did a girl, Kadisha who is very African looking, but Iman, she’s classic looking isn’t she? She’s got a dark colour, but the Ethiopian face is slightly finer and different. So yes, it used to matter then, but it doesn’t matter now.

When you were a student, an art student, what sort of caught your imagination then?

Michael Southgate Page 80 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

Well I always liked fashion drawing, and of course theatre design is what I specialised in.

But whose theatre designs…

Oh whose?

… appealed to you, d’you think?

Oh. Oh I used to like Osbert Lancaster’s and the Zinkeisens and Doris Zinkeisens. Because don’t forget, they were sort of fifties people, when I was at art school it was still, it was forty something, yes. Forty-eight. So they were these people that had come up during the wartime. There was something called Fish which I think was three different designers together. Doris Zinkeisen used to do all the Regency kind of pretty things. Then there was Roland St Hill and St John Roper that did review, all the Talk of the Town, the big spectacular George Black showgirly sort of clothes. None of which I ever did, but that was what appealed to me at the time. I wasn’t into The Seagull or [laughing] anything like that. I wasn’t very… I was definitely sequins and feathers and glamour, you know. [laughing]

Because you mentioned, is it Ralph Koltai?

Yes. Yes, he wouldn’t have been an ideal of mine. But I mean, then that’s, when I was doing scenic design, one was still designing scenery. Ralph Koltai was of the school of machinery, you know, metal walls coming down and hydraulic lifts and then Sean Kenny, you know, with his wonderful sets for Oliver!. And Blitz. It was the beginning of the electronic set where everything moved by computer, yes I wasn’t in that school at all, we were still painting trees and things when I went to school.

What sort of clothes did you wear when you were a student?

Oh, a student. Well, nothing too exciting. Because don’t forget there was no such thing as designer clothes then. But we used to express ourselves with things like sandals with bright yellow socks. Bright yellow socks were very big. Yes, that was very art studenty at the time. What else? I don’t think there was much of a… I mean it’s not like students today struggling to make fashion statements, because we didn’t have any money and also there wasn’t much

Michael Southgate Page 81 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9) available because it was still just like the war. I mean the war was actually over, but there was nothing in the shops and people were still making dresses out of blackout material and curtains and anything they could find. So, creatively one wasn’t, I mean I find today what students do with themselves is so creative. I go all the time to the London College of Fashion here and I love looking what they’re doing and what they push together and the wonderful combinations of things that they do, but that hadn’t happened in my time. We would have been very conventional. It was the yellow socks were the big statement. That’s about it.

And where would you have got those from?

Oh. Yellow sock were quite country, dandy dressing of that period. Also, not that I had them, because I didn’t used to wear them, but bright red waistcoats with little yellow, little brass buttons, or yellow ones, or Tattershall check ones. The country farmers used to put those under their dreary old sports jackets with their riding breeches, and there was a sort of country look and red and yellow was quite acceptable in sort of little accent pieces. I wasn’t really into that because at art school we weren’t farming, we wanted to be something else. I don’t know what we were. I really can’t remember having definite looks. I mean I know fair isle sweaters were considered quite dashing. I think it was all left over from the Prince of Wales and things. [laughs] There wasn’t much guiding for teenagers there. And of course, anybody like nineteen to twenty, they all looked about forty anyway. Particularly the women with their red lips and black eyebrows, there was no subtlety about make-up. I mean, I always remember at art school, the boys all looked like boys and the girls looked like women, although we were the same age. And it was because the make-up was so crude and hairdressing was so awful. It was all sort of frizzy and people were still using curling irons and curlers and getting this crimped funny look to their hair, nothing natural. [laughs]

So when was it that you felt your own clothing style became expressed

Oh. I suppose when I got money and when I came to London. At first I came with quite inappropriate clothes, I had check coat, check overcoats and, very country – I mean I was a country boy really, I still had a Suffolk accent, which I always could fall into, but it used to really be there all the time in the end. But, no, it took me time to learn the different style of dressing for London. And then of course I started to work in shops and then once you do that, you actually see the stuff and you start to wear it and, the sixties was a fantastic time,

Michael Southgate Page 82 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9) because ordinary people could afford exciting clothes. I mean there was, for men there was Take Six, it was a wonderful chain of shops. You could buy a maxi overcoat with matching trousers that went into knee boots. We all looked a bit like sort of cossacks or something, it was a funny look. And then there was the velvet suit period when we all went dandies with sort of marcasite buttons on black velvet jackets and funny shirts that had sort of tied cravats. We all went a bit Regency at one time, with all the long hair and the bouffant hair. And it would change, every year or so there was something else, you know, it was fun and we could afford it. When I was young, most men had like two suits; one for work and one for Sundays, they couldn’t afford more.

What were you wearing when you mentioned having to wear a suit for the Aquascutum interview?

Oh. I was probably…

What were you wearing otherwise?

I was probably wearing, yes, I had, I could afford things then. I was probably wearing something from John Michael. Maybe a Saint Laurent, or something like that. You know we, yes, I think probably it was a navy blue Yves Saint Laurent suit. Probably the Rives Gauche range, not the top one. But, yes we, by that time I had some decent clothes, but when I first went in the theatre I had no clothes, didn’t have anything.

But what were you wearing when you weren’t wearing a suit – you said you didn’t want to wear a suit every day?

Oh, you mean when I was… well, probably jeans and a sweater and… I didn’t have, to do my freelancing in these Madam shops I didn’t have to wear a suit, no. I used to look, have to look clean and respectable but no, I didn’t have to wear a suit, that was definitely for the big shops.

You could wear jeans?

Michael Southgate Page 83 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side A (part 9)

Mm. Oh yes. Yes, no problem.

So when did jeans become available?

Oh my goodness, I can’t remember when you couldn’t get jeans, truthfully. They reached a different level with the eighties, I mean the designer jean – well it was designer everything wasn’t it? But jeans were pretty acceptable for studio people, people working in the theatre. We all used to wear jeans, even in the sixties. Very tight, narrow ones of course. Could hardly do them up, they were so tight, but as we were all so thin, didn’t matter.

And who manufactured those?

Oh well, people like Take Six or Levi’s even, were going then, but everyone. I mean… you could go into Carnaby Street and you could get a really nice pair of trousers made in about four hours. There were loads of shops there with Spanish people on machines in the back, and they’d measure you and you’d go back in four hours and pick them up.

Altered them or actually made them from scratch?

Made them. They’d show you some cloth and… it was just like being in Singapore or something. [laughs] Yes, there was a lot of those. At least three or four. It was jolly nice and I mean it would cost you like five pounds for a new pair of trousers. [End of Tape 5 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 84 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10)

Tape 5 Side A (part 10) So what do you think you actually got out of art school?

Just an overall development of my natural talents. At Ipswich you see, I did the general art course and it was three years of doing fabric design, life drawing, anything – illustration, architectural drawing – which I hated. I used to do it by freehand and get… we had a nasty German teacher called Mr Bellers and he used to grab you by the short hair at the back of your neck and said, ‘I can see you doing that’ because instead of using the compass, I used to be able to do it by freehand, which was quite wrong, not supposed to do that. Doing isometric projections and all that stuff. Oh I hated all that. But there again you see, it’s typical me, I had to learn that and I didn’t want to learn it. Anyway. Had a marvellous lady called Miss Briggs who was a scout, no a guide mistress and she treated us a bit like a load of guides. She was a big fat lady. For a whole year, we, it was, I think it was just called design, it wasn’t fabric design but that’s what it was like more, but for a whole year we drew nothing but heart shapes, freehand. And you could draw long hearts or fat hearts or thin hearts and you had to make circular patterns and border patterns, but always hearts, but of course I can still draw almost a perfect heart because it’s a jolly good shape to know how to draw. [laughing] It teaches you to control. But oh! We used to throw our eyes up to the… oh, not again, not more hearts. Then I had a really nice fashion design teacher called Joan Taylor and she went on to Norwich University I think, and I think, well probably not there now, she must be too old, but she was young and I liked her a lot and she was very tolerant of my sequin phase. [laughs] I always remember, we had this imaginary penthouse that was all red carpet and chrome and black leather furniture and glass tables, it was very, very contemporary and we had to do a dinner dress, not a dance dress, a dinner dress. Well of course, mine was red with all sequins all over it, and she said, ‘Don’t you think it would be scratchy on the metallic chairs and on the table?’ ‘No’ I said, ‘No’. [laughs] Yes, she was very tolerant of all that. So that was that. And then I went to Brighton and did, there I concentrated on set design. And I did learn quite a lot there about things that I didn’t like actually, I never liked anything to do with the mechanics of things, I mean carpentry or electrical work. When I went into the Air Force and I did all the aptitude tests and they said, ‘Oh, you’re just perfect for an electrician’ and I said, ‘You’re out of your mind, I don’t know one wire from another’. ‘Oh but all your tests, you can put all the right shapes in the right place and…’ Now, it’s true, I can see it. I’ve since had a very good assistant who was a telephone engineer and he took me

Michael Southgate Page 85 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10) backstage in a telephone exchange. I’ve never seen so many wires in my life, millions of wires, all different colours and of course he just sits there going like this, well it’s perfect for doing all this display work, he’s got the right sort of fingers, the right sort of mind, he knows where it goes. I could have probably have done that, but I didn’t think so at the time, wouldn’t even hear of it. But I did learn about construction, about, flats and how you brace up things and so they don’t fall over when the actors go on and off [laughing] and things like that, and yes, I did learn quite a lot there. And then of course I went into the Air Force and didn’t go back to finish that because I then started to work. And I really needed to work, you know, I was, I could have gone home, but I didn’t want to go home and I couldn’t expect my parents to keep me any longer and so I just started doing this freelance work and that, truthfully was the end of it. And I did then go to set and costume design and Central School in the evenings, but you can’t do things in the evenings, it strings it out for too long, you know it takes forever. And then I got so busy. You know, I was, I used to work so… not that I felt I was working hard, but I used to, when I was doing the freelance I was also at nightclubs at night. So I used to get home, I became obsessive about sleep. I used to finish my day jobs, rush home and go to sleep and then my friend would wake me up and drive me down to the Stork Room or Le Rondelle or somewhere and then I’d be there till about one thirty in the morning and then come back home and sleep again and still get up about eight to go to, just about slip into work by ten- ish. Being freelance, that suited me very well because I didn’t really start till ten. So, after that there was no time for thinking of going back to school. I’d quite like to go back to school now. But I’ve got too old, my retention’s not great. I can read things and learn things, but I can’t keep them. I find I loose it too quickly, it’s annoying.

So, when you were, when was it do you think that you formulated the sense of what you wanted to do?

Oh, I’ve never known that. I really, I just wanted to survive and earn money. That was the reason I could never give up my display work when I was really very successful on the stage in the end of my career. I still kept it going because I’m paranoid about… I’m quite the same now I’m retired. I’m alright, I’m comfortable, I’m still constantly worrying about earning money.

Where d’you think that came from?

Michael Southgate Page 86 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10)

Probably from my parents. The fact that they kept up such appearances and didn’t have any money. Really didn’t have any money. But one would not have really known that.

What was their response to you going to art school?

Awful. Didn’t like that at all. ‘What are you gonna do? That’s not a proper job. What on earth will you do?’ And then, when I said I was going on the stage when I came out of the Air Force, my mother said, ‘But to do what? You can’t do anything’. [laughs] I said, ‘Well I’ve been doing something’ [laughs] ‘And they think I’m quite good at it.’ ‘I can’t believe it’ she said. But they did, when I started to be in things, they did in fact come and they were always, they’d always turn up and they were quite supportive once I got going. But my brother, I’d been twenty something years in the theatre all over England and different places, didn’t have a terribly starry career until the end, but I’d been around, but when I went and did the Max Bygraves show, I got a phone call from my brother, ‘Michael, Edna’, that’s his wife, ‘Edna and I, we wondered if you could get us tickets for your opening night’. And I said, ‘Russell I can’t, we’re not being given any tickets, but I could get you some next week’. ‘Well, let’s say Saturday then, because we really would like to see Max Bygraves’. [laughs] That sums up our relationship. [laughing] That’s quite true. [laughs]

Was it something to do with your act being in drag, do you think?

No, because it wasn’t always in drag. It ended up a lot of drag, but at the beginning I mean I was in all sorts of things. Student Prince and…

Singing?

Yes. Oh yes. Can’t sing really, but I’m a good faker you know. I’m not a good dancer either, but I can get away with it. Well I can’t now, because I’ve got arthritis. [laughs] But I always could.

D’you do anything for your arthritis?

Michael Southgate Page 87 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10)

I take those things over there – MSM and glucosamine, that’s it, I think. They do relieve it a bit. And then I’ve got Naprosyn for when the pain gets too bad and, I can live with it, it’s tolerable. You know, what is awful is it’s completely ruined my gait, I’ve got no sense of balance, I don’t walk properly. I can almost fall over standing still, if I put my mind to it. The whole balance just goes because it’s all here. Well, it started up, you know, I told you what I did, I crushed my heels, oh yes. I fell, no I didn’t fall, I was in Dover Castle and two people were waiting for me at the bottom of the keep in a car and I went up, because I wanted to see everything and they didn’t want to get out the car and have a look, and there was a sort of mock tournie going on, the joisting match and I got rather carried away watching this and I said, oh God, I’ve completely forgotten about them downstairs, so I looked over the wall and they were – I could see the car right down – so it was like a six foot wall, stone wall, so I jumped off it, to go down the keep, ‘cos otherwise I’d have to have gone all the way round the castle, like a spiral, but what I didn’t realise was that the hill was chalk, so my feet literally went from under me as I landed, I went down the hill on my arse, like a toboggan, ‘cos it was so shiny and chalky, and then my heels hit the ground, which was a stone path, and I crushed both heels. And they told me afterwards that, he said, ‘You’ll probably develop arthritis’. And it went to my ankles, because it’s rather funny what happens, when the heel – they didn’t put any pins in it or anything, it was just like a cracked egg – but he said it will heal itself, I didn’t walk on it for six weeks, but he said, of course it will overcompensate, so your ankle will be walking on a heel bigger than what your natural heel is, so he said, it will give you problems with your ankle, which it did. And then I had a year or two where I had a very bad ankle, then because I suppose you compensate in walking and so on, it went to the other ankle and now it’s gone to my knees. But it hasn’t gone any further. [laughs]

And how long has that development taken?

It’s taken about eleven, twelve years. Yes, it’s been a slow steady progression. But you know, there’s always something. I was incredibly fit and well before that, but there’s always something, you know. If it’s not an illness, it’s a stroke, it’s a… [laughs] you know, you think you’re doing so well, but there’s always something that brings you back to reality. It’s no good complaining.

And what’s your attitude to medication?

Michael Southgate Page 88 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10)

If it hurts, get it fixed. Other than that, I don’t take undue care of myself. I don’t like suffering pain, I don’t mind having… but I mean I don’t really have faith in homeopathic and crystals and laying on of hands and all those other things, I don’t go down those roads. [laughs]

Because, is there sort of, I wondered about that, because I wondered you know, whether, well I don’t know, but you know whether Americans, are there any American habits that you think you’ve acquired?

Hardly any. Hardly any. A different occasional phrasing in things, because if you don’t say it the way they’re used to hearing it, they don’t understand you. Habits… No, I think I’m more, but I think the world is, I mean I was several years in America before I’d ever had a credit card. And when I lived here I didn’t think people that had credit cards that was quite respectable, you know.

So when did you finally get one, when did you give in?

Well I had to have one for business, ‘cos of taking out customers, there’s a lot of entertaining going on with that stuff and so I got used to that. They always terrified me, I hated those spills coming in, I’ve never liked that. But now I must say, I do have credit cards and I use them and I use them, it’s easier than keep constantly going to the bank and getting cash and things. And in some cases it’s much more convenient in shops and things, they prefer the credit card, because they don’t like cheques that much. So, yes, that’s the biggest change, but I wouldn’t say that’s particularly because of America. I think if I’d have been living here it would have been the same. Yes I think so.

And what about food?

Oh yes. Oh my goodness. I put on roughly a pound a year for every year I lived in America, which doesn’t sound much, but when you think I’ve been there twenty something years. So last year, or maybe it was the year… no, I think it was the very beginning of last year, I suddenly hit one sixty, which I’d never in my life been. I’d always been one forty something. And I ended up at one fifty for years and I thought well

Michael Southgate Page 89 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10) that’s – ‘cos I’m talking in pounds now, ‘cos that’s, that’s something American – but I really hit ten stone, which is heavy for me. I’d been nine stone four or six or seven all my life, but then I gradually started, but then I actually went up to nine sixty and I’ve got down to, I’ve got down to one fifty again now, which is… but last summer I got down to one forty-five, which is just right for me now. I was much too thin really, when I was young. But I’m too fat at the moment. Not that I mind being fat, if it was alright, but I don’t feel as good, you know, I don’t…

But you don’t look at all fat.

You just thicken up, you know, everywhere. Yes, you’re better covered all over sort of thing, as you get older and you can’t keep it… I mean there is an… I mean have you ever seen those Leonardo da Vinci drawings when he draws himself at every age? Oh yes, he’s a tall skinny thin man, but every ten years he drew himself again and where I am now in the seventies is not a pretty picture. [laughs] And I think yes, I’m just like Leonardo da Vinci. [laughs] It’s true. I don’t think you can fight it forever though.

And what do you, what sort of foods do you like eating?

Oh, I’m a very good eater and like almost everything. I do enjoy food and I like restaurants very much, and home cooking. I like both, but I like, well I’m lucky, I’m surrounded by people that cook very well. And now my last chap to leave the house has now married a chef and she’s terrific, so we’re getting really good food again from her. So, yes, I think that’s my main pleasure now, is interesting food. I don’t like, I’ve never fallen into the fast food thing that New York loves. I mean a lot of New Yorkers like good food, but they also eat a lot of garbage as well, they like both, they love pizzas and burgers and that stuff. I think I’ve had perhaps three McDonald’s in my life and every time hated them and thought they were awful. No, I don’t like junk food, really. But the trouble is in America of course is the quantities go up so… and you do get used to it. I mean I used to think, oh God, there’s enough here for three people. You end up in the end eating a lot of it. But I’m much more sensible now.

And…

Michael Southgate Page 90 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10)

And I drink. I like about, I’d say I have a couple of whiskies every evening. Even, I used to never drink on my own, but I do now. I didn’t used to, if I wasn’t with somebody I wouldn’t have a drink, but for the last five or six years, I think since I retired more, I do have one.

Because where would you take clients when you were entertaining?

Everywhere. The newest – I mean don’t forget most of them came in from Middle America. I used to see sometimes the same Broadway show, I saw The Greatest Little Whorehouse in Texas seven times. I mean, because they all want to see the same things. They want the hot ticket, they want to see… that’s part of the deal. And whatever were the newest trendiest restaurants and you know in New York they’re constantly changing, so you had to keep up with all that, where the newest things were. That’s almost an occupation in New York, being ‘in’, knowing where to go, what is trendy. That’s why they turn over so quickly because, they don’t many of them settle down into being a good staple restaurant that you go to year in, year out. There are a few; there’s like La Bernadin where you always go for French cooking, for fish. There’s one or two like that, but on the whole it’s a transient thing, as soon as it’s open it’s starting to get old-fashioned, you know.

And would Adel have to do that here, in England?

Yes. We all did it. We did it here, we, I mean because, here you’d get the Germans coming in, the Dutch coming in. If the agents brought them over, it was up to the agent to take care of them but then Adel would always at least one night take them out as a thank you to them. Adel would never, now when we first went to America it was quite common practice that all suppliers to retail, not just mannequins, there was a backhander to the buyer. It was a way of life, I mean they used to get things like cars and new kitchens and yes, I mean if you went to a fixturing house that did fixturing, then they’d completely refit your kitchen for you and that sort of thing. And sometimes hard money. Adel would never do that, we never did it in England, we never had to do it England, but it was a lot of pressure when we first went to America. But she said, ‘No, you can give away anything, but you don’t give away your work’. That was her attitude. But she would entertain. She would take people to dinner, take them to the theatre. That was about the limit of it, but

Michael Southgate Page 91 C1046/08 Tape 5 Side B (part 10) she’d do it very lavishly, she was very generous that way. But it paid off, people were very fond of going out with her.

What did she wear?

Oh, she wore lovely clothes. When she got better off. At the beginning she didn’t wear anything, dirty old jeans and t-shirts, but no, when she had a position to fill she could dress beautifully. Her inclination was not to wear anything smart at all. I mean journalists were always saying to her, ‘Now what is your idea of fashion?’. And she’d say, ‘Well I think fashion is comfortable’. And they didn’t like that. Not particularly. ‘Yes, I really think it should be comfortable.’ [laughs] That didn’t go down very well. But she did understand, so when she was sort of… she loved Jean Muir, for a sort of everyday thing. And then, because she was so loyal, when she had to really dress up, she nearly always wore Zandra Rhodes because they were such mates. And so she would have felt disloyal if she didn’t wear Zandra. Actually, it wasn’t always right for her. But, actually it was, it suited her, she could pull it off. Because she was not a pretty woman, but she was a very interesting looking woman, you know. She had a, she was small and had a very sharp chin and nose, fine little face. It could look very hard sometimes when she had that mood on her, you know, it was like a nail, but then she also had a great smile and she was really very sweet. She was a very nice, unique woman is… she had a sort of insight. I always remember we interviewed an accountant and she said to Rick, ‘Oh you and Michael interview him, I don’t want to be involved in all of that’. And so we interviewed this chap and Rick was always rather impressed with public school, I think that was being Canadian or something, but this chap was very public school and nice chap, can’t remember his name because he didn’t get the job. And I said, ‘Well I think he’s fine and he’s seen Celia’, so he said, ‘I’ll just get Ada to come and have a word with him’, so she came in. Listened to him talking, she said, ‘Has there been any history of mental illness in your family?’ Well this man disintegrated before our very… ‘Well, I mean, yeah, I mean I have had a breakdown’. Well neither of us had picked it up. And she did have this uncanny way of knowing, of getting to the heart of people. And she wasn’t at all vindictive or, everything was forgivable, but she would know. She didn’t judge you for it, but she could immediately see your strength or your weak points.

[End of Tape 5 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 92 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11)

Tape 6 Side A (part 11) (SIDE B CLOSED)

Michael Southgate, eighteenth of March, 2004.

I wondered whether we could just, to sort of finish off the Rootstein Hopkins thing…

Where did we get to?

We, well we hadn’t really got, we got, we were talking a lot yesterday about display, but I felt that one of the things I wanted to ask you more about was what Rick’s sort of role in the company was?

Okay.

And your… you know, how he treated you and things?

Well, in the early days Rick was really very kind to me. He opened up all sorts of venues because I was doing fashion freelance work throughout London. But being a display manager and then a display director of Aquascutum, he, and always looking for a main chance, he always had that about him, he wanted to be something more than just a display director. And he and Adel saw this gap in the English market that there was no major mannequin manufacturer in England. In fact you know, there’s never been more than seven or eight mannequin manufacturers in the whole world that are any good, there’s lots of cheap knock-off people that don’t create anything, they just copy and adapt, but creative people, there’s always been a good house in France, Italy – France and Italy are the people that have a history of it. But in the fifties, definitely the best mannequins in the world were made in America. And from Italian sculptors, the woman that designed them was called Mary Brosnan and she was Irish I believe, Mary. And they had great style and they were very sporty, in the same way that American fashion has always been streets ahead of anywhere else with sportswear. But we didn’t appreciate it at the beginning of the fifties because sportswear wasn’t a major industry. Of course today, in 2004, they are the major industry of the world. American sportswear is probably the leading, but in those

Michael Southgate Page 93 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) days there was Bonnie Cashin, 1Mary McCardell doing excellent, clean, very pared down, classic sportswear, which Americans have always appreciated. And they designed mannequins mainly to take that, they were rather horsey, county looking ladies. Definitely, in America they call it carriage trade, definitely up-market, they looked very aristocratic. And so, even Aquascutum and one or two other houses in Europe used to import the Brosnan mannequin to have in the window, because there was nothing quite like it in Europe. So Rick saw this and when Adel, who used to work at Aquascutum and they got married, he said, well we can’t work together any more because we can’t have husband and wife on the same team…

I wanted to ask you about that, was that actually…

Company policy?

…illegal, oh it was company policy?

It wasn’t illegal, but it was policy in, and still is I think in many companies, that husbands and wives shouldn’t be in the same company. So Adel then set up work on her own as a freelance prop maker, then on one of their trips to the States they discovered a nylon that could simulate hair. It was a by-product of the nylon industry and Adel got some of this and in her prop, little prop company she started making wigs for mannequins. Which then got Rick thinking perhaps they should make mannequins because there were no English mannequins and so even though he was a director of Aquascutum, he and Adel formed this idea and they financed a sculptor and they, the first mannequins they made were very stylised, very thin, they were called ‘Fashion Sketch’ and they looked like a fashion sketch, a very slim, unreal looking woman in rather dramatic poses, but then modelling in the fifties was very dramatic, there was nothing natural about it at all. I mean models had to adopt a certain walk and they were all very stylised, even on the runway, so when they made the figures, they were definitely stylised.

And what were they made out of?

1 Interviewee’s correction: ‘Claire McCardell’

Michael Southgate Page 94 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11)

They were also fibreglass, yes. They were also fibreglass. Prior to the fibreglass era, of course mannequins used to be made out of paper maché, or plaster or wax, going right back to… they say that Worth, the couturier, was the first person to create mannequins. He used to make small mannequins and dress them in replicas of his clothes and then they’d get sent to the courts of Russia and Spain, showing what the clothes could be, and then I think he then made some for his Paris salon. And he is credited with creating the idea of mannequins, although, even in the pyramids they found shapes that the ceremonial robes used to be put on. So I think mannequins probably started off like dressmaker’s dummies, as something to fit a thing on and then probably some little shop maker had a, working at home, some little dressmaker would have a shop, a window - not a shop window - but a window and she’d stand a dummy in it with an example of her work on it. And then I should imagine somebody put a head on one and then they got legs and arms and they kind of evolved. [laughs] I would think that’s how it happened, but nobody really knows. So Rick and Adel went down this road, got their money together – they didn’t have much money – but they got the money together and they financed this thing and it grew slowly from there. Rick left Aquascutum as a director and it was when he left, he was retained as a consultant on the display and the advertising and found that it really was too much, having his own practice and doing that and so he introduced me to Aquascutum because, I think they’d made their first collection to show, of mannequins, and they got in touch with me to do the stand and dress it and it was at the St Ermin’s Hotel in Victoria, which is a marvellous Edwardian entrance hall. Oh God, it was very elaborate, I hope it’s still there. And we did it like a wedding reception; we had a bride and groom and bridesmaids and then we had, the guests were all very grand in sort of military uniforms and… and it looked wonderful, all dressed out in this huge foyer of the hotel. And then he bought the Aquascutum people down to see it and Charles and John Parker, the two main directors, said, ‘Yes, that’s the person we need for our windows’. So that’s how I got into Aquascutum and then Rick opened his own design office and it was adjoining Adel’s premises in, by that time she’d moved to Soho Square, in a little mews at the back called Falconberg Mews and he had a successful practice for a number of years. But, I think it was mainly him constantly pushing Adel to get bigger. He could see that one couldn’t really sustain the business, take care of people – they were always very aware that their employees had to have a pension scheme, they had to have all the things you’re supposed to have, so you couldn’t run as a cottage industry and so he was always pushing. Adel was more reluctant, she liked something small that she personally could manage and

Michael Southgate Page 95 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) look after. But we then got an agent from Holland, called Martin van Houten who covered from, from Amsterdam he covered Germany and Brussels – I think that’s as far as he went, he may have gone to Spain too, but I’m not sure. Anyway, that was our first foreign agent. So suddenly orders were coming in. We hadn’t even tried to sell to America yet. And that was the situation for quite a few years. Well then, we had to take over our own production, I think we discussed that yesterday, and the first unit that we had was fine at first, but then it wasn’t enough, so we had to take on a bigger premises at North End Road in, just off the Cromwell Road there, and Rick and Adel, they decided that he would leave his, close his practice and open and supervise the factory. So after that, he became in charge of manufacturing and once he did that, he was always pushing for more units, more units, more for the men, and he really made the company grow. He didn’t like discussing that side of his work so much, but he was a, if there were any problems he would go off and get everything analysed. He had a sort of, a very methodical mind, he always got to the bottom of a problem. Didn’t communicate very well with workers and things because he was shy, which made him appear arrogant. But he certainly had them, their best interests in mind, always, as Adel did too. They had different ways of dealing with it, but they both always were very concerned that the workers had a fair deal.

D’you think the workers appreciated that about him?

Sometimes. Workers don’t usually. They really don’t, they only think of the gripes and the, and you cannot give workers everything they want, you wouldn’t make any money if you did. No, I don’t say that it was appreciated, but I think they had great respect for him. Whereas Adel, they loved, because she’d bring flowers, if the wife was ill and she’d bring… never forget somebody’s birthday and she’d come with cakes and… But you see, she was the good guy, Rick was always the bad guy. [laughs] Yes.

But what drove him?

Ambition. Yes, he, Rick would really have liked to have been either an architectural or a graphic designer, with a… that’s really… and that’s what he was very good at, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t excellent, you know. He had a wonderful clean line, he did very clear, clean drawings, everything he ever drew up it always worked, but he lacked imagination, I think is the right word. And he knew that, which frustrated him. And yet he had a vivid

Michael Southgate Page 96 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) imagination. All that sort of magic of the Irish when he was talking, you know, he could… his taste and his ideas were all formed in the early fifties before he ever came to England. He went to New York for a short time, he was in Montreal for quite some time, he was mad about Frank Lloyd Wright, he was mad about icons of that era, he never moved on, he kind of stuck in that somehow. Anyway. He also did all the graphics for the catalogues, for the advertising, he supervised the advertising schedules, he liked that side of it because it was a little bit more art. And he did all the working drawings for all our exhibitions. Backwards and forwards to Germany or to the States or wherever. So his contribution was immense, but of course he never got the credit for it, because it wasn’t… I was the one, I dressed the showroom, I was there when the customers came in. ‘Oh Michael, you’ve done a marvellous job’ you know. You said, ‘Well, yes Rick did a good design’. They didn’t even know who he was, many of them, who Rick Hopkins was. And Adel of course got it because she was the name on the company. It was rather a sad side of it really, because he would have liked… he always said he didn’t want it, but it was obvious he did really, he’d have liked a bit more credit. Which used to make him rather bad tempered.

But did he ever take part in the sort of hospitality…?

No. Never. For, he didn’t handle it well. And at the beginning I think, perhaps he did, then Adel he decided, that wasn’t for him, so we had to… Which was one of the reasons I got pushed to the front, because sometimes Adel just needed a man there and anyway Adel was naturally a shy person. A strange kind of shyness because she had great confidence, but she didn’t like the spotlight. She’d always try and push it to somebody else. And it suited it, pushing it to someone like me who was a bit of a, extrovert, suited her very well.

Was it anything to do with her own background d’you think, that sort of funny combination of confidence and diffidence?

I think Adel had a very strange hang-up. She loved Rick to death. I mean she would, but it was almost like a duty. She’d taken it on, no matter what, she was gonna see it through. And she was incredibly loyal, to all the people that were her friends, although if she ever dropped you, she really dropped you. But there was no in between bits, she would never be sort of nice to your face and then not nice behind your back, nothing like that. If you

Michael Southgate Page 97 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) were her friend, she was incredibly loyal. I don’t know, she always said that her father killed her mother. What she meant was, her father was not a Rabbi, but he was, I think it’s called a Scholar, he did nothing but study the Bible, the Old Testament – they were Orthodox Jews – and they ran a kosher hotel just outside of Johannesburg in a place called Warm Baths and she said, from the time she was like ten or eleven, Adel was working as a waitress, and she said her mother virtually worked herself to death while her father sat on his arse reading books. [laughing] And she’s never forgiven him, ever. So, I think she had a man problem to start with. [laughs] And obviously, I mean she, the company, she was the mother of the company. Her employees were her children. She worried about everything to do with their personal lives. She was incredibly… had her nose into everybody’s personal life and there were certain people in the company, they could play Adel like a harp, you know, they knew exactly how to get round her if the husband was drinking or somebody else was beating her up or, whatever. But I think she didn’t ever want children of her own and I got the feeling she really hated the idea of sex. She thought it was rather, I think she thought it was just ugly and unpleasant, it was something that offended her terribly. And Rick, something similar. He certainly didn’t want children, and although he pretended to be this sort of womanising, big, handsome man, there was definitely a problem there somewhere and so I think it suited each other very well, but of course like all these, like Virginia Woolf, you know, they took it out on each other. It was a tough… but there was no question that they were incredibly fond of each other and any problems, they were absolutely united.

Were you sort of caught in the middle?

Oh yes, all the time.

How did you feel about that?

I could handle it. I can’t say that I liked it too much. I was incredibly fond of Adel, I would do anything for her really, but we didn’t get on that well. But we knew that we loved each other, you know we… And very often I would take, all the time I’d take Rick’s side because Adel was very… she wasn’t flexible. And you could see that, usually what Rick said was sensible. It may not be what we all wanted, but, it’s hard to sum it up because Adel was incredibly intuitive and sensible too, but it was a different kind of thing.

Michael Southgate Page 98 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11)

Adel didn’t really like risking much. Rick always wanted to push it further all the time. So there was a tug of war going on between the two of them. And I got caught in the middle of that. And, no it was hard to manage, but it was, somehow I did manage it and managed to stay friends with both of them. But there were periods of on and off between the three of us, you know, us and them. Could be any combination of the three. [laughs] You never quite knew which way it was going. But we stayed always good friends.

Did they have a sort of PA or secretary as well?

Yes. Adele Bennett was Adel Rootstein’s personal assistant, took care of all that personal side of her thing. We also had a number of different PR firms that did our publicity, made sure we got in the right press at least a couple of times a year, when we launched a new collection got publicity for the people we’d chosen, and so on. Yes, it was run, I mean I should think the ratio of money spent on the PR was far too high, but it was the hype that made the models special and better than anybody else’s really. I mean they were better than anybody else’s, but they still could have just been mannequins. You see when I first went to America, I couldn’t stand that they kept saying, ‘What’s your new line?’ and ‘Oh, can you come to a vendors’ meeting at the store, we’re having vendors on Tuesday’. We’d never worked like that. From the very off, Adel decided we would align ourselves with the fashion business. A new collection was called a collection. In America, that would have been our new line. We introduced them at the same time as the collections in London, Fashion Week, so when the buyers came in to go to the shows they’d also come to the Rootstein showroom to see what we’d done. We aligned ourselves very much with designers. Adel would give designers, loan them or give them mannequins any, if they, I mean at different times they might have an exhibition at the V and A or something, at Simpson’s Gallery and anything of that kind, Adel would make sure that they, the door was open to those people. So we worked as part of the fashion industry and her press and everything made our company that way, and that’s how the buyers felt about Rootstein, it’s part of the fashion industry.

So, why didn’t… [telephone rings]

Sorry. [break in recording]

Michael Southgate Page 99 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11)

Why didn’t you employ your own PR person, rather than going to agencies?

I’ll tell you why. There’s a lifespan of a PR. They’re all incredibly excited to suddenly be doing Adel Rootstein. After they’ve done it for two or three years, they’ve gone down all the venues that they know that they can sell that thing. You’re better to change your PR about every three to five years, even if they’re good, because it stimulates more interest again, they’ll try different, differently… and every PR has their own connections. They don’t all have connections everywhere, so you keep moving it round.

Is the same true of America? Did you employ agents and agencies there?

No. We didn’t. We had, we employed freelance PR people for a special event if we had some particular launch of somebody or if we’d done a big job at the Metropolitan Museum or something like that. But truthfully, it’s too expensive in America and this was the parent company, America was a satellite to make money, not to start spending it, creating another company there, you know. Any PR that we got in England, we got copies of in America and we made sure it went to the right places. But no, you can’t have PRs… well we weren’t big enough to have PRs everywhere. You can waste a lot of money on PR, it’s quite expensive.

What would you normally do at lunchtime at Rootstein’s?

Oh, at lunchtime. Well, in America we didn’t really have much lunch, we’d have… but America works very much nine to five, you know. People come in, sharp and probably grab a sandwich and coffee at lunchtime and then… In England, they all do have a lunch hour and go round to the local Picasso coffee bar round the corner or restaurant and have sausage and baked beans [laughs] and those awful things that we eat here. And then sometimes you’d get customers, if they have an appointment around that time and then you say to them, ‘Would you like to go to lunch?’ then you take them to a nice restaurant nearby and do that. But there wasn’t anything rigid about lunch, truthfully. And if you were at the factory, well then you didn’t really bother because there was nowhere in North End Road except McDonald’s or something to go to, so you didn’t bother at all. So no,

Michael Southgate Page 100 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) lunchtime wasn’t a priority, I wouldn’t have really said I know what exactly we did, but it was as the day went, really.

What about the staff that you employed…

What about them?

…in America – was that, where did they come from?

Where did they come from? Well, we had a lady called Nellie, Fink who worked with me and her background was, she was a bookkeeper and she used to take care of all the accounts and the paperwork and so on. But she also happened to be a good saleswoman, so she did quite a bit of that as well. So she and I used to handle sales between us. Then we had another assistant bookkeeper and a receptionist and then we had a freelance accountant who used to come in every month and balance the books and that sort of thing. Then we had a, and then the salesmen in America were not employed fulltime by us, they were employed as freelance people and they carried like three or four different products, but they wouldn’t be able to carry another mannequin. And they were the ones that travelled the rest of the States.

Was all your staff American?

…er…

I mean did you take anybody with you from…?

Well yes, we took, when we opened the factory there the head make-up artist came over and she actually stayed, Sonia. At one period we had a salesman who came from England and he fell in love with our manufacturing resourcer’s daughter, and they married and so then Rod was living in America after that, but he didn’t, no he didn’t work for us for very long, he went somewhere else. No we didn’t have much priority on… At the moment, the person running the American office is English as well. Michael Stewart, he was at Burberry and he’d been in America something like fifteen years or something and when the position came free, he applied and he got the job so we do have someone English there

Michael Southgate Page 101 C1046/08 Tape 6 Side A (part 11) right now. But it’s not any priority of ours, at all. But it’s always thought of as an English product, we’ve always kept that very much going.

[End of Tape 6 Side A]

[Tape 6 Side B is closed]

Michael Southgate Page 102 C1046/08 Tape 7 (parts 13 and 14)

Tape 7 is closed

Michael Southgate Page 103 C1046/08 Tape 8 Side B (part 16)

Tape 8 Side B (part 16) [Tape 8 Side A, part 15, is closed]

Would you ever write your own autobiography?

No. Not in principle, but because I can’t. When I was in the theatre I used to write all our material and I can write a four minute, five minute sketch and, pretty well, I find I can’t sustain a book. Also, I’ve been told so many times that I should write a book and I’ve made notes and thought about it, particularly since I retired, I thought I might try to do that. When I write for the theatre, I’m writing to get to the punchline for a sketch, for a… I can write that rhythm, I can get to the point in four minutes or five minutes. When I start to write a book it becomes so laboured and I thought, nobody’s going to be interested in it. That’s another thing, I always think well, yes it’s my life and people that know me, it’s interesting, but it’s not that interesting. It’s not… I don’t know that I’d want to pick up and read all that about a perfect stranger because I’d think half of it probably was made up, you know [laughs], why would anybody do that, you’d think. [laughs] So, no, I’m sure I will never write a book and I think it’s because truthfully I can’t sustain it and keep it fresh. I can talk about it, but when I try and write it down it sounds so laboured. Perhaps I don’t have a good enough command of the language to make it flow right, or something. It dissatisfies me. I mean I’ve written as much as a chapter and I’ve gone over and over and over, and I could keep going over it you know I, so it doesn’t work for me. I’m not a natural writer, that’s the thing and as I said to you at the beginning of the interviews, I’m only good at things I can do without really trying, and that’s… it’s too hard work for me. [laughs]

But is there anything you’d like to say that I haven’t asked you about or…?

I don’t think there is, really. No. When you were talking about the history and my early schooling of course, included a tremendous amount of studying of the Bible and the scriptures and I never could buy that, I really just, I mean I came from – not that my parents were religious, but I went to church schools and we always had prayers and we had Bible lessons and all that stuff – I never could go with it, but I liked the stories. And then I would say for the majority of my life, I would say that I just didn’t have a religion, but I like all religions, I’m interested in them. I think it’s quite nice to have something to

Michael Southgate Page 104 C1046/08 Tape 8 Side B (part 16) believe in. I’ve never been able to find one that I could say I am, a Buddhist or… but I’ve gone into, I like reading books about Moslems and Buddhists and anything really. Martin Luther, I like, I think he’s a very brave man, but it’s only as an academic thing, I don’t believe it and of course, you’ve got to believe. And I find that the, this latest surge of religious fervour by this new film, which I think is a very dangerous thing, The Passion, but I also like The Da Vinci Code that questions everything in the Bible, practically. And then I don’t know if you know about that, but there were three men that wrote, that were researchers on a BBC programme about that and they wrote a book after they’d finished doing the programme, called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Everything in The Da Vinci Code comes from that book. What Dan Brown did was, invent a fictitious story that fitted in all that information that these other three people had done, which I was rather disappointed because when I read The Da Vinci Code to begin with, I thought, God, what a researcher, what an original idea and I was so impressed with it and I’m talking about it to Dennis, one of the boys in the house and he said, ‘Oh, d’you know, I read all about that about three years ago when I was at college’. I said, ‘You couldn’t have done, it’s only just come out’. ‘Oh’ he said, ‘I did’. And he came up and produced this paperback, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and it said in it the researchers had done the BBC programme about the same subject, they’d been so interested they continued it. And everything in that book is fact, it’s not a fictitious book, it’s only what’s proven. Well, it’s all the things that are in The Da Vinci Code and it’s the source of where it came, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that they were both from Jewish, different Jewish houses, that the crucifixion was done in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea and nobody actually saw it and nobody really knows – I mean I always thought it was on top of a hill with thousands of people watching. Now all of those things I find incredibly interesting and I suppose what I was starting to say before I got carried away with that, I do believe in God or whatever, and I do believe in prayer, from personal experience. I mean I feel my prayers have been answered and I’ve got through some really tough things, particularly with Rod when he first came, he was a very delicate creature to handle and I was desperate, I didn’t know quite how to do it and, we got through it. So, and of course the older you get, I suppose that’s death looming round the corner, but I don’t think about death much. But I think it’s experience really. I do believe that you have to have something to reach out to. It’s some void or something that’s inside us all that, it’s a yearning to, which might just be part of our nature, a part of our make up, but it seems to work, it gets you through things. And so, I’m still searching for God. It’s the same way as I’m still searching for love and I’ll probably never find

Michael Southgate Page 105 C1046/08 Tape 8 Side B (part 16) either. [laughs] But yes, but even that, you see, the children love me, I’m quite sure they do. But it isn’t the love that you think you’re looking for, so you don’t always get what you want, [laughing] but you get something.

And what about 9/11 – did that have any effect?

I was here.

You were here.

Yes. Yes, I mean it’s affected everybody, but going back – I went back a month after it had happened – I mean it’s hard to really remember, it was… You see this big hole in the ground, you know that’s all you can look at. But Roddy and Trudy, they were all at the house in Brooklyn and they said you know, the dust and stuff was all falling in the garden, on the house and that’s like about three or four miles away. And, I think it has an incredible effect on people that were in firsthand experience of it. But going back to it, it’s like all these disasters, this awful one in Madrid, it’s fed to us through the media so it’s like a sort of another story isn’t it? You say, ‘Oh, how awful’, ‘How terrible’. But you don’t go beating the wall and crying and things, it’s another thing that’s happened and we’re getting so blasé about all this stuff, I suppose. And you know, I always remember, people have said to me, with the Holocaust, ‘Why did those Jews get in the train? Why did they go and get shipped off to…’. Well I know that when I went into the Air Force, six weeks of square bashing, you’re not a person any more. If they tell you to jump in the river, you jump in the river. You, a human being can get brainwashed and taken over so easily, so easily. I understand that those people got on those trains, and even when they got to the camp, they said they were going to the barn to have a shower, they went because they’ve, we become sheep. They can knock the self will out of you so terribly easily, you’ve got to be awfully strong. A lot of people just do what everybody else does. I try not to do that. I really try not to do that. Just because somebody says it doesn’t mean it’s right. And that was Adel’s feeling too, she, ‘Well that doesn’t make it right, just ‘cos everybody says so’.

I’m conscious of your appointment. Okay.

Michael Southgate Page 106 C1046/08 Tape 8 Side B (part 16)

Thank you very much.

[End of Tape 8 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 107 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17)

Tape 9 Side A (part 17)

Charles and Louisa Abrahams were co-owners of Aquascutum, it was owned between two brothers, Gerald and Charles. And Louisa was Czech, I think we might have mentioned her before, she was a golf champion and… and as soon as the Russians started to open up foreign trade, they opened up a series of Government shops which were called Tusex and it was the only place that you could buy foreign goods. And you could only buy them with foreign money, so if your cousin from Chicago sent you a hundred dollars, or somebody from London sent pounds sterling, you could only spend that in the Tusex shops. And they had things like Johnnie Walker whisky and clothes and jeans, which were like gold dust and so because Louisa was Czech and very well known in Prague, immediately opened up an Aquascutum shop. And I used to go over because I was on a retainer from Aquascutum for the windows. I used to go over about twice a year to do their trade exhibition or dress the shop or open the shop, anything. So one year we went into an industrial fair in Brno, which is about sixty miles from Prague, it’s like the exhibition centre – it’s near to Austria. And drove by car from here to Prague and, oh and then went from Prague to Brno a day later. But when we got to Brno, the British Ambassador didn’t have a car for some reason. He’d flown from Prague to Brno, so he borrowed Louisa Abraham’s car for the opening the next day. Well we went into a sort of staff canteen the night before the exhibition opened and it was full of workmen, the usual kind of pre-exhibition thing, and sat at big trestle tables and I put my bag with all my stuff in it by the side of the chair and when I came to leave after we’d had dinner, there was no bag. And I though oh well, I must have left it in the car, but I felt sure that I’d brought it. Anyway when we finally got back to the car it wasn’t in the car either, and so then it was off to the secret police to report that the bag had been stolen with my passport, my travellers’ cheques, my visa - everything inside. And, so the report was made and then we had to carry on and finish the exhibition and so on. On the Saturday night, the day the exhibition was opening, we were, just got back to the hotel after finishing at the exhibition stand and I got a call, Inspector so-and-so – ‘We have found your, or have you missed your bag?’ I said, ‘I certainly have, I’ve reported it stolen’. ‘Oh well, it’s been found.’ And he said, ‘You must come at once to such and such a station’ and I said, ‘Where is that?’ and he gave me the address and it was in Prague. I said, ‘But I’m in Brno’. He said, ‘Well you must come at once’. So, I told Louisa and I said, ‘Look’, she said, ‘You’ve got to go right away’. And this was like six o’clock at night. I just caught a plane by the skin

Michael Southgate Page 108 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17) of my teeth and flew to Prague, was making my way I thought to this police station, but when I got, came down the staircase of the aeroplane, somebody came towards me in a raincoat and said, ‘Mr Southgate?’, ‘Yes’. ‘I’m Inspector so-and-so’, he spoke English, and he said, ‘Come with me please’. And we walked to, it was Saturday night, the airport was very quiet and we walked to a sort of empty building with an office and in it were, I don’t remember if they were Russians or Czechs - Russians I expect, and they didn’t speak any English. My bag was put on the desk in front of me and said, ‘Is that yours?’ and I said, ‘Certainly is’. ‘Well would you look in it.’ And I looked in, there was absolutely nothing missing. I think I’ve misled you a bit, I actually, I lost it on the Monday, it wasn’t until the following Friday that they phoned up to say that it had been found, so it had been missing a week. So, they said, ‘Well, is that all you have to say?’ and I said, ‘Yes. I mean you know, I reported it was missing’. ‘We know nothing about that.’ I said, ‘Well I reported it in Brno to the secret police’ and so he then said, ‘Well, whatever you say could be taken down in evidence against you’ and that sort of warning thing went on. And I sat there quite unperturbed, I thought you know, nothing’s happened. Well, the English speaking man disappeared to check on my story that… and I said that I was with Lady Abrahams who you know, was a well known Czech citizen, so they had to check on all of that. He disappeared at about eight o’clock at night and he came back at two thirty in the morning and that whole time, I just sat with these two that didn’t speak any English at all. And when he came back he said, ‘Well we have to tell you that the, your bag was found in the back of a car in Prague that had knocked down an old lady and killed her, and it was found on the back seat’ and he said, ‘How did you get here?’. I said, ‘I came by an aeroplane’ you know. ‘Well where is your car?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a car, I was in Lady Abraham’s car and the British Ambassador has that right now’, all this went on. Finally, at four o’clock in the morning they were, they kept disappearing and checking on things and they said, ‘Well you can go now’. And I was already leaving at Saturday morning anyway, that was my scheduled flight. Only when I got back to the hotel in Prague did I suddenly think, oh that was a bit hairy, [laughs] I really need a drink. Up to that time I hadn’t been too worried, I just felt I’d got to sit it out. So I had a stiff drink and went to bed and I think I was supposed to be at the airport by, for a ten o’clock flight. I think I was up there by eight, I thought let me get out of here. I walked through immigration and immediately got arrested for trying to leave the country on a stolen passport. [laughs] And then, all the people that I’d seen the night before were in their cabins in the forest somewhere and the people who were on duty, they said, ‘But there is no office at the

Michael Southgate Page 109 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17) airport’. I said, ‘Well of course there is, I was in it’. ‘Well, show us’. Well I did manage to find it. He said, ‘But this was all locked up last night. I said, ‘Well it was unlocked and I was put into the prison and until they all came back from their weekend, I was let out on Monday and everything was okay’. But I mean nobody said they were sorry or apologised or anything like that. And they hadn’t informed the people in Prague, Louisa Abrahams, that they’d detained me. I was just immediately sent from the airport to the prison and just stayed there overnight. Now the end of that story is, that another friend – not a very close friend and I can’t even remember her second name – but there’s a Czech architect woman here in London called Eve, Eva something and she does glass staircases. She’s very well known.

Eva Jiricna.

Exactly. And Eva said, ‘Michael, the exact same thing happened to me, although with me they said my suitcase was full of nylons which I was taking to bribe people with and I was kept, but for forty-eight hours’ and she said, ‘I am convinced that they used your passport for something, at that time’. I mean I don’t know what they did. I mean I always thought it really was a true case. She said, ‘I don’t believe the story about the person being knocked down’. She said, ‘They needed your passport, you looked a bit like somebody and so they get it and they use it and…’ Sounds a bit far fetched, but that’s all I can tell you, that’s the story. [laughs]

Were you allowed to contact the Embassy?

The Embassy doesn’t open on a weekend. [laughs] No, it doesn’t open. There was nothing I could do until the Monday and then by the Monday I was out.

Did you sort of complain afterwards to anybody?

You can’t complain about the Russians. But the next year, when I was supposed to go back again, they wouldn’t give me a visa. No, that was the end of it.

And what did Lady Abrahams think about the trouble?

Michael Southgate Page 110 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17)

Oh. Well she was always saying, well you know, don’t talk in the rooms because they’re bugged, they listen to everything we say. [laughs] She’s a bit of a Mata Hari herself, she loved all the intrigue I think. [laughing]

How had you met Eva?

How did I meet… She did a wonderful glass staircase for Joseph in Bond Street and they then reproduced a very similar one in Bergdorf Goodman, in New York, and I was working quite a lot in Bergdorf Goodman at that time and we just met each other. And we went, we had dinner in the River Café – no, I don’t think she des… did she design…? No, it must have been her, the woman’s husband isn’t it? Rogers, that did the River Café. But yes, I don’t know how I really met her, but it was to do with the shops you know. Probably first of all through Joseph and then when she came to New York, she got in touch with me. Oh, I think because they wanted mannequins made a very special size to sit on the steps or something. Very nice girl, really nice.

So has Joseph had, have they had mannequins?

Oh yes. Yes, they’ve often had… they change every few years, they have something else, you know. But yes, they’ve had quite a few of the Rootstein mannequins and one or two, I think probably Schlappi.

Because one of the things I wanted to ask you was about using someone’s image and whether there was any sort of copyright agreement involved?

Yes, there is. I believe Adel was the first person to start that. In the time that I spoke about of the American mannequins that were in the style of Mrs Babe Paley or in the style of Greta Garbo, they never claimed it was them. We actually sell the mannequin with the person’s name in the catalogue, on it. And model girls, model boys or other personalities. And a fee is negotiated, it’s not… it’s basically the same fee for model people, but of course if you do a personality like a Joan Collins or a Susan Hampshire we did another time and Janet Suzman, they negotiate what they think they’re worth. But it’s a flat payment, they don’t get royalties. Because there’s absolutely no way of predicting what will be a good seller and what won’t. Probably the most famous ones, with the exception

Michael Southgate Page 111 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17) of probably Twiggy, they don’t sell in big quantities, it’s a much more anonymous person that gets… you get a longer length of life out of, you know. Yes, but that’s how it’s done; there’s a contract signed at the beginning and they give us the right to reproduce their likeness. In the same way, in the mannequin business there’s a lot of knock-offs. Cheap companies will take one of, a Rootstein mannequin or another good company, stick it in a mould and maybe just change a hand, or put the head looking in a slightly different direction and if it doesn’t fit exactly into the original mould, there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. Nothing at all. But, if they put one of the Rootstein heads on to a figure, the real person can sue, because they did not give them the permission to use their likeness. And many times we’ve managed to stop people knocking us off by threatening with – we of course as a company would have paid for the person to, the costs of it, but it usually has, in fact it has always worked.

And has it always, have the finances of the copyright agreement ever prevented a mannequin being made, by somebody asking for too much money?

Yes, occasionally I think it has. Yes, with the coming of the super models. Adel had a wonderful eye, she was usually ahead of the game. And she was incredibly lucky, many of the people that she picked became very established after the mannequin. But one of the big mistakes she made was Linda Evangelista. She came for a go-see as we call it, and Adel didn’t like her. [laughs] And of course she went on to become one of the very biggest models of the eighties and nineties. [laughing] That was one of our failures, I’m afraid.

Why do you think she didn’t like her?

She’s rather blunt featured and wide mouthed, it’s a very obvious look. Adel liked much more interesting people. But of course, she just transforms very well, Linda Evangelista, she takes on many looks. But at that time, when she was starting off really, no Adel couldn’t see it. And I can’t say that I saw it, you know. And then some people turn you down flat, they won’t do it. I know we wanted to do Rupert Everett and he wouldn’t do it.

D’you know why? Why was he…

Michael Southgate Page 112 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17)

Oh, I can well see why. I mean it’s not a very happy thing you know, to see yourself. I always remember Chelsea Brown who was this black American dancer that was here in a show with me at the Criterion, and Adel said, ‘We really should do Chelsea, she’s so pretty’. And Chelsea was absolutely thrilled. And we said, ‘You do understand, once the mannequin is sold to the customer, we have no control on what they do with it’. And she said, ‘Oh, I don’t care’. And poor thing, the first time she ever saw herself was in Miss Selfridge and she was white with a blonde ponytail [laughing] and she was completely shocked. And then we did this wonderful Japanese model called Sayoko Yamaguchi and she had a very low fringe and a sort of geometric hairdo, rather Cleopatra like, and she came in one day after the mannequin had been selling, she said, ‘Adel, could you please insist they always cover my eyebrows’. She didn’t like her eyebrows showing. [laughs] Yes, so you never…. And once we did, Laurie Newton Sharp [ph] was the fashion, head of fashion I suppose she was, at Harrod’s and she was in her sixties and very well dressed in a very Paris kind of way, you know. And she would contact Adel and say, ‘I’m in such and such, I really don’t think I should be in there’. She didn’t like the cheap shops having her. And sometimes in the showroom, she didn’t like what she… ‘I would never wear that’ she would complain. [laughs] So some people relate all the time, other people can walk away from it, they just don’t care, they just don’t mind.

But what about, what about male mannequins then?

What about them?

Well what, I mean what was it d’you think that made Rupert Everett feel that you know, it wasn’t for him?

Oh. Well maybe he didn’t want to see himself in… I mean you can’t guarantee that they’ll be… I mean not that long ago we did Ute Lemper, who was a little difficult, very uptight. And the German agent, she comes from some very small town in Westphalia somewhere and of course when they heard that their local star was… well, it was the lingerie shop in her home town and she was sitting on a bed in a very lovely, very German negligee, you know, lots of lace and… she absolutely flipped. Her mother contacted us to say she was in a shop window in underwear [laughs] and we had a terrible hoo-ha there for a while. [laughs] So sometimes you know, they don’t like it. They don’t like it.

Michael Southgate Page 113 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17)

I wanted to sort of, to go back to you. Because you’ve just come back from a sort of holiday in Spain and I wanted to ask you what you do on holiday, how do you, do you like going on holidays and what d’you do?

Oh. I’m not a great holiday person, truthfully. But that was particularly to go to the Alhambra, which I’ve done before about five or six years ago, and I always wanted to go back, and I particularly loved the gardens – I’m crazy about gardens. Funnily enough, the gardens weren’t anywhere near ready yet, I thought they would be more advanced being Spain, because the weather was lovely, but no, they were a bit bare, but it was lovely to see the Alhambra again. We stayed in the little village just below the Alhambra, on the sort of, as you look down from the castle, you can just see this little village square at the bottom, in a very old – it was like an eighteenth century Spanish house that’s been converted into a hotel – and had some really nice food and a few bottles of wine and weather was lovely. That’s really what I do. And in the normal run, I do go to Barbados quite a lot because I still have friends there and when you go there you don’t do much really, except the beach and swim and go out in the evenings.

Who organises them for you?

Oh, I never go on an organised holiday.

No, no I mean who books the flight and…

Me.

You don’t have a sort of PA?

No, no I don’t. Although, talking of that of course, I think – I don’t know if we mentioned this before – in the last Christmas I suddenly got all this work in Las Vegas, it was one job and it turned out to be four and I had to keep all the receipts and the different accounts and each one separate for tax. And of course I realised, in all my life I’d never done that. I’d always had accountants, office staff. I’d never had to do it… I was awful at it. Oh! You’ve never seen so many boxes and jam jars with things thrown [laughs]… it was

Michael Southgate Page 114 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17) terrible. No, I’m not very good at things like that, but I can manage holidays okay. Yeah, I’ve had quite a lot of experience with that.

And how many holidays would you take in a year?

Well, at the moment you see, I have to come here twice a year for the Trust, which costs me quite a bit of money really. Because, like this time, I usually stay a month in March, because we have one at the beginning, two meetings at the beginning of March and one at the end, so instead of going home I stay for the month. That’s rather like a holiday. So I usually have one other holiday and usually go to the sun. But, get lots of weekends in the summer in New York you know, going to, like Rod now lives in Boston and there’s some really pretty countryside around there. Trudy, my girl, she’s, and her husband have a house in Vermont and sometimes I go up there you know, so we get into the country. People do in New York you know, they want to get out of the city as much as they can in the summer.

Sorry, who is Rod?

Rod is Roderick who is the chap that’s only just left my house at forty. The one that got married at, last New Year’s Eve. And he came when he was sixteen.

I didn’t realise he’d only just left.

Yeah. And he’s not forty yet, he’s forty next birthday. He’s thirty-nine. Yes, he left when he got married.

The other thing I realised I hadn’t asked you was where you shop?

Ah. These days I’m not very keen on shopping. Haven’t been for quite a long time actually. In what I call the designer eighties and nineties, it was part of the business that you had to have the right clothes. It’s not necessary any more. I still like to get nice clothes, but I also don’t like, well nobody likes designer clothes now, it’s very basic, simple clothes. I like… I like Ralph Lauren, because it’s very classic and at my age it’s

Michael Southgate Page 115 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side A (part 17) very hard to find things that look decent, because nothing looks good on you really. [laughs]

What are you missing?

Well, there’s just a time when you’re too old for certain things.

Like what?

Oh, I don’t know. Colours or anything that’s a little bit more extreme. I mean there’s some wonderful, wonderful suits in Selfridge at the moment, I was looking at them only last week. There’s Ted Baker and Boatang? Somebody Boatang. I mean they’re traditional suits, but they’re just in the most wonderful colours. You know, it might be a black suit with a pinstripe, but the pinstripe is bright turquoise or red. And then they’ll have a wonderfully contrasting shirt and tie with it, with clever things. I mean I was looking at a shirt, it was like a banker’s inch wide, blue and white stripe, but then over that they’d printed a rose print. So you had a businessman’s shirt, but the collar was white and then you could see the blue and white stripe, but you also could see these little roses as if they were peeping through trellis or something. I like things like that, traditional things that they just turn a bit and just make it more fun. But even those things, I tried them on and they’re cut so narrow for me. Now that I’ve gone into the sort of dumpy shape, they don’t work. [laughs]

You haven’t.

Well I have, I’m afraid. You should see. I mean Christian Dior have brought out stunning menswear, ready to wear, this, started last year – really very, lovely herringbones, very traditional materials, but they’re so tight. Terribly narrow. You really need to be absolutely no tummy at all and about a thirty-six inch chest and preferably about six foot at least. But the whole collection is like that and it looks marvellous, looks great on the mannequins.

[End of Tape 9 Side A]

Michael Southgate Page 116 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18)

Tape 9 Side B (part 18)

What were you wearing then in the eighties and nineties?

Oh, Gaultier, Issey Miyake… yes, and the sixties, Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes. I mean when I think of what we did used to wear, it’s, it’s amazing really. We were running about like sort of eighteenth century people with bishop sleeves and great big collars that almost came down to your chest, and high necks and cravats and the hair was long. Yes, it was a sort of sixties version of Regency bucks or something. Double breasted high collars, high jackets and all sorts of things. And then there was the maxi coat with boots, that was a big look for a time.

Is there any particular thing that you wore from those decades that you know, that stands out for you?

Well it would do now. I mean yes, I had a you know, bomber jackets for men and furs for men were very in, and I had a – it was called Romance Box [ph] – it was a sort of beige – dyed I suppose, bomber jacket. I mean I used to look like a ball of fluff coming along [laughs] with you know, tight bell bottom trousers or…

And who had done that, who had designed it?

I think I bought that in Joseph. I mean I really wanted a wolf coat because that was really very desirable, but again, you needed to be six foot something. So this bomber jacket, but I’ve seen pictures of myself in it since and [laughs] it was quite outrageous really. But I mean, I mean people wore things like that and thought nothing of it.

And have you kept these clothes?

No. No. In fact I gave my, that jacket to a lady in New York, my bookkeeper. She wore it for quite a long time after that. But suedes and leathers, they were very desirable, good ones. And when I was younger I didn’t have much money, so it was Take Six and Carnaby Street. You know, you got fashion. A bit like today, nobody cares if it lasted

Michael Southgate Page 117 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) because you only wanted it for the, sometimes just for the one event, you know. People would buy things just for a party, quite often.

So, when do you think that changed, that things became more…?

The nineties. As soon as the nineties came in, the economy went down, trade was bad and we’d been designered out. I mean there was too many labels, too many diffusions, every designer had like three levels; the top, the middle and the cheaper and suddenly it didn’t matter any more. And also, somehow, the American sportswear that had been pushing for all my life really, for forty, fifty years, suddenly came into its own. And the simple lines of the American sportswear suddenly became a look. And today, if you are too dressed, if you are too got up, you look old-fashioned and you look silly, really, I mean that’s the truth of it. Whereas before, people, a lot of people dressed to be looked at. You wanted to have something different and it was much more costumey. But then, bodies weren’t as nice. You know, in the fifties, sixties, women were short and dumpy and they either put on a merry widow and got a waist and – you know, that’s that tiny corset thing that pushes your boobs up and cinches in your waist – and they were soft and pliable you know, they were always shooting their boobs up and down according to what the fashion was and so on. But now, the bodies are so good. And the same with men. I mean men liked a suit, a nice tailored suit because they had no shoulders, no chest. Well they were so unhealthy looking, really. Now it’s quite different. Quite different. They want their bodies to show and they don’t want a lot of clutter on top of it. So I think that’s how that happened.

And would you dress differently in New York to how you dress in London?

Not now. No. In the summer you dress, in New York, much thinner than you ever do here. I mean it’s quite acceptable to go around in shorts and… in New York in the summer, because it’s so hot. I mean I couldn’t believe it when I saw people in offices, in their work in shorts, but they do now. They didn’t use to, but they do now.

And what would you wear then when you met clients when you were in America?

In the summer? Lightweight suits. You know, cotton or linen. Yes. You’d really need a summer wardrobe in the States, which here it doesn’t change, I mean that much. We don’t

Michael Southgate Page 118 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) even have big overcoats and things here now, do we, because people don’t go out that much, they’re in cars and things. But in New York you need a lot of summer clothes. You change at least a couple of times a day, because everything gets sweaty and wrinkled and… And then you go and freeze in the air conditioning because half the places are too cold. [laughs] Never quite know how to dress really. It’s a cruel climate really. Very cold in the summer, in the winter and very hot in the summer.

How did people, would you say, given what you were saying last time about being gay, how did they respond to you in America – was that any different to how you felt here?

No. Very few times in my life have I had trouble with being gay, with non-gay people. But I think, I think that’s how I handle it. I’ve never not, I’ve never pretended not to be gay, I’ve never had to do that, which was very much an American thing years ago. Oh, poor gays were always in suits and ties with a wife you know, they, terrified. I didn’t have that from very young, really. There wasn’t much point in it really, I was obviously gay, you know. More looking than the way I behaved, you know, I just did. I look less gay now, though I still look gay, but when I was young I, I was very girlish looking. Never acting, but looking. I was very skinny and lot of hair and you know, just was. I mean that’s why, in drag I made a much, much nicer looking woman than I ever have been a man. Much nicer. [laughs] I think that’s why I liked it. [laughs]

So, I’m not sure you answered my question in the sense that you seem to imply that it was you not noticing or sort of riding above it, rather than you know…

Oh you mean how I was accepted?

Yes.

I found I was liked. Particularly when I went to America, because I was a bit, I was forty- six when I went there fulltime, I’d been going there though for at least ten years before that. I think it was a bit… you know, they do like an English accent. I think I told you I went on this holiday in sixty-four or five where this American schoolteacher did nothing but find fault with myself and my friend, saying we were wearing long sleeves when we should have been wearing short sleeves and our hair was too long. Oh, he was terribly

Michael Southgate Page 119 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) twitchy and worried about us, but that was long ago. From the time I went in, I went there in seventy-six, it was never a problem. And of course, there’s an awful lot of gays in our industry, so really everybody in the industry is attuned to that. I mean even all the straight people, I mean half their customers are gay, so they have to… I mean a lot of the people that own the companies are not gay, but their customers are, so it’s just an accepted… it’s a bit like the theatre, it’s never been a problem. And it was the same here, really.

And what about, when you, do you think that being a gay man that your attitude to clothes is different in any way?

No. No I don’t think so. There’s a very gay way of dressing now. That didn’t exist when I was young. I mean the very, very tight tee shirt with the earring and the… they go out of their way to be obvious. I missed that. That was not my era. Everybody in our business in retail of a reasonably young age up to say fifty, everybody dressed, you know that was part of the business. Whether you were working in a shop or whether you were supplying shops or whatever. No, I mean I don’t think it’s a particularly gay, I mean gays do seem to like clothes, but then so do an awful lot of straight people and they’re usually the people in those businesses. No, I don’t think predominantly it’s anything different. I think a lot of gays wear clothes better, not me particularly because again, too short. I mean don’t forget I’m a mannequin person, I’ve always wanted to be at least six inches taller.

Can you just say how tall you are for the tape?

[laughs] I’m five foot six and a half. I’d like to be six foot. It makes a big difference on clothes, you know. And like most small people, from the torso up it’s normal, it’s the legs [laughing] that are never long enough. Big shame.

Have you ever had a suit made, sort of bespoke items?

Yes actually, I had one made about three years ago at Zegna, Emilio Zegna. And that was simply because a colleague’s boyfriend was working there as a manager in one of the branches and they made me a black linen suit and I couldn’t find one to buy and they said, ‘Oh we’ll make you one’. And it was very good. I haven’t ever been back, to have

Michael Southgate Page 120 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) another one, but it’s not because I didn’t like it, I thought it was very good. But usually I can get clothes off the peg.

And, have you observed any sort of differences between, you know in your experience, between being a sort of shopper in America, well in New York, and here?

No, I find that it’s one’s lifestyle, I mean it depends how much money you’ve got. When I was young, I didn’t have that much money, but I always enjoyed getting my clothes at places I could afford. When I got more money I went to better shops. But then, my whole life has been like that. I mean when I was in theatre I was earning I think, six pounds a week, when I started, but it was enough, then, you know. [laughs] You just tailor… when you were asking me the other day about politics and I thought well really, even politics, it changes with your circumstances. In the forties when I was a young teenager, when I was growing up, I was very socialist minded, but I’d come from a poor county, Suffolk. I saw farm workers that had got a cottage, two up and two down and I think five shillings a week. And it was at a time when the unions turned the working man’s life around. They got them a decent wage, they got them in coalmines, in steel works or on the land. And I saw tremendous changes when I first came to London in fifty-one, I was twenty-one and while I’d still been at home I’d seen the countryside change tremendously. Now of course, if I go back to Suffolk, it’s so gentrified and there’s not a cottage you can buy anywhere that’s not about a hundred and something thousand, you know. So, according to what your circumstances are, I think your politics change. But I was definitely for socialism and Labour and… which my parents were not, because my parents were equally, they weren’t well off at all, but they had a car, they had a house, which they’d got from the times they had been better off, and so they still kept those standards. That was that sort of funny English middle class thing that you were a Conservative and you kept… I can remember very clearly, my father had a friend called Ralph and they were good friends, they worked together for the Ministry of Food and he was apt to call in at the house on his way back to his house and he usually seemed to come just about dinner time. You know, we would never have our dinner. It used to drive me absolutely round the bend – I was like about twelve, fourteen maybe – I could never understand why we didn’t say, ‘Ralph, would you like some dinner?’ And if I said anything, it was, ‘Oh he always comes, he’s just like that, he always comes just when it’s mealtime’. But of course when I got older I don’t think they wanted Ralph to see what we were having for dinner. I think that was

Michael Southgate Page 121 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) what it was, it wasn’t good enough. I mean, that’s in hindsight I think that and we always had quite a bit of meat because you know, my father was in the butchering business. But something was wrong, and they wouldn’t ever serve up food if people came. And we very seldom entertained anyway. We never seemed to have people for dinner or… no, I think that was, that was money I’m sure, you know.

Did they read a newspaper?

Oh yeah.

And what was it?

Oh sure. My father would read The Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Yes. That was about it really. And we always had Radio Times. Big radio… well of course radio was everything in those days. Didn’t have televisions then. We had a gas refrigerator, that was considered quite an advantage to have a refrigerator. Funny old thing, a sort of wooden thing, run by gas. Think we might have got that from the shop when my father gave up the shop, I think that might have come with us to the house. It looked a bit commercial like that. [laughs]

And what sort of meals did your mother cook?

Awful! My mother could make wonderful cakes – sponges was her speciality. But absolutely no idea about cooking, and what’s more, didn’t like it. No. No, she was not a cook. It was very English, you know. Straight under the grill, straight in the oven, no seasoning, no marination of anything, I mean, vegetables over-boiled. Pretty normal though, in those days, you know. [laughs] It was quite normal. We didn’t know that… I think I was about seven or eight before I’d eat anything that wasn’t covered in tomato sauce. It’s the only way they could get me to eat anything.

When you said that your politics in a way are linked to your circumstances, when do you think yours changed then, when do you think your politics shifted and what did they shift to?

Michael Southgate Page 122 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18)

They became less passionate. I think English people on the whole are not terribly passionate about politics, they never quite know what they are. But, for instance, I’m completely confused now because you’ve got to have world politics. It doesn’t make sense to just think about England and I really don’t understand politics in America. I don’t understand the amount of money, the millions of dollars they have to raise just to run for President and have all these campaigns and they keep giving money out. As fast as they’re getting it in, they promise people monies to get their vote and… it’s something I really can’t understand. I try to get my head round it and I can’t. And, I even can’t understand what’s going on at the moment in the world, in Europe. I try to, I’m reading these things about how many immigrants are coming in. I think I saw something like, they thought fifty thousand might come from Poland alone and I read something in The Times, very good article, and really from what I can understand, it’s the economists that are really planning this, by bringing in… apparently the English population is dying out and there won’t be enough people to pay for the welfare, pensions, National Health, unless there’s an influx of people and cheaper labour. Bringing in people that will work for less, even people like doctors and nurses, coming in qualified, they’ll earn less money because it will still be a lot more than what they’re earning in Estonia or all these Eastern Bloc countries that they’re coming from. But the overall aim as far as I can see it is that they will bring down the wages and prices and the price of housing eventually, although I can’t quite get that because if there’s more and more people, why… they’ve got to build a hell of a lot of houses to… but that’s the idea, the economists of the world are saying that this global Europe eventually will bring, we’re on this sort of… we’re going up and up and up all the time and it will bring everything down and I’m trying to understand that. I don’t know why I’m telling you about it, because I don’t understand it myself. [laughs] But, it’s confusing. And… I mean I’d like, I don’t think I’m prejudiced in any way, racially, but that doesn’t mean there’s an awful lot of people I dislike of all nationalities, you know, I mean in any… English people and Jewish people and Arabs and… if I don’t like them, I’m not afraid to say so, but it’s not because they’re Jewish or Arabs or anything. I think all people want, they want to be comfortable and happy and loved and have a home life. That’s all most people want. But politicians of course want power, and they’re born. They want power and there will always be people like that. I mean there’s the extremes like the Bin Ladens or Hitler or, but even Bush you know, who’s pretty ignorant I think, and, but he wants power and if that, that’s in all different degrees in business and

Michael Southgate Page 123 C1046/08 Tape 9 Side B (part 18) everything. Some people are very ambitious and they must have control and power above other people, and I suppose if you’re born like that there’s not much you can do about it.

[End of Tape 9 Side B]

Michael Southgate Page 124 C1046/08 Tape 10 Side A (part 19)

Tape 10 Side A (part 19)

Where do you feel at home?

I feel at home with Rod and Trudy and Dennis and… wherever they are. Not any particular place. I suppose I’m more natural in London than I am in New York, even though I’ve been there twenty-five years. I’m still a foreigner in New York. But not, not terribly so, you know, but…

In what way?

Well with friends I’m still English. And on the street and the way, Americans are so forceful and they have a different, they have a different character on the street than what they’d have at home. They’re aggressive, because that’s how you show that you’re not intimated, that’s being streetwise I suppose. You don’t go up to somebody, say, ‘Excuse me, could you tell me the way’. You just say, ‘Where’s…’ You just say that and they go, ‘Over there’. [laughs] You know, it’s a different, there’s nothing wrong with it, they don’t mean anything. But it never quite, you never quite get used to it. I went to, when I first went to live in America, there was a local bar on the corner, called ‘My Lady’s’ [ph], Italian area, and Mal, one of the people that worked in the office with me, he said, ‘Oh Michael, come and have a drink tonight’. So I said, ‘Sure’. So we went in, typical New York waitress. So Mal said, ‘What will you have?’ and I said, ‘Oh I think I’ll have a gin and tonic’ and she said, ‘You’re English aren’t you?’. I said, ‘Yes’. ‘Oh, I can’t stand the English’ she said, straightaway. [laughs] I said, ‘Well what have we done?’. ‘Oh’ she said, ‘They never know what they want.’ [laughs] ‘They say about twenty words when they could say two.’ [laughing] And on she went. So about a week or so later, Sonia, the make-up artist was up doing a job in the showroom and I said, ‘Sonia, let’s go and have a drink’. [laughs] She’s English too. So we went in, I said, ‘Sonia, what will you have?’. ‘Umm, well, now shall I have…’ [laughing] This woman’s eyes just went up to the ceiling. Absolutely, right on cue, Sonia did it. Yes. So even after all this time, those things stay, you know. You always have to be careful not to be too chatty. We do talk too much.

So in your, in your sort of world, business world, was there a similar type of aggression, sort of aggressive business behaviour?

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Yes. Yes, it’s quite different to selling here in, not just England, in Europe. It’s much sharper and it’s usually like, ‘Well we’ve got an order to place so we’ll come in at eight o’clock’. You know, you’ll get these breakfast meetings. Oh, executives in New York love to give the impression that they’re working very hard. And I think they do work hard, but they don’t let up for a minute. They’re always justifying their… but they get big salaries, you know. It’s very, very competitive. Because don’t forget the whole States wants to live in New York and if you’re in retail, the best jobs are in New York, really. Well I suppose it’s like that in London too, to a degree, and it seems to be sharper there.

But how do you find dealing with that sort of aggression?

I was just myself, actually and somehow got away with it. I mean, although I think I go up a couple of revs, you know. When you’re surrounded by that sort of energy you do react. And of course you have to be positive. I mean we used to have this lovely guy who was one of our main sculptors, John Taylor, I used to hate John Taylor coming to New York, because he’d stand in the showroom and the buyer would say, ‘Oh John, that’s a great figure, you know I love…’. ‘Well the neck’s too bloody long and she wouldn’t stand still and…’ Very English to kind of put it down. In New York, you say it’s wonderful, I feel great. If you’re dying – I feel great! Everything is up, and you must do that. And that’s where you know, things go a little astray if you try and cross it over too much. But I’ve learnt those lessons so long ago I don’t even have to think about it. I just automatically… it’s like driving on the wrong side of the road, you know when you get in the car you just do it. And it doesn’t seem to be an effort.

Why do you think John Taylor didn’t sort of grasp that or was it his…?

It’s just his way. He’s always like that. Always. He doesn’t ever take a compliment well you know, it’s always, oh it’s alright, you know. But there’s a lot of people like that.

And what about Adel – you know how did she, how would she have acted in that situation in America?

Michael Southgate Page 126 C1046/08 Tape 10 Side A (part 19)

Oh, Adel always praised, she’d say, ‘Oh John did a wonderful job’. ‘Isn’t the showroom lovely? Michael did that and he’s been working so hard’. Never mentioned her contribution to anything, that really kept the whole thing ticking over and was the business. But that was her way of doing it, ‘Oh it’s so…’, ‘Come here, Michael. So and so is saying this is so lovely’, and she always wanted to bring you in, and that was her way of dealing. Which was not only generous, but clever, because Americans would love to have put Adel up on a… they were all mostly terribly disappointed when they met her, because they thought this tall, glamorous woman was gonna… and it was this little, tiny thing with a little quiet voice, in flat shoes saying she’d like to be comfortable. [laughs] So she didn’t quite come up to what they wanted, but then they were absolutely enchanted with her because she just won them over. Yes, she was a very special personality and you couldn’t resist her, in a way. The more you resisted her, the harder she’d try.

[telephone rings – break in recording]

…go to the Rootstein company now…

Right.

…here in London, when you go to the showroom, what would you feel?

I don’t go very much. I go more to the American office because they always make a point of, when it’s the new show, the trade show, they do two a year, they always phone me up and they’ve always sent me an invitation and if they do any kind of party they always invite me. Plus, Michael Stewart who is now in charge of the showroom, he’ll phone me up quite often and say, ‘Look, I’ve got to go out with Jack Aresca [ph] of Bloomingdale’s and he loves you and will you come to dinner with us?’ and so quite a lot. Here in London, not so much. I do go, every so often. In fact I’ve got to go down there this week, ‘cos, take a wedding present to somebody. But, not that there’s any reason why I shouldn’t go, but I just don’t like going, because I think it’s not letting the people who are running it now get on with the job, you know. It’s awfully difficult when you go and if customers come in and they, ‘Oh, how are you?’ and they’re all over you and that time’s gone, you know, it’s not necessary. And there’s so few people left from the original days that, no, it’s no hardship.

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So who is left from…?

Well Kevin now is doing the designing and he was there when I was still there, and then one of the production planners is now a director, a girl, called Rita Connolly [ph] and so, and then there’s the Japanese. But the main Japanese man that’s in charge of the company has never learnt to speak English. He’s now been there, must be well over ten years and he doesn’t speak English at all, so there’s an interpreter and him, they’re the Japanese. And really they’re just there to sort of police it. Hate to say that, but he falls asleep most of the time.

And is there a Japanese person in New York?

No. There was, but he spoke the best English in the company, much better than, well the one here doesn’t speak English, but he was also quite young, but then the head of the company, Yoshida [ph], his father retired and the son who was about fifty-five or something, got made the President or whatever they call them over there, and he then recalled Jay from New York because he was the only one that could really speak English, to be his assistant. And then they didn’t replace them. They had a Japanese bookkeeper there though, who was an American, and she just came and got the job and she sort of takes care of anything that has to go directly back in Japanese. But they don’t, they don’t put a lot of pressure on the company. It really ticks over very well and I think they’re quite happy with it. But it’s a very small portion of the overall company. They’re mainly textiles, kimonos – they had a huge kimono business, and I think the mannequin side of it… you know, they had a Japanese mannequin company before they bought Rootstein, that was how they came to buy us. And they wanted the prestige of that line. But I think it’s a very small piece of their overall empire.

In terms of volume, what is the difference between London and New York? In terms of volume of business?

Oh, well of course London is the whole of Europe. At one time, but not any more, at one time Germany was practically equal to New York, er America, which Rick Hopkins, Adel’s husband could never understand. He said he couldn’t look at a map and see an expanse the size of America and no-one, until they know the States, understands this, there’s a commercial section down the east coast and there’s another one down the west coast, and there’s very little in between. Those shops in Oklahoma and Kansas, if they buy a

Michael Southgate Page 128 C1046/08 Tape 10 Side A (part 19) mannequin once every fifteen, twenty years [laughs], you know, they’re small town, small time shops and Rick said, ‘But look at the amount, there must be a town every ten miles’. I said, ‘Yes, there is but they don’t move, they’re real hick cornfields, deserts’. It’s a bit like Australia, it all runs round the edge doesn’t it, you know. So your, all your business is done down the Eastern Seaboard and then down the west coast. Very, I mean there’s, in between you’ve got Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, but huge areas of nothing between these cities. It’s not like England where there’s a town every four or five miles. [laughs]

And why Germany?

Germany was a terrific economy and lots and lots of shops and very mannequin minded. Now France is not mannequin minded, they don’t particularly go for mannequins. It’s funny because they invented mannequins really. But, in France, the mannequin is associated with the big department store, rather cheaper. All the good shops, you know, it’s all laid on the ground, it’s that nice sort of… which is great if everybody does it, but doesn’t look too interesting. We can’t seem to do it the same way. So yes, the territories change. I mean there’s, Canada is a small selling field for the size of the place, but there again, import duties are high there and that’s what happens. There’s bans on South America, we can’t sell in South America because they’re not allowed to import mannequins, they have to use domestic ones. We’re now starting to sell, I understand, which we never did when I was there, now starting to sell to Russia. So the markets always move a bit around. Now Germany, the economy’s been so bad there for the last two or three years that the business has gone right down to almost zero. So, with all the products that have a world market, it goes like that though. It moves around all the time. And you can only keep abreast of it all by keep pushing into more and more markets and gradually it evens out.

I know you said it was after you’d left that Russian became a market, who would, would the Russians, or I suppose who would the Russians want as a mannequin?

They’d come and buy Rootstein from London, in the same way that people used to think, how can you sell – because before we were a Japanese company, we sold for fourteen years to Japan – and they said, you know, do you have to do short mann… They used to buy all the tallest, blondest girls they could find. I don’t know how they managed to find clothes to fit them, because the clothes in the shops would not. But that was what they liked, it gave them

Michael Southgate Page 129 C1046/08 Tape 10 Side A (part 19) the Western image and they were moving, they wanted to be like Western retailers and they were getting as many, the Donna Karans and the Ralph Laurens of the world have all got shops in Japan. Paul Smith. Many, many places. And that’s what they wanted. And they like them tall and blonde.

So there’s a sort of model model [laughs] usually originates in the West, in sort of either New York or London.

Rootstein all originate in London. We don’t do any sculpting in New York, only reproduce from the ones that… there’s only, there’s two collections done a year and as soon as they’re out here, then an extra set of moulds are then made and sent to New York. But everything originates here, we don’t have sculptors in New York. Otherwise you’d never be able to keep a house style. If you had too many different sculptors, it would be very hard to keep a house style.

Thank you very much.

Have we finished?

I think so.

Oh, very good. [End of Tape 10 Side A] [Tape 10 Side B – no recording] [End of interview]