Meet... Michael Fish
The forgotten menswear designer responsible for some of the most iconic fashion moments of the 1960s and 1970s, dressing everyone from Sean Connery to David Bowie to Muhammad Ali!
Long before Harry Styles broke the internet by donning a dress as Vogue’s first male solo cover star, there was a menswear designer called Michael Fish who, as part of a nationwide fashion movement, dressed some of Britain’s finest names in rock’n’roll in pleated skirts, balloon sleeves, ruffled collars and cuffs.
Known as the Peacock Revolution, this flamboyant and gender-fluid period in men’s fashion roughly took place from the mid-1960s through to the 1970s. Among a number of other forward-thinking and trendsetting London garment makers, ‘Mr Fish’ (as his brand was known) played a key part. Not least by making fashion history one groundbreaking moment at a time.
One of the most memorable took place on 5th July 1969 when Mick Jagger appeared for the now legendary Rolling Stones Hyde Park concert in a romantic, billowing white Mr Fish smock that the British press likened to “a little girl’s white party frock.”1
And then there was David Bowie, who dipped his toes into his new androgynous style by wearing a Mr Fish floral, cream-and-blue satin dress on the British cover of the1971 album, The Man Who Sold the World. The look was a hit, with Rolling Stones magazine declaring it “ravishing.”2
Bowie wore the dress regularly for promotions, interviews and magazine covers. So much so that in a groundbreaking interview in Melody Maker, the interviewer Michael Watts asked Bowie, “Why aren’t you wearing your girl’s dress today?”
“Oh dear, you don’t understand that it’s not a woman’s. It’s man’s dress” said Bowie in reply.3 I’m discussing this particular moment with Dr. Lucie Whitmore, Lead Curator of Museum of London Docklands’ current major exhibition, ‘Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style,’ which includes a section on Michael Fish.
“He really got it,” says Whitmore about Bowie. “That this isn’t about limiting who people are, a man or a woman. It allowed him to be playful. Mr Fish himself said that the most virile men in history have worn skirts. He believed that trousers weren’t suited to men’s bodies and that skirts actually worked better for men.”
Although Fish was a menswear designer, “he was very fluid with his idea of gender,” says Whitmore, “and didn’t want to tell anybody what they could and could not wear. He said you should wear clothes that make you feel good and not what other people expect you to wear.”
By all accounts “a very charismatic guy,” Fish dressed anyone who was anyone in the Sixties. By the end of his career, his roll of clients read like a who’s who of Sixties culture featuring names such as Lord Snowdon, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Caine, David Hockney, Peter Sellers, Sammy Davis Jr., and “more famous people than you can list. He obviously really made a splash.”
Born in 1940 in Wood Green, North London, Michael Fish came from, as he described it “a perfectly ordinary family.” He started his career aged 15 straight out of school, working at Colletts department store on Shaftesbury Avenue. His initial job involved simple tasks like cleaning countertops, but it wasn’t long before the naturally talented and creative Fish moved into shirtmaking, a career which Whitmore says allowed him to put his skills to good use.
After working for a couple of distinguished shops on Jermyn Street (the shirtmaking equivalent of Savile Row), Fish’s career really started taking off when he joined the upmarket clothier, Turnbull & Asser. “This is a very traditional company,” says Whitmore. “A staple of classic London menswear.”
Taken under the wing of renowned shirtmaker Kenneth Williams, Fish perfected his craft, learning “the building blocks, the skills of traditional Jermyn Street shirtmaking.”
Whitmore compares this period to Picasso mastering the classic rules of drawing and painting in his early years. And like Picasso, Fish started to play with and bend the rules he had learned so well in innovative and unexpected ways; “once he gained these skills, he started really revolutionising that traditional image by doing wacky, trendy things that appealed to a younger audience.”
This would have been subtle at first; “things like exaggerating the shape of the lapel, adding a bit of volume to the sleeve, or swapping a regular pinstripe for a bolder stripe. And obviously he refined and refined until he had his own quite iconic style.”
At Turnbull & Asser, Fish broke the conservative mould of male attire; widening ties into his trademark kipper style,4 making kaftans for men,5 and designing silk dressing gowns; most notably (and featured in the exhibition), is a hot pink silk gown with ‘Nollie’ embroidered on the pocket. “It was a present for Noël Coward by his good friend Vivian Leigh,” Whitmore tells me. Fish was even responsible for making Sean Connery’s ‘cocktail cuff’ shirts for the early Bond films.
Despite initial resistance from the old guard at Turnbull & Asser, Williams and managing director Robert Clark had to concede that their bold new pieces had introduced a whole new clientele to their shop – young trend-led men who bought silk turtleneck evening shirts and velvet ties, sometimes in their tens of thousands.6
“One of the things Fish was most known for was his use of fabrics,” says Whitmore “Quite often they’re not shirt fabrics or menswear fabrics. They would probably have been designed for womenswear, quite often for evening wear. Things with sequins, embroidery, or printing. He used a lot of global influences, just taking whatever comes his way and using it.”
A visionary in his approach to menswear, Fish was just as unconventional with his style of customer service. Whitmore tells me that interviewers described him as “funny, gracious, camp and sarcastic.” His vibrant personality won over customers, many of whom became personal friends. Even the Turnbull & Asser website recalls how “within three weeks of his arrival at Turnbull & Asser, the young Michael Fish was dining with one of the Guinness heirs, much to the anxiety of Mr Clark, who felt it wrong for Mr Fish to be ‘fraternising with customers.’”7
With such charm, popularity and eye for design, it wasn’t long before Fish started his own clothing line. With Barry Sainsbury as his business partner, Fish launched the Mr Fish boutique on Clifford Street in Mayfair in 1966.8
The aim of the brand was to mix the quality of Savile Row with the trendiness of Carnaby Street, and the “lavish and masculine”9 interiors echoed this fusion; a traditional shop floor with wood fixtures and a chandelier was offset by opulent, colourful garments such as paisley prints, velvet jackets and ruffled shirts.10
Still in his mid-to-late twenties when Fish opened the shop, he made the most of his youthful persona. “He really did put himself at the forefront of his business,” says Whitmore. “The opening of his shop was filmed by an Italian film crew. He was on the radio to comment on the fashions at Ascot one year. He became very much a friend and a companion to a lot of his customers, including celebrities.”
The boutique was even featured in the classic 1969 crime caper The Italian Job, as the place where Michael Caine’s character Charlie Crocker gets stocked up on shirts, having just been released from prison. In a coup of product placement, the Mr Fish logo is visible in the scene.11
In an extraordinary run of success, Fish is also credited with dressing Jon Pertwee’s the Doctor in Doctor Who, as well as designing Peter Seller’s outfits in the 1970 film There’s a Girl in My Soup. In 1974 Muhammad Ali wore a robe especially created by Mr Fish for his unforgettable Rumble in the Jungle match.
“He did quite outrageous things like putting Arsenal players in dresses,” Whitmore tells me. “But he was also making classically cut men’s shirts in sheer or sparkly fabrics that allowed people to make a little bit of a visual impact or do something subversively a little bit different.”
Unsurprisingly, Mr Fish’s opulent style became popular with women too, with ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot of the Mamas and Papas, and Vanessa Redgrave both fans of the brand. Responding to a public callout for Mr Fish pieces ahead of the exhibition launch, many women got in touch to say that they had borrowed items from their male relatives. Some even went as far as having the men’s shirts tailored to better fit their feminine frames.
Yet despite the shop’s huge success, it wasn’t to last longer than a decade. By the mid 1970s, the Mr Fish boutique closed down. Whitmore says it’s hard to place an exact date on the closure of the business as it had a couple of relaunches towards the end with a number of different backers, but essentially the reasons were twofold; the first reason was the beautiful fabrics that had been such a big part of the brand. They were just too expensive, with some materials even being custom-made for the shop. “He couldn’t sell enough to cover that level of bespoke and specialist material supply,” Whitmore explains. “It’s just not a sustainable way to run a business.”
“The other problem was that they had a very generous credit system which was largely abused,” says Whitmore. “A lot of people were matey with Mr Fish and he was glad to have famous customers. He was just a little bit free and easy with the credit system, and people weren’t paying their bills.”
After Sainsbury pulled out and a second backer closed the business, Fish managed to find a third backer. But sadly a fire at the premises extinguished the business in one final dramatic end.
Despite the closure of his namesake brand, Fish stayed occupied for the next decade or so, designing for the Sulka label in New York and then being involved in a trendy Bond Street club: “he’s so well connected that his address book sort of becomes the basis of a private nightclub or members’ club.” Whitmore found various leads as to what happened next, believing that Fish returned to Turnbull & Asser for a bit and may even have run another iteration of his brand from his South London home. “I’m still trying to piece together what comes later.”
What Whitmore does know for sure is that Michael Fish sadly passed away in 2016. Despite his huge influence in Britain, this information has managed to pass the internet by. There’s no update on Wikipedia. Not a single obituary in any newspaper, nevermind a national one. And not a Tweet from former friends or associates. For such a flamboyant figure it seems surprising that there has been such a dearth of celebration of this accomplished, daring and creative life.
As Whitmore reminds me, Mr Fish is “not a classically forgotten figure” as there are so many people the world over still passionate about his designs and able to remember how it felt the first time they tried on his outfits in the Swinging Sixties. The brand has even been revived by Mason & Sons, with a shop on Montagu Street.
But Whitmore would say is that there hasn’t been a single book or thesis that’s explored his life story in depth, which is why Whitmore and her team are so excited about putting more of Mr Fish’s story in one place, both in the exhibition and the accompanying book (authored by Lucie Whitmore and Bethan Bide).
“A lot of people, myself included, feel he should be a household name,” says Whitmore, “In that sense his life really has been overlooked.”
Indeed, in many ways Mr Fish continues to inform our understanding of what a rock star should wear; flamboyant, head-turning velvet jackets, exaggerated sleeves, kimonos, psychedelic prints, shirts with ruffles, and so many other classic looks. They all began with Mr Fish.
‘Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style’ is on at the Museum of London now until 14th April 2024. Book your tickets via museumoflondon.org.uk
The accompanying book, ‘Fashion City’ by Lucie Whitmore and Bethan Bide is available from your local book shop or online. Purchase a copy along with your exhibition ticket to get £5 off the retail price.
Many thanks to Lucie Whitmore for sharing so much of her knowledge of Mr Fish’s extraordinary life with me.
https://sites.courtauld.ac.uk/documentingfashion/2021/11/16/party-frock-or-military-uniform-mick-jagger-performing-gender-at-hyde-park-london-5th-july-1969/
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/mar/13/peacock-revolution-david-bowie-mick-jagger-mr-fish
https://www.bowiebible.com/1972/01/22/bowie-im-gay-and-always-have-been/
https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/blogs/off-the-cuff/dressing-a-defining-decade
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1172302/mans-wedding-suit-mr-fish/
https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/blogs/off-the-cuff/dressing-a-defining-decade
https://turnbullandasser.co.uk/blogs/off-the-cuff/dressing-a-defining-decade
https://mr-fish.co.uk/blogs/news/a-peculiar-fish
https://londonembroideryschool.com/2021/11/04/beautiful-people-the-boutique-in-1960s-counter-culture-at-the-fashion-and-textile-museum-visit/
https://fashionfollower.com/the-fantastic-mr-fish/
https://anthonysinclair.com/blogs/style/mr-fish-making-a-splash
Thank you for a very enjoyable and informative read Anastasia! I am fortunate to have a small collection of Mr. Fish garments - all very well made with incredible fabrics and more than a little flair. It lifts my spirit to learn that he was involved with Sulka later in life. I look forward to reading more.
Thank you Tim and Anastasia for your interest. I have a few more details from Michael's life that I can share. He came to work as a "consultant" at Deborah and Clare in 1983, and stayed there for approximately 6 months. At the time, the shirtmarker for D & C was Frank Rostron, who owned shops in Manchester and Leeds. Frank made business shirts for businessmen, and as you might guess Michael had very little interest in that! But he stuck around for 6 months or so. There were two partners in the business, Nico Rogerson and Tom Spiers, and they were hoping Michael could bring back D & C to its former glory.
Near the end of this time (1983 or early 84) I went with Michael to visit Jeremy Frye in Bath. Mr. Frye had been one of Michael's backers in the earlier years, and Michael I gather was hoping Mr. Frye would back him again. Unfortunately, it came to nothing.
Instead, Michael had a workshop in his home in Brixton, and he got D&C's main shirtmaker, a lovely woman named Chris Bellingham, to come work for him there. I remember Chris coming in everyday with her assistant from Croydon. At this time, Michael did a show having designed a range of 10-12 silk vests for women. I don't remember what the show was in aid of, but I went to the rehearsal with Michael, which was great fun. A while after that I moved on and lost contact with Michael, but he was great fun and a good person.
I still have a photograph of me in his Mohammed Ali gown. He told me that the original was in the Smithsonian, but he had a copy that was in his house in Brixton.