Pauline Fordham
“There’s a new leading influence on avant-garde fashion,” wrote Georgina Howell in the Observer in July 1965. “The place to find the news in London is in the small shops. The girls who own and run them are designing or buying only clothes they would wear themselves”. Howell got the designer Min Hogg to look at the leading boutiques, one of which was Palisades at 26, Ganton Street, just off Carnaby Street.
Palisades was opened by Pauline Fordham just two months previously and the self-styled “Fun-Maker”, as the Daily Express called her, opened the boutique with “a rousing party”. She had backing from theatre impresario Michael White, artist David Hockney and actor/writer/literary agent Clive Goodwin (who was the husband of pop-artist Pauline Boty). It was considered the shop where designers of bits and pieces exhibited their talent and Fordham promised “all the usual way out designers including Quorum, Caroline Charles and Tuffin & Foale. The sign and interior was designed by the pop artist and partner Derek Boshier. She also stocked anything that anyone brought in “if it’s groovy”. And “customers could let of steam there too” she said, “there is a juke box and fruit machine”.
The Daily Mirror noted that she also sold Psychedelic goggles at 30 shillings each. They had built in glass prisms which make everything look multi-coloured and mixed up. Fordham, who designed them, said “they’re a good visual trip”.
David Mlinaric in an interview for the V&A website says of Pauline and her shop:
Pauline Fordham of Palisades had incredibly beautiful things, but didn’t last very long. She was a colourful character. The journalist Erica Crome used to refer to that kind of thing as fancy dress, and she used to refer to us as fancy dress too.
SWINGING LONDON 1966: In Pauline Fordham’s boutique in Ganton Street, near Carnaby Street. Customer Jackie Binder in a ‘with it’ blouse and skirt stands beside a dressing room decorated with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. In the background, Jacqueline Ball plays the juke box.
Miss Jackie Binder stands in one of the latest ‘convict-stripe’ fashions while looking at an old fashioned ‘What the Butler saw’ machine.
Customer Jackie Binder, in a new ‘convict-style’ dress designed by Pauline Fordham, looks in the mirror at Miss Fordham’s boutique in Ganton Street, off Carnaby Street.
Palisades from the outside
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