The Chelsea Invasion

Dashing as diplomats and espionage agents, grand as poets, even grander as kings, the British are notorious duds when it comes to fashion. Though endowed with better-than-average raw material, Englishwomen intent on clothes that set them off had to cross at least a channel, sometimes a sea, to find them.

Left to themselves, they relapsed into the national uniform of high-necked blouses, sensible shoes, tweeds, frowned on those who, like Lady Godiva, did not. There were local designers, but they tended to turn out clothes for the Queen, or for anyone interested in dressing like her. All this has been changed by something called "The Chelsea Revolution," a group of young designers, all 30 or under, who have done more to change the shape of empire than anyone since Wellington.

Old Edwardian. Nobody was more astonished than the U.S. designers (who pride themselves on catering to the young) when the Chelsea girls invaded Manhattan in force this fall and bowled over nearly every buyer in sight. Suddenly Cincinnati looked more like Chelsea. So did Cambridge, Mass., and Carmel, Calif.

Actually, much of the Chelsea look is a revival of oldtime fashion ideas from older, more fashionable times. Nostalgia is the order of the day. Edwardian sleeves and bertha collars, ribbons, roses and trailing black velvet are the tricks of the trade. It is their high comic sense, however, that affords the Chelsea group the authority to unearth shades of the past, drop a street-dress hemline down to the ankles, cut a cocktail suit from a Victorian lace tablecloth.

It began some eight years ago, when young Mary Quant, now, at 30, the doyenne of the, group, grew weary of wearing her cousin's castoffs, set up shop, sewing and selling her own designs. Instantly British teenagers, themselves weary of the butch look, flocked to the tiny Chelsea workroom, emerged looking more like Cossacks and guardsmen, sailors and hockey players. Audacious in concept, vivid in execution and realistically priced ($20 and up), Mary Quant's offbeat styles (a typical dress trimmed red flannel with black lace, included a striped bodice and a quilted hem) caused such a local stir that buyers hurried over from abroad. Today, with a posh London office, a vast European market, and outlets in 45 American department stores, Mary Quant is a $3,000,000-a-year business.

Others were quick to queue up. Jean Muir, also 30, bolted her stockroom job at London's Liberty's, moved in on the boom with a fanciful collection of narrow coats, smock dresses and knickers that nick off just above the knee. Sally Tuffin, 26, and Marion Foale, 25, the pop artists of the group, popped up with wild prints, impossible color combinations and a dress, called "Gruyere," with holes in its sleeves.

Same Wave. But it is Caroline Charles, 22, who most precisely defines the essence of the Chelsea Look. Veteran of a peripatetic childhood (as the daughter of an army officer, she followed the campfires from Cairo to Germany to Surrey), a convent education ("I went through all the phases, from knitting to riding to weaving") and a short stint at art school, she put in an apprentice term selling dresses for Mary Quant, last year opened her own store in a Belgravia basement. Then Jordan's Princess Muna spotted her in one of her bright new coats in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel, and Caroline found herself patronized by royalty. One commission led to another, and finally the arrival of a whole delegation from Macy's.

Currently in Manhattan to watch her newest collection take over Macy's show windows, Caroline Charles sees her success as part practical, part metaphysical. "We are all, you see," she says earnestly, "on the same wave length. We know that youth doesn't have to be kept under any more."

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