ON LEAVING his enforced tour with the RAF, he worked as a photographic assistant in London, latterly for John French. This appears to have created the opportunity to work for Vogue magazine and in turn, the chance to go to New York. He went along with a young, gamine model called Jean Shrimpton.
It was 1962. It was one of those historical moments for fashion and photography. Within a few months both Bailey and ‘The Shrimp’ would be king and queen of the fashion scene, and the world itself would centre on London for its focus on design, fashion and the new directions in music. But this was all about to happen. The snappily titled NY JS DB 62 (the idea of Bailey’s wife, Catherine) is a photo essay of pictures done in New York for Vogue that year. Bailey, with a 35mm SLR replacing his original Rolleiflex, lots of attitude and Vogue’s Clare Rendlesham on his back playing ‘art director’. Jean, already creating attention in English fashion circles, was to be judged by history as the first ‘super-model’ of her generation - and who was at the time, co-incidentally, in a ‘relationship’ with the photographer.
These images are only a foretaste of what was coming down the line, epitomised by Bailey’s Box of Pinups, shot only two years later. But in New York, the images were softer - more naïve - and with a strong visual reference to the cinéma-vérité of Bailey’s childhood (jam sandwiches with Mum in a East Ham picture house). But here, clearly, is the sign of a new dawn and a sense of the fresh style of dynamic fashion photography which was to sweep the traditional, posed and static studio portraits into the waste bin. The importance of this collection is, therefore, that the pictures formed a catalyst (they appeared in Vogue, April 1962) which opened the door to a visual revolution in fashion. All credit to Vogue for having the percipience to sense the sea-change and offer a platform to one of the most significant artists of the age.
