The Strawberry Fields Jacket
Our very first project was the DIY Jacket kits. We made screens of the laid-out patterns for American style Bomber jackets with printed images on the sleeves with the main image on the back sections. We started the Cut'n'Sew kits in '68 - it was a huge project with over 100 silk-screens that ran for 4 years. The first Cut'n'Sew designs were Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jayne Mansfield, Baked Beans and The Strawberry. Our Painless Tattoo Collection had taken over the production of the Cut'N'Sew Kits and slowed up progress. The Silver Surfer was the last of the kits - by then we were probably into 1971 and working with that amazing store at 430 Kings Road called Paradise Garage. The Strawberry Jacket idea was our 5th jacket piece. It was in January 1970 - a cold winter's day when we caught the bus to Mayfair. Fortnum & Mason was the only store in the UK with fresh Strawberries - from South Africa - very expensive. They were a luscious red, huge with splendid pips. We decided to run straight over to John Claridge's studio at London Wall to have them photographed while they were still fresh. John Claridge and I had worked together on many projects so he was always ready to help us with the photography. A brilliant photographer in his own right, he produced some amazing dark close-ups which could have taken us in a completely different direction - but we stuck with the first idea. John made a few terrific B/ W close-ups on a white ground of a single strawberry - the best of the bunch. We would superficially create the Red, Yellow and Blue colour screens by making some line and half-tone positives merged together. So in 1972, we plumbed for the Granny Takes A Trip offer to sell the Jackets in satin. All three Granny's outlets stocked the jackets and so did Colette Neville Pret-a-porter, Paris, and Vibrations, Los Angeles. Later in In 1973, Paul McCartney ordered 6 Strawberry Jackets for his first USA tour since Shea Stadium and wore the Jacket on Top of The Pops in the UK. The Strawberry Jacket soon became known as The Strawberry Fields Jacket - a tribute to the Beatles song "Strawberry Fields". Paul McCartney became a collector of our T-shirts.
Source John Dove and Molly White's IG
