Archie McNair
Businessman who provided the financial foundations to Mary Quant’s Swinging Sixties salon
ARCHIE MCNAIR, who has died aged 95, was the entrepreneur whose business acumen and financial foresight underpinned the international impact of the Swinging London pop culture phenomenon of the 1960s.
McNair was the behind-the-scenes figure in the success of the fashion designer Mary Quant and her husband, the late Alexander Plunket Greene. He was the investor in the country’s first boutique – Quant and Plunket Greene’s Bazaar, which opened at 138a King’s Road in autumn 1955 – and the canny overseer of the subsequent expansion which communicated such so-called “Youthquake” styles as the mini-skirt across the Atlantic.
McNair’s legal training and acute attention to detail were applied to the deals he struck on Quant’s behalf with such partners as the giant US retail chain JC Penney. By understanding that licensing contracts spread brand awareness without the pressures of dealing with manufacturers (since this becomes the responsibility of the other party), McNair revolutionised the post-war British fashion industry, developing a business model which pertains to this day.
Yet McNair was not a typical “suit”. He enjoyed the thrill of risk-taking, and had been at the forefront of London’s property, photography and coffee-bar scenes even before he encountered the young Goldsmith Art School graduates Plunket Greene and Quant. They first met McNair at his Fantasie café, below his portrait photography studio at 128 King’s Road, hard by the Markham Arms, then the hub of the raffish Chelsea set.
In the 1970s, while still chairman of the Quant label’s parent company Ginger Group, McNair ran the trading company Thomas Jourdan, and engineered a series of acquisitions, including the Corby of Windsor trouser press business. Under McNair’s guidance, Corby products were updated to include a heated range, and so became near-universal fixtures in hotels around the world.
Archibald Alister Jourdan McNair was born on December 16 1919 in Tiverton, one of six children of Donald and Janie Grace McNair, who were members of the Plymouth Brethren. His father owned the Patchquick factory in the Devon town, manufacturers of a range of thenpopular tyre repair kits.
On leaving Blundell’s School, which he had attended as a day boy, McNair took articles with a solicitor’s practice in Exeter. These were interrupted by the war. Since his non-conformist upbringing precluded active service, he became an auxiliary fireman in London, where duties included piloting the boats on the Thames pumping water for fire-fighters during the Blitz.
After the war, McNair took the difficult decision to leave the Brethren, which, as his son Hamish explained, “meant saying goodbye to some of his family and starting a new life”.
He completed his articles and worked in conveyancing and property law at a London practice. A small legacy enabled the purchase of 128 King’s Road, where McNair opened the first-floor studio and became a professional portrait photographer. Among his subjects was the virtuoso classical horn player Dennis Brain.
The address became a drop-in spot for the Chelsea set, and McNair, tiring of preparing constant rounds of cups of coffee for his friends, bought the second commercial Gaggia machine imported into the country.
McNair opened the Fantasie in the summer of 1954, intending to provide customers with 24-hour service. Nocturnal unpleasantness from local Teddy Boys persuaded him to investigate alternative business opportunities, and he put up a 50 per cent share of the £8,000 required by Quant and Plunket Greene to open Bazaar on the corner of Markham Square.
Bazaar was an immediate success, spawning imitators and sparking the British boutique boom. McNair was integral to the smooth running of the operation. Andrew Loog Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones who had worked at the retail outlet as a sales assistant, recalled later: “The three of them, Mary, Alexander and Archie, were in total harmony. They didn’t need words and when they used them, so very well, they could finish each other’s sentences. There was love, and it was apparent. In their own fashion, the Quant trio were very disciplined, but they really improvised the whole thing. I will always thank them for teaching me about fame, fashion, money and how to have fun getting it done.”
Although the Quant business was often seat-of the-pants, McNair’s determination and strong judgment provided a secure financial basis as the fashion designs and make-up lines proved popular from Tokyo to Idaho.
In 1971 McNair bought an off-theshelf shell company and transformed it into Thomas Jourdan, acquiring engineering firms as well as Corby, whose Windsor base provided the headquarters for the group.
He stood down as chairman of the Ginger Group in 1988, having suffered near-fatal injuries when hit by a taxi near St James’s Park. Nevertheless, McNair enjoyed a long retirement, during which he oversaw the building of a house near Marbella, and remained proud to have been an integral – though rarely cited – figure in the 1960s fashion and pop culture explosion.
McNair was predeceased by his wife Cathy (née Fleming), to whom he was married for 60 years; he died on the first anniversary of her funeral service. He is survived by his son and daughter. Archie McNair, born December 16 1919, died July 2 2015