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14 Facts About Christopher Gibbs

1.

Christopher Henry Gibbs was a British antiques dealer and collector who was an influential figure in men's fashion and interior design in 1960s London.

2.

Christopher Gibbs has been credited with inventing Swinging London, and has been called the "King of Chelsea" and "London's most famous antiques dealer".

3.

Christopher Gibbs was educated at Eton College, from which he was expelled "for being generally totally impossible", Stanbridge Earls School in Hampshire and the University of Poitiers.

4.

Christopher Gibbs has been said to be the first man to wear flared trousers in 1961, and was ordering flower print shirts by 1964.

5.

Christopher Gibbs was an editor of the shopping guide in the quarterly Men in Vogue, the first male edition of the magazine produced between 1965 and 1970, which was closely associated with the peacock revolution in English men's fashion in the 1960s.

6.

Christopher Gibbs's style has been described as a kind of "louche dandyism", while others have described him as a latter-day Beau Brummell.

7.

Christopher Gibbs brought back Moroccan brass lamps, carpets, soft furnishings and other things that came to characterise the "hippie look".

8.

Christopher Gibbs was a friend of the Rolling Stones and his upper-class background was of interest to Mick Jagger, whose origins were more modest.

9.

In 1967, Christopher Gibbs was at Keith Richards's country house, Redlands, in West Wittering, when Richards, Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were all arrested for possession of illegal drugs.

10.

Christopher Gibbs was the set designer on the 1970 film Performance, directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg and starring James Fox and Mick Jagger.

11.

In 1972, Christopher Gibbs bought Davington Priory, a former Benedictine nunnery in Davington, Kent, built in 1153.

12.

Christopher Gibbs was a trustee of the American Friends of the National Gallery.

13.

In 2000, Christopher Gibbs reluctantly sold Clifton Hampden Manor in Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire, a house that had been built for his family in the 1840s.

14.

Christopher Gibbs died at his home in Tangier, Morocco, on 28 July 2018, one day before his 80th birthday.