Waistcoat

Studded leather waistcoat made by Ian Mankin for Just Men. Mankin started out in his father's trimmings business, branching out on his own in the 1960s to design leather jackets and luggage. He later made clothing for celebrities like the Beatles and Michael Caine.
Charles Schuller opened Just Men on the King's Road in 1964. In his 1971 book ‘Today there are no Gentlemen’, Nik Cohen observed that the shop's 'greatest strength was in its mimicry, in the way that it achieved the look and feel of custom-made clothes at ready-made prices’. A nearby branch in Tryon Street had an in-house hairdresser, where Peter Viti, the donor, was a customer.
Peter Viti, was born in Bloomsbury in 1936. He attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts, then entered into a partnership making costumes and props. He eventually went into the family business of letting property. Viti calls himself ‘a bit of a dandy’. He purchased clothing from the boutiques which revolutionised men’s fashion in the 1960s. Viti recalls the London gay scene both before and after the legalisation of sex between consenting men in 1967, considering that things became a little easier for gay men as attitudes slowly changed.