David Hockney created many double portraits of friends throughout his long career, believing that such portraits are “doubly interesting.” Like many of the artist’s portraits, the subjects in this drawing are his friends. Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell were influential fashion designers; Clark’s fashions and Birtwell’s textile designs defined the hippie-chic London look of the 1960s and 1970s. The portrait was drawn at Le Nid de Duc, the vacation home of film director Tony Richardson in southern France. Hockney was Best Man at the couple’s wedding shortly after this portrait was made. However, the pair was divorced by 1974. This is one of many drawings leading up to the large-scale painting Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (illustrated below), now at the Tate Gallery in London.