The Fashion Businessworn by native Americans. Initially handmade or scavenged from thrift shops,
these clothes were soon produced by savvy entrepreneurs.
Hippy styles rapidly entered the fashion mainstream. In 1967, American
Vogue solemnly announced that “Timothy Leary’s paradigm “Turn on, tune
in, drop out” remains the classic statement of the hippy weltanschauung.”
Rock critic Richard Goldstein wrote: “Now beauty is free. Liberated from
hang-ups over form and function, unencumbered by tradition or design. A
freaky goddess surveying her... realm. Kite-high, moon-pure. Groovy,
powerful and weird!... The style of the 60s is creative anarchy.”
People are mistaken in thinking of the 1970s as a period of calm after the
“uproar” of the 1960s. Although political radicalism faded after the end of
the Vietnam War, both the drug culture and the sexual revolution became
mass phenomena. From about 1970 through 1974, fashion was characterized
by a continuation of many late 1960s themes, such as conspicuous outrageous-
ness (epitomized by platform shoes and hot pants), retro fantasies, and ethnic
influences. In its orientation toward youth, freedom, and other counterculture
virtues like equality and anti-capitalism, the first phase of 1970s style might
be described as late hippie diffusion.
From 1975 through 1979, however, fashion became simultaneously harsher
and more conservative. On the level of street fashion, the peace and love
ethos of the hippies was followed by the sex and violence of the punks and
the macho style of gay “clones”. In the world of high fashion, a deliberately
decadent style of “Terrorist Chic” dominated. Yet at the same time, middle-
class people increasingly gravitated toward sportswear separates and Dress-
for-Success uniformity.
When the 1970s began, however, the most striking development was the
sound of hemlines falling. In January 1970, the Paris collections emphasized
long skirts. After almost a decade of rapidly rising hemlines, the new, longer
length made news around the world. Life published a cover article on “The
Great Hemline Hassle”, bemoaning the demise of the mini-skirt, symbol of
youth and sexual allure. Many women reacted against the new fashion of
midi skirts, because they were tired of fashion’s excesses – and sympathetic
to the hippies’ creed of dressing to suit oneself. (The hippies themselves, of
course, had already adopted long skirts, and within a few years hemlines
would, in fact, fall.) Yet the resistance to the midi was historically significant.
Never again would the majority of women change their hemlines just to be
in fashion.
Increasingly, women chose to wear trousers, the traditional symbol of
masculine power. They even began wearing trouser suits to work, another
important turning point in twentieth-century fashion. Meanwhile, for casual
occasions, both men and women favoured denim jeans. Although blue jeans