The Fashion its come here.
1960s Talent
Talent was the prerequisite to success in the 1960s. For the first time ever in any fashion era, the young became the leaders of fashion. They led with new and radically innovative fashion styles, with little girl woman androgynous looks for women that swept away the sophisticated sweater girls of the early sixties. The picture of Twiggy in the header defines her as the epitome of a sixties baby doll woman.
Fifties Fashion Hangs on until 1966
In the 21st century it's easy to associate all 1960s fashion with short skirts, but the short skirt was not really worn by many until 1966 and not nationwide until 1967. Just as in the 1920s for half a decade clothes still showed signs of belonging to the late fifties. The fore runner of the mini dress the straight shift, which had developed from the 1957 sack dress, was still well below the knee.
In the early sixties, pleated skirts set on a hip yoke basque were worn with short sleeved over blouses which were cut not unlike the shell tops of today. Straight skirts had front and back inverted pleats called kick pleats and were ideal for doing the twist dance craze as they allowed the knee to move freely. Straight sweater dresses in lambswool or the synthetic acrylic variety called Orlon were worn belted with waists nipped in became fashionable.
Pencil skirts were still worn with sweaters or even back to front cardigans that had been pressed super flat. Before the days of tumble driers many women lay their washed rung out knitwear in paper tissue and then brown paper. They put it to dry under a carpet for two days. When it was removed from the tissue, the footsteps that had pounded over the knit gave it a flat dry cleaned as new appearance. Laundering of delicates could still be a problem, but everything changed when mass produced synthetic garments arrived.
Micro, Mini or Maxi 1970s Skirt Lengths
By 1970 women chose who they wanted to be and if they felt like wearing a short mini skirt one day and a maxi dress, midi skirt or hot pants the next day - that's what they did.
For eveningwear women often wore full length maxi dresses, evening trousers or glamorous halter neck catsuits. Some of the dresses oozed Motown glamour, others less so.
Left - Two young women in their early twenties on holiday in the Canary Islands c1972. The short check flared skirt was very popular, as was the empire style of the diamond check pattern mini dress. Right - Halter neck catsuit pattern of 1971. Exotic and tropical prints were a reflection of designers gaining inspiration from foreign travel destinations.
For evening in the early seventies, either straight or flared Empire line dresses with a sequined fabric bodice and exotic sleeves were the style for a dressy occasion.
One frequently worn style was the Granny dress with a high neck. Sometimes the stand neck was pie-crust frilled, or lace trimmed. Often they were made from a floral print design in a warm brushed fabric or viscose rayon crepe which draped and gathered well into empire line styles.
Right - Typical short and mini dresses worn at an office party in 1972/3. At the front a young girl wears a long floral granny dress that covers her knees.
Another hugely successful evening style of the 1970s was the halter neck dress, either maxi or above knee.
Left - Black halter neck dress pattern of 1971.
At a disco, girls might don hot pants. In contrast to the reveal all mini, a woman would suddenly confound men by completely covering her legs and retort that mini dresses were an exploitation, rather than a liberation of women.
Easier Travel Broadens the Fashion Mind
The influence of the self styled hippy clothes and the mish-mash of 1970s fashion from every corner of the global village crept into mainstream fashion. Easier travel meant that people brought ideas and accessories from abroad. Others looked for designers to provide styles that fitted the mood of an era, that had returned to nature and was anti-Vietnam-war in outlook.
Ethnic Trends of 1970s Fashion
In the 1970s, every type of ethnic image set a trend.
A peasant fashion for eyelets with lacing, oversized ric rac braid with false bib parts of blouses became universal. Real blouses began to appear beneath short bell, or just above elbow knitwear. The lower sleeves became fuller and fuller so that by the late 1970s they were similar to Victorian engageantes. Sometimes they were left open and were known as an angel sleeve. The edging of the sleeve was often of the bordered fabric used in the main body of the garment. Richly patterned, border print fabrics were perfect for some of the simple garment shapes of the fashion era.
The ethnic influence was so strong that it revived craft skills from far flung places. Macramé bags and bikinis from the Greek Isles and crochet waistcoats and shawls from Spain were all high fashion. The poncho was short lived and soon became a children's style. Gypsy tops with drawn up necklines trimmed with bells and puffed sleeves were made in cheesecloth or light cottons. In the year of 1978, Broderie Anglaise made a brief appearance as trimmed petticoat hemlines designed to show beneath peasant style skirts.
At about the same time, Tibetan and Chinese quilted jackets and square armhole waistcoats, in mix and match prints were teamed with softly pleated skirts. Sometimes they had stylised patchwork print effects and were a very pretty feminine fashion.
Indian imported cotton voile dresses overprinted in gold by Phool were often worn with quilted jackets. The colours were vivid and striking bright pinks, sea greens and wonderful shades of cornflower blues. Indian silk scarves of similar designs abounded. It was only in the 1980s when it was widely reported in newspapers that the dresses were quickly flammable, that they lost favour.
It was during the 1970s that friendship bracelets first became fashionable. These hand braided bracelets made from coloured yarns were initially made by teenagers. As the 1970s fashion for teaching friends how to do it flagged, street sellers started to make income from the craft by weaving bracelets to order, as customers waited. The bracelets started as fine strips no wider than 6mm, but by 2001 they were often as wide as 2cm.
Platform Soled Shoes
In the early 1970s platform shoes started with a quite slim sole which moved from ¼ inch up to about 4 inches at the peak of popularity. When they were that high, individuals frequently got friendly cobblers, or handy men to hollow out cheese holes from the sole base. A platform shoe with a 1 inch sole was quite comfortable to wear stopping the development of hard skin and feeling small stones through the soles.
By the mid seventies the most ordinary people were wearing two inch deep platforms without a second thought. But accidents did happen and many a woman and man twisted on a pair of platform shoes. At about the same time, clogs became popular as they followed the trend for chunkiness of sole.
For those who still liked to show a leg, it became tasteful in the early 70s to wear creamy white tights with black patent shoes.
1970s Tank Tops And Mix And Match Knitwear
Really the tank top of the 70s was a forerunner to the scoop necked camisole top of the 1980s, the shell of the 1990s and the vest of the millennium. It may be laughed at now, but it was a useful garment worn with a blouse, or simply worn blouse free with a matching V neck long style cardigan just like a modern twin set.
At the same time coordinated colour schemed clothes slowly began to enter the stores and boutiques. Suddenly it was possible to buy a skirt or trousers and top and not have to spend hours searching for tops and knits in other shops that just might coordinate with the items. Mix and match collections of separates were soon the norm within good department stores by the 1980s.
Fabrics and the 1970s Fashions
Despite the fact that synthetic fabrics were used in many items of clothing there was still a great following for natural fibres. Cotton velvet and cotton corduroy in particular were worn at all hours of the day by both sexes. Coloured navy, bottle green, wine or black it could be teamed with frilled shirts,or open necked shirts.
Courtelle
Courtelle jersey was very popular for all sorts of garments from trousers suits to tank tops to neat little dresses.
From High Bulk To Low Bulk Polyester
Crimplene which had been so popular to create the correct 'A' line mini dress of the 1960s was used for every style of garment imaginable. High Bulk Crimplene began to run out of steam by the early to mid 70s and finer examples of the fabric like Lirelle had been introduced. Crimplene had been used since the 50s and was loved for its wash and wear qualities.
The ethnic influence meant that people were looking for natural fabrics or a fabric that at least looked more natural. Crimplene was abandoned and continued to be worn only by old ladies. By the 1990s it was almost extinct yet appeared to resurface in 2000 made into quality tops.
1960s Fashion History Drawings - 1965
Use these Tailleur images below as inspiration for fashion designing and pattern cutting.
They have an early 1960s fashion feel for more mature women. All the images will expand to fit an A4 sheet when printed out. Click the thumbnails for those enlargements. The mini skirt length was not really an accepted mass fashion when these trade plates were designed for a more conservative mature market.
1970s Fashion History Hairstyles Image of College Women 1977
By the mid 1970s women had adopted a variety of hairstyles many based on blow drying of hair into specific flicked positioning that emanated from a centre parting. The image below is of several hundred women between 18 and 65 and taken at the university college where I graduated. I never thought 30 years ago I would be putting it on this site to show hairstyles, but when I recently came across the picture long stored in my loft it seemed so real. Real people of the 1970s with real hair styles.
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