The way other people dressed was a transparent sign of a change in attitude. In the 1960s, many chose, very publicly, to begin to look different from the norm. a new market for youth fashion. Our collection aligns the various facets of this accelerated taste revolution, with eye-catching pieces through many of the most influential designers of the decade.
The invention of fashion
In the 1950s, fashion was governed by the tastes of a rich and mature elite. Paris has remained the driving force behind the fashion industry with complicated haute couture garments produced in normal collections through Cristóbal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy (the author of Audrey Hepburn’s iconic black black black). dress at Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961), but times changed temporarily. At the dawn of the 1960s, the source of income for young people was at its highest point since the end of World War II. Increasing economic strength has fueled a new sense of identity and a desire to express it. The fashion industry responded temporarily by creating designs for other young people who no longer only copied “adult” styles. Beatniks and Mods (an abbreviation for “modernists”) were especially influential in the early decade. colors and lines, as they were for American soul and R music
New to new fashion
It took a new type of store to break the dominance of Paris and completely ignite the perspective of youthful fashion. The branches were small self-service branches created in London through designers looking to offer affordable models to ordinary young people. , be providing a very different delight from pretty stylish clothing stores and outdated retail branches. Being “on the ground” allowed them to get to know their consumers well and respond temporarily to their needs. Designers Mary Quant and John Stephen pioneered this new form of retail, having opened their first retail outlets in the mid-1950s. They designed and stored incredibly influential clothes that, first of all, nodded in the Mod aesthetic of bright, personalized minimalism.
The reign of the store
In just a few years, the grocery shopping scene had exploded. Other young people flocked to “see and be seen” in the dynamic new shops, centered on Kings Road and Carnathrough Street in London. These now iconic boutiques sell affordable pieces tailored to an urban and lively lifestyle, allowing consumers to mix pieces creatively. Brightly colored costumes produced through London designers have become incredibly influential in the UK, as well as in Europe and America, helping to create the seductive symbol of ‘Swinging London’. The miniskirt, popularized through Mary Quant, temporarily earned its position as the most iconic maximum look of the decade, as young women had the chance to dare to undress. Later in the decade, influential designers included Barbara Hulanicki, who, like Quant, focused on a laugh. dresses with boldly short hems, and Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin, who stand out for their original day suits and women’s pants.
An unnatural obsession
The 1960s fell under the spell of new artificial materials, with young designers eager to locate new angles in established forms, which exploited the perspective of fashionable plastics and artificial fibers: plexiglass, PVC, polyester, acrylic, nylon, radine, elastane, etc. – to create easy-to-maintain outfits, eye-catching and fun. The search for a truly fashionable form of clothing has materialized through the ‘paper dress’. Made of cellulose, glare or polyester, these disposable garments were first created in 1966 as a component of a marketing trick for an American company that manufactured paper sanitary products. Opportunistic brands in the United States and the United Kingdom temporarily transformed those boldly published dresses into an essential novelty that remained popular until 1968.
Clothes for the space age
Over the decade, dress codes, even for the older generation, have become increasingly relaxed: public figures like Jackie Kennedy, sewing loose, began to favor shorter skirts and fewer people wore accessories such as hats and gloves. André Courréges also adopted the new temperament of informality. From the mid-1960s on, André Courréges promoted sewing to create boldly fashionable clothes. used with astronaut-style accessories such as flat boots, goggles and helmets. Nor were he afraid of protecting reasonable new fabrics when more productive they served his striking creations.
Sewing let’s
Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro and Yves Saint Laurent were some of the European designers who managed to translate a haute couture aesthetic, generating ambitious and futuristic designs for other young people looking to be used every day. new materials, adding vinyls, silver fabrics and giant zippers, creating radical shapes like their outstanding “visor” hats. Italian designer Emilio Pucci also influenced. He produced complicated garments for the jet-set, but his creations were far from conservative. Pucci, the first designer to use a distinctive taste for haute couture licenses, has created a variety of published colorful silks, which were used for probably endless scarves and ties, as well as for loose dresses and pajamas whose contours reflected a growing interest in ethnic taste. Pucci’s extravagant creations foreshadowed the psychedelic patterns of drug-fuelled counterculture.
Looking for alternatives
By the late 1960s, the taste had gotten quite theatrical. Fashion allowed for longer hair for men and women, as well as flared definition for pants. Men appreciated the recently given freedom to be extravagant, dressed in cuts complemented by bright, ambitious shirts and high-heeled boots, and increasingly, as clothing has become more unisex, they shop. in the same department stores as women. With the Vietnam War and the student uprisings in France, opinion leaders began to disapprove of the materialistic brilliance of pop. People turned to eastern culture for inspiration. The mix-and-match concepts and aesthetics of the Californian hippie movement have crossed the Atlantic, giving other people the freedom to “ live differently ” and wear sportswear from a diversity of non-Western cultures. Fashion leaders began to sport long, loose and layered outfits, encouraged through second-hand or ‘vintage’ tastes, from the late 19th century and 1930s. London’s Kensington Market has become home from Mecca for other young people who need to create their own style of choice, promoting a host of colorful clothing, much of which is from India. This new direction was reflected in the models of Zandra Rhodes, Foale and Tuffin and Yves St Laurent, who showed an interest in ethnic textiles.