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60 years of fashion

60 Years of Fashion (part 2!)

15th March 2023 by Fiona Mobbs Leave a Comment

I’m exploring sixty years of popular fashion and part 1 took us from the space-inspired 60s, through the hippy-chic of the 70s to the big shoulders (and bigger hair!) of the 1980s.  Let’s pick up this fashion story in 1990…

 

1990s

The 1990s seem to be having a bit of a renaissance in fashionable circles just now: denim dungarees, spaghetti-strap tops, check skirts and shirts, and Doc Marten boots have been spotted on some apparently  young and fashionable types recently.  Should we ‘look back in anger’ at an incredibly diverse decade in fashion or should we embrace some of its hottest looks ‘baby, one more time’?

The 1990s was the decade of ‘Madchester’ and the rise of BritPop and CoolBritannia on this side of the Atlantic.  Couple that with the twin winds of the ‘Friends’ phenomenon and rappers launching their own fashion brands from the US, and the 90s was the decade of super casual fashion excess.  From Sporty Spice’s track-wear, through to Christina Aguilera’s hip-hugging cargo pants, we were either wearing over-large and athletic-inspired or tiny and covered in glitter.  And if it had a smiley face, even better!

In this article for The Guardian, former editor of Face magazine, Sheryl Garratt, looks back at the rise of 90s youth culture and it’s influence of what we were wearing then.

 

2000s

The first decade of the new millennium saw moves away from the baggy and the sporty (with the exception of the Juicy Couture velour tracksuit!) and towards something a little more glamourous – although the rise of the Ugg boot shows that we weren’t giving up on comfort entirely!  The ‘Noughties’ brought back the capri pant – preferably in denim and worn ‘low-rise’ enough to show off your thong (if you were young and firm enough!).  Denim has, of course, always been fashionable, adapting to suit the youth culture of each generation in turn.  The ’00s was no exception and saw everything from denim micro-skirts to denim vests – and it was OK to ‘double-denim’ if you wanted to.

There were some fashion pieces that every generation could embrace, too: the arrival of the pashmina and return of peep-toe heels were something even Mums and Grandmas could enjoy without looking like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.  Some brave souls even adopted the cropped cardigan, but probably over a flowery blouse rather than letting it show off your midriff!

Instyle magazine looks back at some of the more questionable fashion choices from the 2000s.

 

2010s

Are we still too close to the last decade to reflect on it impartially?  Perhaps that depends whether you enjoyed the puffer jackets and ‘festival fashion’ that it brought, or whether it largely passed you by.  As we have seen often in this retrospective, one decade often rejects the looks of the previous, perhaps an inevitability in the fashion world’s constant quest for the ‘new’ (or the ‘reinvented’!).  The 2010s was no different, presenting perhaps a more sophisticated, grown-up glamour than the Noughties had.  This is reflected in the rise of some new fashion icons like the perfectly put-together Kim Kardashian, the buffed Beyoncé and the generally ‘out there’ Lady Gaga.

Although we liked to put flowers in our hair and embrace the denim flares for a ‘Woodstock’ festival look, the rise of social media and key influencers ensured that we always looked polished when the camera was on us.  The 2010s also saw the first serious moves into sustainable fashion; for the first time, perhaps, we took an interest in how and where our clothes were made – and the rise of online shopping meant we could buy from anywhere around the world if we wanted to.  Towards the end of the decade, first Kate Middleton and then Meghan Markle had the ability to sell out an item online within hours.

This article from Fashion United – written at the very end of the decade – reflects on what it thought we would remember from the 2010s; were they right?

 

2020s – and beyond?

What has this decade brought in terms of fashion?  So far, we seem to have been harking back to times past: the 1980s and the 1990s have both had ‘moments’ already.  Perhaps it comes from a nostalgia for better times (summers were always long and sunny when you were young, even if they really weren’t).  Or perhaps it’s simply the ease with which we can buy and sell our clothes online (thanks to the likes of Etsy and Vinted), but it seems to me that anything vintage, from any decade, is acceptable now.

Whether you like your denim super-skinny or completely bell-bottomed, whether you favour a pashmina or a crocheted tank-top, it feels as though the 2020s haven’t found their style (yet) so it’s up to us to wear what we like and what suits us.  If you can still get into something from your youth hanging at the back of the wardrobe, you earn style credits for having had the good sense to hold on to it for all this time.

If the 2020s aren’t going to show us what to wear, we’ll have to make it up ourselves!

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 2010s fashion, 60 years of fashion, 90s fashion, noughties fashion, vintage fashion

60 Years of Fashion (part 1!)

23rd February 2023 by Fiona Mobbs Leave a Comment

It’s very hard to say when fashion ‘started’.  Historically, it largely depended on your social status.  For example, Queen Elizabeth I was a highly fashionable lady and influenced her court, but did she influence the average person in the street…?   The Georgian era – all that Jane Austen glamour – was also terribly fashion-conscious, which perhaps reached the aspiring middle-classes but not much further?

I would argue that fashion, as something we all have access to and are influenced by, really only started in the 1960s.  As post-war austerity slowly gave way to a more stable economic situation, incomes rose and, with that, we had a little more disposable earnings in our pocket – with the growing department stores and ‘off the peg’ clothes shops very happy to help us spend it!  Colour movies had us wanting to dress like film stars and the rise of the record industry had us wanting to copy our pop idols.  (Am I starting to wax too lyrical…?!)

Perhaps this article should be called sixty years of popular fashion, as I suppose that’s what I really mean.  It’s just a great excuse to reflect on the many changes in fashion and style that the last sixty years have seen. In this first blog, we look at the 60s, 70s and 80s, which all brought some very different styles!

 

1960s

The 60s was the era of young people.  Their desire to stop dressing like their parents really pioneered so many fashion looks.  New technology had created new fabrics that designers could exploit; everything from polyester, nylon and acrylic to Perspex, Spandex and even PVC were used.  The dawn of the space age (Sputnik I had been launched in 1957) saw many fashion houses design for what they thought the future might look like.  The 60s also saw the rise of the boutiques and more accessible designers; Mary Quant and Bibas are both great examples of these (but anything you said you bought on the Kings Road or Carnaby Street was bound to win you admiring looks!).

The 1960s was the era of the mini-skirt, bubble skirts and love beads.  Women wore polka-dot fabrics and ponchos, men wore moccasins and medallion necklaces, and everyone wore frayed bell-bottom jeans!  As the 60s gave way to the 1970s, fashion generally got a whole lot more relaxed…

Read more about 1960s youth fashion, with some lovely memories, in the V&As great online page here.

 

1970s

The 1970s was a decade that seemed to embrace everything.  Whether you loved the hippy and psychedelic vibe of the Woodstock festival, you revelled in disco glitz, or you adopted the fledgling glam-rock look of the likes of Thin Lizzy and Roxy Music, the fashion world was as diverse as the world of music.  Hair was generally worn longer, for men and women, and beards became rather more mainstream for the first time since the 1920s.  Shoes were probably platform – the higher the better – and everything was colourful, preferably clashing.

In the 70s, the most fashionable women wore floppy Farrah Fawcett flick hair under their trendy headscarf, wore maxi-dresses with plenty of smocking or shearing and probably owned a pair of over-the-knee boots.  If you couldn’t afford the punk looks of designers like Vivienne Westwood or Malcolm McLaren, you shopped the more affordable versions offered by the likes of C&A, Tammy Girl and Dolcis.

Take a trip down memory lane with this fabulous gallery of 1970s fashion plates from Harpers Bazaar.
 

1980s

Ah, who doesn’t look back to the ‘80s and think Ra-ra skirts and leg warmers?  Or perhaps big shoulder pads and lots of bangles?  As each generation in turn seeks to make its own look, so the 1980s ‘New Romantic’ generation turned its back on the too casual hippy and embraced an often smarter look.  The jacket saw a comeback, for men and women, probably slightly over-large and with the cuffs folded back.  Lace-trimmed blouses and waistcoats were popular and, if we weren’t wearing kitten-heel stilettos, we were probably wearing slouchy boots.

Teenage girls wanted to look like Madonna or Adam Ant, whilst their Mum’s styled themselves more on Crystal Carrington from ‘Dynasty’ (or Jan Howard from ‘Howards Way’ – did you know they have been repeating that on the Drama Channel?!).  Our menfolk embraced colourful knitwear, or the aforementioned ‘Miami Vice’ pastel suit.

The 1980s also saw the rise of the Supermodel, with Janice Dickinson, Linda Evangelista and Elle Macpherson dominating the fashion press.  But probably the most iconic dress of the decade was, of course, Princess Diana’s 140 metres of ivory silk taffeta wedding dress, designed by David and ‎Elizabeth Emanuel.

Take a look back at the pop fashion of the 1980s with Marie Claire here.

 

Read Part 2 here, where I look at the 1990s right up to the present!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 1960s fashion, 1970s fashion, 1980s fashion, 60 years of fashion, fashion memories

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