The 1970s

1970s history

1970s Music

1910s Fashion

1920s Fashion

1930s Fashion

1940s Fashion

1950s Fashion

1960s Fashion

1970s Fashion

1980s Fashion

1990s Fashion

The early 70's will always be considered as the 'back end' of the 1960's. The fashion and attitudes of the late sixties lasted into early part of the seventies. It was a time when technology revolted and began to change people’s lives. Lee Cooper mini skirts caused a stir across Europe as hemlines went from mini to maxi to mini again. The Lee Cooper product range of 1971 included hot pants for girls, suede jeans for men and safari suits. Then came the launch of the Lee Cooper “love” jean, the “cherry jean” and the first 32” bell-bottom flair. As the decade progressed, Lee Cooper’s tank tops and hipsters were as popular across the universities of Europe as the celebrities that wore them. The internationally known couple, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, were particularly noted to wear Lee Cooper jeans. In 1975, an ultra-modern, environmentally conscious production facility in Tunisia was opened. In 1976, checks made an unexpected return to the Lee Cooper’s product range. As the rock sound of the sixties gave way to the disco sound of the 70's, colourful corduroys and other fabrics came back into style. By the decade’s end, Punk and New wave music were hitting the clubs with a vengeance, and so were Lee Cooper’s “stonewashed” jeans The 70's gave birth to a style that has endured more than 3 decades and introduced 2 new generations to its clothing, music and attitude. Punk was not just a whimsical stab at fashion creation; it was a revolution and encapsulated a complete era lifestyle, the music, the clothing, dance, language. And it brought together one of the most consistently influential groups of individuals, in the right place at the right time. Names we are all too familiar with like Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm Mclaren, Richard Branson, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten, the names behind the pistols. It was Richard Branson who signed the Pistols to a recording contract with the newly founded Virgin Record label and their first album Anarchy in The UK was a huge hit. This culmination of different talents gave birth to styles still embracing our senses. Each individual went solo to become household names in their own right. From record stores to airways and railways, the Virgin name has been branded all over the world. Richard Branson has become the inspiration for generations. He left school at the age of fifteen suffering from dyslexia. Gifted with a highly creative imagination his weaknesses never deterred his resolve as he went from strength outright. Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950. His entrepreneurial ways began early when he was publishing a student magazine at just 16 years. Branson did not go on to graduate school but in 1970 the now famous Virgin brand had its beginnings in the form of a discount records mail order venture that he and his friend Nik Powell worked on. Soon after opening a record store on Oxford Street, London, Branson began a recording label in 1972, Virgin Records. This was to be the first major success for the British entrepreneur as he started the label with a hit record. The instrumental artist Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" released in 1973 was a cash cow for Branson's Virgin Records and it stayed in the UK music charts for 247 weeks. The record label went on to sign top music artists like "Genesis", "The Pistols", "The Rolling Stones" and "Simple Minds". In the mid 1970s as a young man not yet thirty, Malcolm McLaren owned and operated a London shop simply called "Sex" and dreamed of fame and fortune. He met a half formed group of teenage rock star hopefuls and fed them happy half truths about the great bands he had led to stardom. With his help in finding corner stone members John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) and Sid Vicious those boys became the English punk rock legends "The Pistols". The group met its ends less then four years later and McLaren walked away with a little bit of personal fame, but with most of his big dreams unfulfilled. Using his status as a legend maker McLaren would later manage such 80s punk influenced pop successes as Adam Ant, "Bow Wow Wow", and Boy George, and even release albums of music under his own name. Vivienne Westwood accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year's Honours List "for services to fashion", She has won the award for British Designer of the Year three times. In December 2003, she and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her designs, testimony to her versatility and maturity and the respect she has garnered, a far cry from Punk. Endurance in such a volatile industry for a prolonged time is a hallmark by any measure. Together they forged a new creative direction for music, clothing and attitude, without a single academic qualification to share this is testimony to "born to succeed or fail". Meanwhile Vivienne Westwood carved out her own place in fashion history with her Pirates Collection and Buffalo Girl style. Vivienne Isabel Swire was born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on 8 April 1941. Her mother had been a weaver in the local cotton mills and her father came from a family of shoemakers. Her parents ran a sub post office in Tintwistle before moving to north-west London in the 1950's. In 1965 she met Malcolm McLaren together they went on to become one of the most creative partnerships in history and as they say the rest is history. In all design disciplines there have been few that are true leaders; worth names are, Frank Lloyd Wright, the father of modern architecture applied his genius to The Falling Water House, perfect in proportion and modern in any era. And yet it was built more than 70 yaears ago. His work in the late 18th century paved the way to The Art Deco style, which began to take shape around 1920. He was decades ahead of his time, it's well documented. And, an engineer driven by steam and steel, Isambard Brunell the greatest structural engineer in living memory. The Clifton suspension Bridge is testimony of his ability to create a structure that performed a vital function poetically. Not even the Golden Gate and Sydney Harbour hold a candle to it, especially in the wind. Their symbols live on in architectural structures, silk ties, bridges, business ventures, music and cufflinks, clothing and jewellery, all, instantly recognizably punk. The Mohawk or Mohican is a hairstyle which consists of shaving either side of the head, leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair. Mohawks became common in youth punk subcultures in the early 1980s and were then adopted by various other groups, becoming more diverse in style. Today, Mohawks are still associated with the Punk subculture, but have become a part of mainstream fashion. Bell-bottoms in the 1960s and 1970s Bell-bottoms became very fashionable in the late 1960s and much of the 1970s, both for men and women. They began as part of the hippie counterculture movement in the 1960s, together with love beads, granny glasses, and tie-dye shirts; in the 1970s, they moved into the mainstream. Sonny and Cher helped popularize bell-bottoms by wearing them on their popular television show. Loon pants (shortened from "balloon pants") were one type of bell-bottomed trousers. They flared more from the knee than typical bell-bottoms, in which more of the entire leg was flared. They were a 1970's fashion, and could initially only be bought via catalogue from a company in Britain which advertised in the back of the New Musical Express. They were usually worn with a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and Jesus boots (sandals). They became associated with disco music. When the disco backlash occurred, late in 1979, bell bottoms quickly went out of fashion along with leisure suits and other clothes that had become associated with disco. Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&CO) is a privately held clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came from Bavaria, Germany to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the company began producing denim overalls in the 1870s, modern jeans were not produced until the 1920s. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with employee ownership and a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss' four nephews. Jacob Davis was a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Davis' costumers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. Davis did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi suggesting that they both go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacobs' offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patented rivet was later incorporated into the company's jean design and advertisements. Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), the manufacturing of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s. In the 1950s and 1960s, Levi's jeans became popular among a wide range of youth subcultures, including greasers, mods, rockers, hippies and skinheads. Levi's popular shrink-to-fit 501s were sold in a unique sizing arrangement; the indicated size was related to the size of the jeans prior to shrinking, and the shrinkage was substantial. The company still produces these unshrunk, uniquely sized jeans, but they don't sell very well. The decade began with a continuation of the hippie look from the 1960s. Jeans remained frayed and the Tie dye was still popular. The space age look was on the wane, though tunics and Indian fabrics continued to be popular. Jeans rises shrunk to 4 inches or even less as "hip huggers" with "bell-bottoms" became the height of denim fashion. Altering the appearance of jeans with bleach and tie-dye techniques, embroidery, and metal studs were popular as well. Polyester "doubleknit" fabric was coming into its own, with many clothing items for men and women being produced in this modern easy-care fabric. By the mid-Seventies, as the economy improved, silhouettes narrowed, and hemlines dropped again from mini skirt to midi (mid-calf length) and maxi (ankle length), with all three lengths enjoying almost equal popularity. Platform shoes with soles 2-4 inches thick became the style for both men and women. Men's ties broadened and became more colourful, as did dress shirt collars and suit jacket lapels. Fashion influences were peasant clothing, such as blouses with laces or off-the-shoulder necklines, inspired by those worn in the 17th century. Yves St Laurent introduced the peasant look in 1976 which became very influential. Skirts were gathered into tiers and shoulder lines dropped. Clothing became very unstructured and fluid at this point. Embroidered clothing, either self-made, or imported from Mexico or India also enjoyed favour. The decade began with a continuation of the hippie look from the 1960s. Jeans remained frayed and the Tie dye was still popular. The space age look was on the wane, though tunics and Indian fabrics continued to be popular. Jeans rises shrunk to 4 inches or even less as "hip huggers" with "bell-bottoms" became the height of denim fashion. Altering the appearance of jeans with bleach and tie-dye techniques, embroidery, and metal studs were popular as well. Polyester "doubleknit" fabric was coming into its own, with many clothing items for men and women being produced in this modern easy-care fabric. By the mid-Seventies, as the economy improved, silhouettes narrowed, and hemlines dropped again from mini skirt to midi (mid-calf length) and maxi (ankle length), with all three lengths enjoying almost equal popularity. Platform shoes with soles 2-4 inches thick became the style for both men and women. Men's ties broadened and became more colorful, as did dress shirt collars and suit jacket lapels. Fashion influences were peasant clothing, such as blouses with laces or off-the-shoulder necklines, inspired by those worn in the 17th century. Yves St Laurent introduced the peasant look in 1976 which became very influential. Skirts were gathered into tiers and shoulder lines dropped. Clothing became very unstructured and fluid at this point. Embroidered clothing, either self-made, or imported from Mexico or India also enjoyed favour. Tie-dyeing The basic process is to tie up the material before applying dye in such a way that the dye only reaches part of the area to which it is applied. The boundaries of the dyed and non-dyed areas are usually rather blurred, as the dye has begun to soak into the non-tied sections. During tie-dyeing, if a good fiber reactive dye is used, a chemical reaction takes place which permanently bonds the colourful dye to the fabric, making tie-dye safe to wash amongst other, non-tie-dyed clothes once the excess dye has been removed. As the name suggests, the fabric is tied, usually with string or rubber bands, after being folded into a particular pattern. Some areas, where the textile is tied and in inner parts of folds, do not absorb dye as readily, forming a pattern. This is known as a resist technique (the areas that are tied and the inner parts of folds resist dyeing). Punk as a style originated from London from the designer Vivienne Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren. Postmodernist and iconoclastic in essence this movement was a direct reaction to the economic situation during the economic depression of the period. Punk had at its heart a manifesto of creation through disorder. Safety pins became nose and ear jewelery, rubber fetishwear was subverted to become daywear, and images of mass murders, rapists and criminals were elevated to iconographic status. Punk fashion can be traced to the ripped jeans, torn t-shirts, scrappy haircuts and worn and torn leather jackets sported by members of the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols were dressed by Malcolm McLaren, their manager, who owned a clothes store called 'Let It Rock' in the Kings Road, Chelsea area of London, when they released Anarchy in the UK in 1976. These styles can be traced back further to New York artists at the Andy Warhol Factory or bands such as the Velvet Underground or New York Dolls. By the 1980s, Punk fashion, and punk bands, had shown up in cities across the world. There was a DIY (do it yourself) quality to the fashion. Some small elements that spoke of a person's punk roots were safety pins, mohawk, spikes or harshly dyed hair, filthy tennis-shoes or pointy Beatle boots. There is an element of a makeshift, thrown together look and a sense of poverty. The original punk fashions of the 1970s were intended to appear as confrontational, shocking and rebellious as possible. This style of punk dress was significantly different from what would later be considered the basic punk look. Many items that were commonly worn by punks in the 1970s became less common later on, and new elements were constantly added to the punk image. A great deal of punk fashion from the 1970s was based on the designs of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, as well as the dress styles of punk role models such as the Ramones, Richard Hell and the Bromley Contingent. Punk style was influenced by clothes sold in Malcolm McLaren's shop SEX. McLaren has credited this style to his first impressions of Richard Hell while McLaren was in New York City, supposedly managing the The New York Dolls (Note: In the documentary Punk: Attitude, David Johansen said McLaren was never their manager, and that he only designed clothes for them and booked them one concert; the Red Show.) The punk movement was a “statement of independence” among young people who were trying to assert personal freedoms over what they felt was an oppressive societal attitude. By dressing and grooming themselves in such a manner as to shock and often intimidate those persons they felt were “mainstream” (and thus part of the problem) they made themselves visible and gained lasting notoriety. While there were many different variations on the punk theme, spiked hair was a commonly seen style because it was unmistakably intentional. It also generally photographed well. A world famous UK clothing designer once said that fashion is a gentle progression of revisited ideas - and it's difficult to argue with this sentiment. Whilst fashion by its very definition is something that is constantly changing, there are only so many changes clothing trends can go through before they inevitably start to borrow ideas from previous styles; and this can be seen across many fashion crazes in recent years. The flare and bellbottom fashion of the late 1960s and 1970s was resurrected for a time in the late 80s to early 90s baggy music scene that emerged from Manchester; however, this time the style was a little more casual. Furthermore, the mod style trend of the mid 1960s has certainly seen a resurgence in recent years, with skinny proving very popular once again. Of course, fashion has always been closely linked with celebrity life - the glitz and glamour of the music and film industry helping to turn the stars into role models and ultimately, global trendsetters. As such, it only requires a quick scan of the latest music magazines to see what's currently hot with young people across the country. Whilst some styles can change in a relatively short period of time, some things simply never seem to go out of fashion. Jeans, for example, is one item of clothing that seems to have been around forever. Originating from the French phrase 'bleu de genes' (the blue of Genoa), denim jeans originated in two places independently of each other; in Nimes (France) and in India, where denim trousers were worn by sailors of Dhunga (which eventually lent its name to dungarees). But whilst they were originally worn by workers for their hard-wearing material and general durability, jeans became fashionable in American popular culture in the 1950s, and became a symbol of rebellion across various youth subcultures of the time. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history. Jeans have been a fashion mainstay in many cultures since then, being worn casually by people of almost all demographics. As is the case with all fashion trends, people have always sought ways to distinguish themselves from the mainstream. Over the years, popular denim fashions have included bellbottom, boot-cut, flare, straight-legged and hipsters, to name but a few. The hip-hop music scene also helped to bring baggy jeans into the mainstream, often worn alongside a baseball cap, trainers and a casual jersey. This helps to demonstrate how one simple item of clothing can reveal quite a lot about the background and lifestyle a person chooses to follow. For now though, skinny jeans are back in a big way. If they ever go out of fashion again, perhaps it's best holding on to them, because you never know; they might be all the rage again a lot sooner than expected. Mary Quant OBE FCSD (born 11 February 1934 in Kent, England) was an English fashion designer, one of the many designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born to Welsh parents, Quant studied illustration at Goldsmiths College before taking a job with a couture milliner. She is also famed for her work on pop art in fashion.Skirts had been getting shorter since about 1958 a development Quant considered to be practical and liberating, allowing women the ability to run for a bus. The miniskirt, for which she is arguably most famous, became one of the defining fashions of the 1960s. The miniskirt was developed separately by André Courrèges, and there is disagreement as to who came up with the idea first. Mary Quant named the miniskirt after her favourite make of car, the Mini, she loved this car so much, she had her own one designed especially for her!. Flare and boot-cut jeans in the 1990s In the mid 1990s a disco revival occurred and bell bottoms became popular again in women's and men's fashion in Europe spreading to the Americas. They were initially reintroduced as boot-cut (also spelled "boot cut" or "bootcut"), tapering to the knee and flaring out to accommodate a boot. Over time, the width of the hem grew wider and the term "flare-leg" was favoured in marketing over the term "bell-bottom". As with boot-cut hems, the trend began in Europe and spread rapidly around the world. Today both boot-cut and flare-leg pants remain popular both in denim and higher quality office wear. In menswear straight-leg also gave way to boot-cut looks, again initially in Europe, and has made its leap into flare-leg for officewear, the same as what has happened in womenswear. In most cases men's boot-cut and women's boot-cuts differ. Women's jeans are tight to the knee and then flare out slightly to the hem while men's styles are usually flared/loose all the way from crotch to hem. The bell-bottoms of the 60s and 70s can be generally be distinguished from the flare or boot-cut pants of the 90s by the tightness of the knee. Jeans in the 1990s also tended to ride lower than those of the 1960s and 1970s. Welcome to ABBA - The Site the official ABBA website and the worlds largest ABBA Online Community. Now 170527 members. Carnaby Street is a pedestrianised shopping street in London, United Kingdom, located in the area of 'Carnaby' in the district of Soho, near Oxford Street, and just to the east of Regent Street. The area around Carnaby Street is known simply as 'Carnaby'. It consists of twelve pedestrianised streets with 168 fashion and lifesyle retailers, including a large number of independent fashion boutiqaues. The nearest London Underground station is Oxford Circus tube station (Bakerloo, Central and Victoria Lines). The street derives its name from Karnaby House, located to its east, which was erected in 1683. It is not known why the house was so called. The street was probably laid out in 1685 or 1686 and first appears in the ratebooks in 1687. It was almost completely built up by 1690 with small houses. In the 1960s, Carnaby Street was made popular by followers of the Mod style. Many independent fashion boutiques, and designers such as Mary Quant and 'Lord John' were located in and around Carnaby Street as well as various underground music bars such as the 'Roaring Twenties'. With bands such as The Beatles, Small Faces, and Rolling Stones appearing in the area to work, shop, and socialize, it became one of London's coolest destination associated with the Swinging Sixties. There are two Westminster City Council green plaques on Carnaby Street: the first can be found at 1 Carnaby Street and is dedicated to fashion entrepreneur John Stephen, who was responsible for beginning the Mod fashion revolution here. The second plaque, located at 52/55 Carnaby Street, is dedicated to the Mod pop group 'Small Faces' and their manager 'Don Arden'. Mary Quant ran a popular clothes shop in the Kings Road, Chelsea, London called Bazaar, from which she sold her own designs. In the late 1950s she began experimenting with shorter skirts, which resulted in the miniskirt in 1965 one of the defining fashions of the decade. Owing to Quant's position in the heart of fashionable "Swinging London", the miniskirt was able to spread beyond a simple street fashion into a major international trend. Its acceptance was greatly boosted by Jean Shrimpton's wearing a short white shift dress, made by Colin Rolfe, on 30 October 1965 at Derby Day, first day of the annual Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia, where it caused a sensation. According to Shrimpton, who claimed that the brevity of the skirt was due mainly to Rolfe's having insufficient material, the ensuing controversy was as much as anything to do with her having dispensed with a hat and gloves, seen as the essential accaessories in such conservative society The miniskirt was further popularised by André Courrèges, who developed it separately and incorporated it into his Mod look, for spring/summer 1965. His miniskirts were less body-hugging, and worn with the white "Courrèges boots" that became a trademark. By introducing the miniskirt into the haute couture of the fashion industry, Courrèges gave it a greater degree of respectability than might otherwise have been expected of a street fashion. The miniskirt was followed up in the late 1960s by the even shorter microskirt, which has been referred to derogatorily as a belt or pelmet. Upper garments, such as rugby shirts, were sometimes adapted as mini-dresses. Tights or panty-hose became highly fashionable, in place of stockings, specifically because the rise in hemlines meant that stocking tops would be visible. Mary Quant cited this development in defence of the miniskirt: "In European countries where they ban mini-skirts in the streets and say they're an invitation to rape, they don't understand about stocking tights underneath Western cosmetics in the 1970s reflected the multiple roles ascribed to the modern woman. For the first time since 1900, make-up was chosen situationally, rather than in response to monolithic trends. The era's two primary visions were the feminist-influenced daytime "natural look" and the sexualized evening aesthetic presented by European designers and fashion photographers.In the periphery, punk and glam were also influential. The struggling cosmetics industry attempted to make a comeback, using new marketing and manufacturing practices. During the early rise to prominence of designer jeans, in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, it was fairly typical to see fashions for men follow those for women, just as previously women had been the first to wear flared and bell-bottomed trousers. For example, Jordache initially marketed their products to women only, but soon followed with a line for men that was very similar in overall appearance to the women's. Given the general tendency toward bagginess in men's pants today, this male-after-female trend is less noticeable; nevertheless, most jeans companies have offered low-rise cuts for men in recent years. With the popularization of disco and the increasing availability and diversity of man-made fabrics, a drastic change occurred in mainstream fashion, the likes of which had not been seen since the 1920s. All styles of clothing were affected by the disco style, especially those of men. Men began to wear stylish three-piece suits (which became available in a bewildering variety of colors) which were characterized by wide lapels, wide legged or flared trousers and high rise vests. Neckties became wider and bolder and shirt collars became long and pointed in a style reminiscent of the "Barrymore" color that had been popular in the 1920s. The zippered jumpsuit was popular with both men and women, and clothing inspired by modern dance (wrap-around skirts of nylon or polyester knit) also became common along with close-fitting ballet leotard-style tops with spandex. Even women's blouses were available in body-suit form--close-fitting and fastening with snaps at the crotch so that the lines of the clothing would remain clean and close to the body, even while engaged in energetic disco dancing. Women's shoes began to echo the 1940s, with high-heeled lower-platform mules--"Candies" made of molded plastic with a single leather strap over the ball of the foot or "BareTraps" made of wood very popular. With the demise of disco, late in 1979, these styles (which were by then being criticized as flamboyant) quickly went out of fashion in 1980. Designer jeans and painters pants then started to come into style. With the popularization of disco and the increasing availability and diversity of man-made fabrics, a drastic change occurred in mainstream fashion, the likes of which had not been seen since the 1920s. All styles of clothing were affected by the disco style, especially those of men. Men began to wear stylish three-piece suits (which became available in a bewildering variety of colors) which were characterized by wide lapels, wide legged or flared trousers and high rise vests. Neckties became wider and bolder and shirt collars became long and pointed in a style reminiscent of the "Barrymore" collar that had been popular in the 1920s. The zippered jumpsuit was popular with both men and women, and clothing inspired by modern dance (wrap-around skirts of nylon or polyester knit) also became common along with close-fitting ballet leotard-style tops with spandex. Even women's blouses were available in body-suit form--close-fitting and fastening with snaps at the crotch so that the lines of the clothing would remain clean and close to the body, even while engaged in energetic disco dancing.

HOME