1969 and the Rise of a Revolution: Fashion Fifty Years Ago

With June fast approaching, it is hard to believe that 2019 is almost halfway over. This year will go down in history as the year of the Mueller Report, the Venezuelan presidential crisis, and the second North Korea-United States summit, along with a thousand other events that rocked and shaped its progress. Even among these events, the media still publish reports on Melania Trump wearing a jacket emblazoned “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” to a migrant shelter or the price of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s suits, suggesting that politics and fashion are not such strange bedfellows. The chaos of today makes it easier to turn back the clock — to rewind some 50 years to revisit the events that similarly transformed 1969 and its fashion, which wholeheartedly symbolized a changing era.

Charged with rebellion and anger, 1969 was marked by overwhelming turmoil. The year saw the successful completion of the Apollo 11 mission, the inception of the internet, the first U.S. troops withdraw from Vietnam, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, Britain deploying troops to Northern Ireland, the Stonewall Riots, and the Andean Pact, to name a few events.

This spirit of revolution also applies itself artistically. The Beatles released “Abbey Road,” the cult film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” dominated the box office, and Woodstock attracted half a million people with headliners like Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. More than any other era, the ‘60s embodies the clear link between cultural and political events and the arts.

In the ‘60s, young people careless about the latest collections showing at Paris couture week — they found the convention elitist and antiquated in a new world order. Instead, they turned to designers like Mary Quant, who gave women clothes that already felt made for them: mini-skirts, knee socks, pinafore dresses, and short shift dresses. Women across the world wanted this “London boutique-style” look, and French designers like André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin followed suit.

An event like Woodstock encapsulates how the establishment’s rule — even those of the fashion establishment — can so easily be cast off. Woodstock saw the peak of hippie style: Ossie Clark’s long peasant dresses, Jimi Hendrix’s military jackets and fringe suede jackets, Emilio Pucci’s paisley prints, and Edwardian voluminous blouses. The festival inspired the mass appropriation of Native American, Asian (namely Indian), and West African designs in particular Indian print tunics, African dashikis, and Pakistani trousers. Larger fashion retailers like J.C. Penney took note and re-appropriated these designs for mass consumption.

A connection can also be drawn between the political climate and the world’s consumption at the time. Though the late ‘60s were a turbulent time fiscally, particularly for the U.S., experts now see a link between the rise in salaries among men and women and the shift in the way that people dressed during the time period. Higher salaries meant young people could afford more expensive, colorful, and decorative clothes.

Even amidst the world of Paris fashion, an internal revolution occured. By 1969, Yves Saint Laurent established his boutique Rive Gauche. It-girls like Betty Catroux, Loulou de Falaise, and Catherine Deneuve modeled his clothes. His famous “safari collection,” filled with low slung belts, knee high boots, and cotton khaki jackets, dominated the scene alongside his brightly coloured patchwork dresses. The former was a look inspired by the uniforms worn by the Afrika Korps, and began to show that globalization was well underway in fashion.

English singer Jane Birkin — with her baby white t-shirts, flared blue jeans, and straw baskets — also dominated 1969. Her top-of-the charts album with husband Serge Gainsbourg featured a simple cover of her face featuring her signature wispy bangs, long hair, doe-eyes, and long lashes, a look that helped usher in and prime the bell bottom craze of the ‘70s.

Compared to other decades, this era’s fashion seems to be less obviously linked to politics. One begins to wonder, given more historically striking years like 1969, is this even a relevant question? While it is easy to see parallels between the release of Robert Mueller’s 2019 election report and the completion of the Pentagon Papers, can the same be said of fashion?

The answer is far from simple. Recent collections by Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior with slogan statements about “sisterhood” or Prabal Gurung’s 2017 “The Future is Female” finale are all clear nods to contemporary waves of feminism and female empowerment that are reverberating around our conversations. Yet will clothes like these ever have the same magnitude or symbolic liberation as the mini-skirt?

Coachella fashion, try as it may, will always be a far cry away from the summer of ‘69. More than anything, it feels like a false pageantry. But fashion does seem like it is on the right track.The emulation of other eras, which fashion magazines Vogue and Elle report on every season, signifies a desire to bring back earlier revolutions in an attempt to bring about political and cultural change. We can only hope that someday soon, fashion makes the same amount of noise as it did 50 years ago.

—Staff writer Aline G. Damas can be reached at aline.damas@thecrimson.com.