During my 64 years on this planet I have seen many fads come and go.
The first craze I remember was Beatlemania. I remember sitting in front of our family’s black and white television in 1964 watching the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. I was only 8 years-old and just couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It was really hard to hear the music and the group sing over all the noise the girls in the audience were making; they were absolutely screaming at the tops of their collective lungs. In those days (and still now) my big crush was on hip-shaking Elvis Presley. To me, in comparison, I thought the “fab-four” were pretty silly with their shaggy haircuts and all that head shaking while singing “OOOH!”
Fast-forwarding a few years, I recall the flower-child hype in the late 60s. I remember gals wearing long flowy skirts and flowers in their hair. The guys all seemed to play guitar while wearing jeans, unbuttoned shirts and no shoes. The flower-children promoted harmony and love and were quick to flash the peace sign, a hand-gesture consisting of two fingers positioned to form a V … as did the hippies, but with a drug-culture state-of-mind. By the way, the whole V finger sort of sign language gained popularity in 1941 when Winston Churchill used the gesture in public as a “V-for Victory” symbol during WWII.
Somewhere in the 60s the trend changed, and model Twiggy became the fashion icon for many young women. Her look was new to the fashion magazine pages as she flaunted her ultra-thin figure, boy-like short blonde haircut and extraordinarily long dark eyelashes. Oh, and of course, for the guys we had the short-lived fashion-trend of the Nehru jackets popularized by the Beatles. For the gals, our skirts were indeed mini.
The 70s to me were kind of a mixture of the anti-war, peace-movement angry times. Nevertheless, although the bright color wardrobe for girls and young women remained, hip styles at that time also included bell bottom pants, mini skirts, maxi dresses, tie-dyed t-shirts, ponchos, and peasant blouses worn with jeans. No outfit was complete without beads for the guys and gals, lots of headbands, feathers and fringe. Over-used words during that time period included the following: hey man (when addressing men or women), cool, dude and groovy.
Next week I’ll write about disco, Madonna’s influence on clothing and language/slang, Valley Girls and the newest– VSCO girls.
