The Way We Wore

There’s a cycle clothes go through: unwearable, daring, fashionable, everywhere, sooo last year, grotesque, interesting, stylish, revival (but never quite accurate), museum piece. According to fashion historian James Laver, the declension reads: indecent, shameless, daring, smart, dowdy, hideous, ridiculous, amusing, quaint, charming, romantic, beautiful.

At various points in history, fashion has evolved extreme costumes or hairstyles that everybody thinks they must follow (crinolines, beehive hairdos, skirts that trail along the ground) until one day everybody quietly drops it. It goes with a kind of official myopia, an inability to see that women don’t really have 17in waists, or sloping shoulders, or eyebrows half-way up their foreheads.

More examples: wearing thin, fragile nylon stockings in all weathers, as we did in the 50s and early 60s. The thin stockings were worn with indoor shoes – in the winter. My mother recalled that you put cardboard in your shoes to try and keep your feet warm, but it wasn’t very effective.

Nylon stockings became 15 denier tights circa 1967. Tights were cold in winter, but hot in summer. Bare legs were just about OK as long as you dyed them orange. Around 1980 we gave up on the QTan and we were fine. Tights manufacturers even come out with a “white leg” shade (ecru).

Society became very conservative between 1950 and 1965. Somehow this went with the rigid hairstyles, constricting suspender belts and pinching pointy shoes. In the 50s women wore a suit, hat and high heels to go shopping – or to travel by train or air, or go up to "town" (London). My mother had beautiful tweed suits made for me and my sister, and we wore them once, to travel to Ireland by boat. If you didn’t have a hat, you wore a headscarf. In the early 60s, you wore a light chiffon scarf that wouldn’t crush your beehive.

White gloves were a must in public – from the late 19th century until the 50s. Gloves made sense when heating and cooking relied on coal, and the air in cities was full of “smuts” and every surface was dirty. An upper-class girl recalls being forced to carry a pair of “slimy, nylon” gloves whenever she went out in the 60s.

By the late 60s, hats and gloves were no longer obligatory, so manufacturers made gloves “fun” with cutouts and bright colours. Hats became big, with scarves round the crown. Headscarves vanished – and if it rained we just got wet.

Setting your hair on rollers and then back-combing it was time-consuming, sleeping in rollers was painful, and the resulting hairstyles suited nobody. Rollers lasted from the late 50s to the late 60s, but when young people dropped them older generations were shocked. They were convinced our long, limp hair was “dirty” – but we washed it far more often when we didn’t have to “set” it afterwards.

Cotton shirts, blouses, handkerchiefs, napkins, tablecloths, sheets, aprons, summer dresses – they were all starched. A stiffening of manmade fibre made this unnecessary – but had it ever been necessary?

In the early 20th century, some rabbis in the UK wore dog collars and birettas. About 30 years ago there was a lot of fuss about what women priests were going to wear (cassocks with darts!?). Now rabbis and priests sport ordinary clothes, business suits or smart workwear.

At our convent school we wore lisle stockings and pinafores, and veils in chapel. City men wore bowler hats or trilbies. Men junked the hats circa 1970 – the convent probably updated the uniform around the same year.

Barbara Cartland froze the image she adopted as a young woman in the 30s (when hundreds of men proposed, according to her). The Queen Mother and Queen Mary both stuck to the styles of their youth. When Twiggy was having tea with Noël Coward one day, a visitor arrived and: “It was Merle Oberon. It’s funny how people get stuck in the era when they were at their most glamorous. She was wearing a big black polka dot chiffon dress, with a big black bow around her waist.... with high, high heels. But she looked gorgeous.” (Twiggy in Black and White) Men get stuck with teenage rebel hair: Nigel Kennedy, Gary Rhodes, Simon Rattle.

You know you’re old when they start reviving the clothes you wore when young. When they start reviving the clothes they were reviving when you were young...

More clothes here, and links to the rest.

More 60s Food

In the 50s, aprons were all frilly and feminine (or gingham), and if a man wore one – cue laughs. Mid-60s, Habitat started selling unisex butcher aprons, with a practical plain design of white stripes on navy (it was traditional, but went with the geometric and yachting themes in fashion). They sold in millions and coincidentally it became OK for men to cook, and kitchens and dining became far less formal, with earthenware plates instead of fine china, and stainless steel cutlery instead of ornate silver. You ate round the (stripped pine) table in your (big, Victorian) kitchen.

Previously, the woman slaved in the kitchen for three hours, passed the food through the serving hatch, then nipped round to the dining room and joined her guests. With smart eat-in kitchens guests could talk as the hosts cooked, and even help out. It was also part of the “fun!” approach to life. No more boring white candles and Georgian candlesticks, have these pink/red/blue ones in a stainless steel modernist holder! Don’t launder those napkins, have a red paper serviette! Don’t decant everything into separate vegetable dishes you'll have to wash up, bung everything into this oven-to-table casserole dish decorated with futuristic snowflakes! And the quickly prepared food (spag bol) was a lot tastier than the standard roast and two veg.

It was DIY cooking (led to the 70s fondue party – playing with your food!). It was a new kind of oneupmanship, and some caught on faster than others. It was about being modern.

There was a lag between the vanishing of railway porters and the invention of pullalong suitcases, and a similar gap between the disappearance of servants and the junking of the stuffy lifestyle they had made possible. Duvets, dishwashers and freezers helped, too. 

Sheets and cookware became colourful. And mugs (easier than fragile cups and saucers). Plastics enabled patterned formica wipeclean worktops and wacky cutting boards. No more scrubbing kitchen tables. And goodbye antiques - a circular mirror framed in red was the icon of the new look.

So what did we eat in our trendy new kitchens?

Coffee ice cream, rum’n’raisin ditto.

Steak was a treat. It had to be rare. We bought sets of serrated steak knives. But if you ordered it in a restaurant you quite often didn’t get a steak knife and it was practically impossible to eat.

Potato scoops produced spheres of mashed potato, like melon or ice cream balls. They went with radishes/tomatoes cut into flowers. (How I miss those mashed pot balls in a sea of Bisto gravy.)

Mortadella: a horrible pallid sliced Italian sausage. People were outraged if you wouldn’t eat it. Why? It symbolised “abroad”, and sophistication.

Smorgasbord:
pumpernickel
lettuce
cottage cheese
tinned mandarin segments

With variations including mayonnaise, smoked salmon and caviar. It was sooooo sophisticated! And delicious. Wet, sweet, salty and bland. And pumpernickel was different in those days: thinner and blacker and tasting faintly of salt and treacle. Oddly, it was delicious with butter and Silver Shred marmalade.

As well as fussing about how to eat pasta (twirl it round the fork), there was an immense amount of fussing about how to cook it. You had to take it off the heat just before it was cooked, and then quickly decant it so that it didn’t go on cooking because otherwise it might go soft and it wouldn’t be al dente and that would never do! It might become like very soft spaghetti in tins. Middle-class food always has to be tough. Meanwhile common people were making macaroni mould in a pudding basin (it's rather delicious – combine with cheese sauce and peas and eat cold). We still had pudding basins – they were left over from the steamed-pudding era.

Food was more expensive. Sainsbury’s sold bags of cracked eggs, and corner shops (then called “grocers”), sold bags of broken biscuits.

I'm sick of kitchens like science labs with an "island" you can't sit at. I miss those big kitchens with useful tables. Time to revive them?

More here.

60s Slang

In the 60s, small talk, conventional etiquette, and formal manners were abolished. (Among a small subset of humanity. And they came back pretty quickly in the 70s.) The aim was to be laid back at all times, as if you were stoned, which you probably were. If you tried to talk about anything serious you might be told “Heaveeee!!!!” “It was quite a heavy scene” might mean that people were taking hard drugs. If you wanted to leave a gathering because you were bored, shy or embarrassed, or there was nobody there you wanted to talk to, you could say you were quitting the scene because the vibes were bad. Depressing events were a downer or bummer. Fortunately you could “get into” practically anything, from spiders to origami to particle physics, and make it “your thing”. If you were baffled or bored by any of the above, you could say “It’s not my bag”.  “Into” and “my place” were just coming in. Spacey for spaced out and airhead came later. But nobody ever said “Yeah, man!”


airhead
bad trip
bad vibes
bummer

do your/your own thing
Don’t come unglued!
downer
Dragsville, Squaresville etc
drop acid
far out

generation gap
go crazy apeshit
go through changes
grotty

hacked off
Hang in there!
heavy
heavy scene, lighten up
Heavy, man!
hooked on
into

If you’re looking for a pad to crash...
It was a blast.
It was unreal!
It’s not my bag.

kicks
laid back

Let it all hang out.
Let’s split.
living in sin, shacking up

my place, your place
Neat-o!
No sweat.
Quit buggin’ me.
rip-off

scene, bad scene
something else
spaced-out
the fuzz
threads, gear
trippy
Turn on, tune in, drop out.

Wanna score some acid?
Want a toke?
What do you do for bread?
where you’re at, where it's at
where you’re coming from
zilch

I researched the slang for My Novel, a 60s-set young adult paranormal romance called Witch Way Now? (And I remembered a lot of it.)

More 60s here, and links to the rest.

The Way We Wore: 60s Style

I think I made this one...

It wasn’t all Austin Powers...
Here's the 60s, seen mainly through the prism of knitting patterns. As with interior decor, everything changed around 1966.

In the early 60s we wore:

black-flecked beetle green bouclé tweed, and mohair, sometimes in plaid
very very thick knitted dresses. (Did anybody ever knit/wear them? Must have been so hot.)

big thick knitted cardigans, worn with a knee-length straight skirt and a bubble-head hairstyle created with rollers and back-combing

buttons and belts covered with the same material as your dress (It was called a “self” belt.)
stiff fabrics like crimplene, made into tailored clothes. Stiff hair. Tight armholes, tight collars.

stoles in warm wool (mohair, mink) You wore them with your sleeveless evening dress designed for the central heating most English people didn’t have.


When mini skirts and mod clothes happened, we found we could adapt school gym and tennis skirts (short enough), and divided hockey skirts (right length), and blazers – by sewing on red buttons and wearing them with the rest of our groovy gear. And knee socks and Mary Janes.

beading was very in circa 1966, also big, big paillettes (because plastic was in), especially in iridescent blue on a vivid green woolly hat. (Older women didn't stop wearing hats – they kept up to date with “fun” hats. Or felt stetsons.)

In the mid-60s there was a trend for very tailored capes with Nehru collars. Initially worn by beatniks or early hippies, they quickly became tamed, and were worn only by older ladies (with a Tyrolean hat) and small children (in Welsh tweed). Welsh tweed was popular – we loved its geometric patterns and lurid colours.

all-over ribbing became a thing (“skinny rib” sweaters) with a beanie to match

lurex yarn

turquoise and lilac striped knitted dresses from M&S with straps, a dropped waist and a short knife-edge pleated tennis style skirt. (Also came in navy, green and white – and purple?)

Matching jersey/hat/scarf (worn with a cute expression).

clothes made out of stretchy towelling (Especially holiday clothes for children. In brown and turquoise, with rope detailing.)

PVC printed in bright, bright colours (Raincoats with matching souwester hats. Hot, and quickly became naff. Part of the “fun everything” trend. "Fun fur" was nylon.)

plastic geometric jewellery


stiff brocade in royal blue, beetle green and aqua – possibly combined

Nylon lace had a moment.

Mannish shirts, and frilly and flouncy blouses were in – from the Tom Jones trend (the film came out in 1963), but combined with stiff, tailored pinafore dresses. There was also a hairstyle called a "Tom Jones": a bow tied on a ponytail at the back of the neck. It quickly became rather frumpy. Shoes also went 18th century, with square toes and buckles.Very short mini skirts went mainstream, combined with a frilly blouse and a huge beehive updo.

In the late 60s crushed velvet took over, and Twiggy went for the 30s Biba look. Cool youths dressed like extras from Game of Thrones. I'm still trying to forget.

60s decor here.

Living in Style - the 60s

Space helmets were a fad

60s interior decor and style in general was a game of two halves. In the early 60s, tasteful Swedish reigned: the lady with the beige handwoven rug with a faint brown stripe was dressed in restrictive tailoring in muted autumnal shades. By 1969 she was wearing purple velvet and living in a squat. But half-way through the decade, the colour was turned up,  and modernism mutated briefly into futurism (space-helmet hats) before morphing into Victoriana and a fascination with the 20s and 30s.

The early 60s interior

“The house was decorated in Coral’s favourite white and shades of green: white cupboards, white fireplace, white Venetian blinds, olive green and white willow-pattern wallpaper. The bathroom had some unusual features: a shaggy bearskin rug and pots of roses on top of the lavatory cistern.” (From a life of Coral Browne the actress – in the 80s she collected antiques and marble obelisks.)

pictures by Canaletto printed on melamine for a table-top

one wall in dark grey with life size silver trees (“Woods” by Cole & Sons), or black with a white brocade pattern

art featuring vintage cars, art made of watch parts in the shape of vintage cars on black velvet.

silhouettes

a giant red brandy glass on top of the television

Swedish glass - thick and dark green

candy striped sheets

nautical memorabilia especially things in the shape of ships’ wheels

16th century style sun faces.

passementerie and fringes on curtains, lampshades and bins – an odd hangover from Victorian upholstery

pale-blue velvet, pale-blue fitted carpet

prints from Boots and Woolworths: the crying boy, exotic maidens, swans, ballet dancers in swan costumes, sunbeam striking through a breaking wave. (By Vernon Ward and J.H. Lynch)

biscuit barrels etc decorated with hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades

spiral staircases

East European folk art

matching wallpaper and curtains


Late 60s decor

Around 1966 it seemed everything changed. Bridget Riley's geometric "dazzle" paintings became fashionable Op Art. Mary Quant's clothes for teenagers were all black and white. We wore white eyeliner. We painted our fingernails white. We chucked out the coral lipstick and wore - white. (Beige was more flattering.) We wore Op Art dresses, Op Art PVC (a new wonder-fabric) raincoats and hats.

The word "trendy" came into being. Trends came thick and fast.

Everything was “fun” and throwaway: paper lampshades, slot-together plastic lampshades, self-assembly paper chairs, modular cuboid furniture, paper knickers (they live on in hospitals), paper carrier bags (perfect for advertising and for making a statement).

Bright Casa Pupo rugs replaced the beige haircord. They came in flowery patterns and went with thick white pottery.

We chucked out the Sheraton and hung circular mirrors with thick red frames. We weren't quite sure what Pop Art was, but we got the look.

We lounged in peacock chairs, basket chairs suspended from the ceiling, or hammocks.

We chucked out our restrictive "girdles" and wore tights instead. Men's shirts and ties were going to be replaced by nylon turtle-neck shirts. Dull evening dress was jazzed up. Middle-aged men grew their hair longer, and grew mutton-chop whiskers which went perfectly with giant blue velvet bow-ties, kipper ties and frilled shirtfronts. (They grew the hair but failed to wash it more often. And it looked very silly combined with a combover. These ghastly aberrations soon faded from the scene.)

Op art was followed by psychedelia: There was a fashion for taking hallucinogenic drugs – because they made you see the world in bright rainbow colours. Manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and added vivid, clashing colours to their patterns for fabric, clothes and wallpaper: lime-green, orange, purple, pink, yellow, turquoise. Green/purple was popular. Patterns were swirly. Paisley (from Victorian era Indian shawls) was already fashionable – now it became bigger and brighter. Jacobean embroidery went through yet another regeneration. Op Art was remade in lime and pink. You could get a psychedelic mini-kaftan with a ring-pull zip and flared sleeves in M&S. Very daring. Posters, magazines, graphics had the look. It dated very fast.

Psychedelia was replaced by a depressing hippy ambience with burgundy walls, a vague 30s/Victorian feel, everything old and dusty, curtains closed during the day, purple ostrich feathers from Biba, old lace clothes hung up, old shawls, vases with incense (which left dust and bits everywhere). Spanish and Chinese shawls. Kimonos and printed silk.

Women who lived in a room like this had a chest of drawers and dressing table mirror, but the drawers wouldn’t shut, all surfaces were covered with clutter, the mirror was draped with bead necklaces, the dressing table covered with cheap little boxes. The brass bed had clothes hanging off the end. There’d be an orange crate by the bed for a lamp and an overflowing ashtray. The rest of her clothes hung on a hook on the back of the door. If there was a wardrobe her best clothes would be in a heap on the floor of it.

In every bedsit, there was an oblong art deco mirror hanging from a chain, and a central light with a marbleized bowl shade. Both going for £££££s in vintage shops today.

On the walls were posters of Alphonse Mucha and Van Gogh’s sunflowers. People with degrees had prints of Sienese art.

It wasn't really that seamless: hippy flowery fabric was both around in the early 60s – before hippies. When hippies came in (summer of 67), flowery fabric was swiftly labelled “hippy”. Colours were getting brighter before “psychedelia”. Daisies were “in” in the early 60s too - but they were quickly whipped into service for “flower power”.

Fashion Crimes of the Past

More here.