Australia's Baby Boomer Generation

The 1950s | The 1960s | The 1970s | The 1980s

The idealism of the 1960s had long since been left blowing in the wind. There were increasing anxieties about global pollution and the exhaustion of the earth's natural resources. The 1970s had seen war in the Middle East, the war in Vietnam had ended, there was corruption in the highest levels of American government with Watergate and Nixon's resignation, an oil crisis, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia had turned its fertile land into killing fields. There was a daily diet of the world's troubles brought into the homes of the West through television.

In terms of fashion, the 1970s were literally the "anything goes" decade. For some, the uglier and clunkier the fashion, the better. For others, soft and feminine was the answer. No matter what you "dug", making a fashion statement reached its apex in the 1970s. The 1970s were an intensely tumultuous time, with various cultures and subcultures coming out into the open at once. Cynicism abounded as militant feminism, Civil Rights, the Watergate scandal, and the Vietnam War brought gritty reality to the forefront. These influences gave designers new ammunition, and the public was eager for the latest fashion wave.

Movies and television shows such as Charlie's Angels were having an increasingly profound affect on fashion. Cultural icons such as Wonder Woman created a lust for interesting boots - often teamed with hot pants or short skirts that were a carry over from the previous decade. Boots might be shiny, textured, bejeweled, or covered with psychedelic or floral designs, but they were seldom boring. Dressing to shock was popular, and the Punk and Glam movements took it to an extreme. Designers pushed the envelope by decorating shoes for outrageous customers such as Elton John, David Bowie and Cher. Designers took platform shoes to new heights, building 7 to 8-inch stacked heels and covering them in rhinestones, sequins and other adornments.


Charlie's Angels	Wonder Woman	Elton John	Cher

The conservative media compensated by illuminating the romantic, the soft and the classicly beautiful. Historic revivals, covering many periods of history, continued. This trend, embraced by design houses such as Biba, Ossie Clark, and Yves St. Laurent, is apparent in the Edwardian-style court pumps, Roman-inspired sandals, and squared-off toe-reminiscent of the 1940s.

This era's fashions are also frequently marked by designers such as Givenchy, Norell, and Oscar de la Renta. The 1960s trend of mini skirts, bell bottoms, and long hair lasted through this decade. Polyster knitted fabrics broke the ground to expand the continuing look. If you didn't wear polyster, the preferred textile was denim blue jeans. Skirts came in three lengths in the 1970s, mini, midi, and maxi. Television and film reflected the way people dressed such as Annie Hall and Saturday Night Fever. The latter half of the decade's fashions were heavily influenced by glam Rock 'n' Roll and Disco music.


Catsuit	Midi skirt	John Travolta in 'Saturday Night Fever'	Typical disco outfits

Disco Fashion
The late 1970s set off the disco craze, showcased in John Travolta's film Saturday Night Fever. Polyester was THE fabric of the decade. Leisure suits with butterfly collars were all the rage under the mirrored disco lights. Spandex tops and shiny clinging Lycra stretch disco pants in hot strident shiny colours with stretch sequin bandeau tops were often adaptations of professional modern dance wear that found itself making an impact in discos as disco dancing became serious. Neon tights, leopard skin and stretch halter jumpsuits and white clothes that glowed in Ultra Violet lights capture the era perfectly.
Disco gave way to dress codes and a door screening policy. People had to have tried to look right to gain entry to clubs. Disco wear was never acceptable for day wear, but for night it was the only possible wear to enable the participants to be part of the action, to be part of the atmosphere of strobe lighting, mirror balls and spotlighting of individuals at any time. Satin jackets that reflected the light and a medallion resting on a tanned chest in an open neck shirt with the collar turned up were the norm, however awful such fashions might seem now.

Clothing

Micro, Mini or Maxi
By 1970 women chose who they wanted to be; if they felt like wearing a short mini skirt one day and a maxi dress, midi skirt or hot pants the next day that's what they did. Mini cheerleader skirts were popular in the day. For evenings, women often wore full length maxi dresses or evening trousers or glamorous halter neck catsuits. Some of the dresses oozed Motown glamour, others less so. Either straight or flared Empire line dresses with a sequined fabric bodice and exotic sleeves were typical for a dressy occasion. One popular style was the Granny dress with a high neck, sometimes frilled or lace trimmed and a floral print design in a warm brushed fabric.


Kaftan style top	Empire line midi dress	Cheerleader mini skirt	Ringo Starr wearing a Nehru jacket

The Kaftan
The Hippies began wearing clothes from other ethnic groupings which had often never even been seen before outside of their own countries. Nehru jackets and loose flowing robes from hot countries made their way into world cities and permeated down to mainstream fashion, helped of course by designers like Yves St Laurent. Kaftans, kimonos, muumuus, djellaba (a Moroccan robe with a pointed hood) or jalabiya (a loose eastern robe) and other styles from every part of the Indian subcontinent and Africa were translated into at-home style robes and comfort wear. They were worked in every fabric imaginable, and were especially suited as glamour dressing when worked in exotic fabrics edged in silver or metallic trims.


Muumuu	Kaftan	Micro skirt	Hot Pants

Platform Shoes
By the mid 1970s the most ordinary people were wearing 50 mm high platforms without a second thought. But accidents did happen and many a woman and man twisted an ankle on a pair of platform shoes. At about the same time clogs also became popular as they followed the trend for chunkiness of sole. Pop art emulated the platform shoe, and by 1971, it was considered the most exciting year in shoe design, not only for the population but for Pop artists. The colors and designs were raved as "psychedelic," for their swirls and colors. The shoes illustrated (right) were worn by Elton John.
Speaking of shoes, Nike debuted in 1972; the result of a fateful bit of ingenuity meeting a waffle iron. Running became a popular pastime, and running shoes were a functional necessity, especially for men (and Charlie's Angel's Farrah Fawcett). The athletic craze was only just beginning though.

Above: Rugby League players in their Stubbies get ready for the first State of Origin series in 1980 Right: British pop singer Lulu sporting a silk shirt, hotpants and go-go boots, seen by many young women in the 70s as the perfect combination

Hot Pants
Hotpants reached the height of their popularity in the early 1970s. Back then, they were often worn with dark tights and knee-length Go-go boots to create an edgy, sexy look. They declined in popularity towards the end of the decade, but not before having evolved into what became known as cut-offs. These were originally created at home by cutting the legs off trousers, typically jeans, above the knee. How short they were was determined by where the material was cut. The cut was not finished or hemmed; the fabric was left to fray. More ...

Stubbies
While women's super-short shorts were called hotpants, super-short fitted men’s shorts were called stubbies. The story goes that, in the summer of 1972, a pair of salesmen for clothing manufacturer Edward Fletcher and Co met over a slab of beer to brainstorm a punchy name for their new men's fashion short. As one might imagine, the thinking didn't meander too laterally, and they soon settled on the Aussie name for the bottles from which they were drinking - "Stubbies" (The brand was so successful that Edward Fletcher and Co changed its name to Stubbies). More ...


Bay City Rollers show off their baggy pants	Satinised polyester jacquard blouse	Flared jeans	Cut-off jeans

Flared Trousers, Bell Bottoms and Trouser Suits
Trousers and trouser suits were serious fashion items in the 1970s.They began gently flared and reached wide bell bottom proportions by about 1975, after which they slowly reduced to straight and wide until by the end of the 1970s they were finally narrow again. Popular fabrics include heavy crepes, wool jersey knits, Courtelle jersey and woven Polyester suiting such as Trevira. Trevira was used to make wide Bay City Roller trousers with wide square pockets down the leg sides and which were the inspiration for today's cargo pants.
Satinised polyester jacquard blouses had been fashionable since the early 1970s, but had always been quite expensive. New technology enabled the satinised polyester to be combined with the crepe de chine to produce fabrics of great complexity which looked like real silk and which were ideally suited to the glitzy dresses of the 1980s. For some who took a middle line in fashion the clothes by the designer Laura Ashley which harked back to country styles and long lost Victorian and Edwardian summers gave them the contrast they had sought from the relentless sexuality of the mini and the exotic kaftans. The fabrics were pure dress and cotton lawns with simple uncomplicated prints of yesteryear. They were a relief to many who loathed synthetic fabrics, particularly in summer. See also: Fashion icons: Flares


Punk rocker, Sid Vicious	Diane Keaton as Annie Hall	Trouser Suit	Courtelle jersey

Glam
in 1972, David Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust came out ... in a big way. According to Bowie (right), the name "Ziggy" came primarily from the title of a London tailor's shop (called "Ziggy's") that Bowie observed from a train one day. In an interview he said that it was his private joke that because Ziggy Stardust was going to be largely about clothes, he had named him "Ziggy". Glam was suddenly all the rage; boys borrowed girls' boas, blouses, slinky shirts and sometimes even their makeup. And then it was the girls turn to try out the boys' style ... Bands like the New York Dolls had followings bigger than Elvis and it was hard to tell the girls from the boys! Fashion was all over the place by this point and in 1975 there was the natural romantics and the earth mothers (think earth shoes and chukka boots).

The Annie Hall look
Diane Keaton, Woody Allen's chanteuse in the neurotic 1977 venture movie Annie Hall, was very much unlike other leading ladies in one all-important area - this lady looked like a man (fashion-wise only, of course). Men's shirts, ties, fedoras you name it. In the late 1970s, women's lib was breaking free from the chains of old-fashioned female constrictions. There was a collective gasp when girls donned 'boys clothes' and wore pantsuits outside the house - this was outright stealing from their father's closet! Wacky Annie wore men's blazers, baggy pants, vests, oversized shirts, ties and floppy hats - sometimes all at once - or sometimes just a men's jacket was an accessory.

Punk
By the time Punk Rock came on the scene in the late 1970s, styles changed as radically as was possible - while bikers and Hells Angels had dressed in black and shoved metal studs through their clothing for most of the decade, the new punks sported every colour under the rainbow but preferred to shove the metal studs (and safety pins) through their ears and noses.

Fashion Accessories


Carlos Santana wearing a bandana	Wraparound sunglasses	Hush Puppy shoes

Men: hippy-style beads; "ban the bomb" jewellery; neck chains with medallions; headbands and bandanas; Hush Puppy shoes; dyed unisex T-shirts; small circular reading and sun glasses; Elvis-style wraparound sunglasses; ID bracelets; punk studded wristbands and chokers; head-nodding toy dogs on the car's rear window shelf.


Macramé bikinis	Glo mesh purse	Choker

Women: Glow mesh purses; Aligator skin belts; Afghan Fur Trims; Tank Tops and Mix and Match Knitwear; hippy-style beads; crevattes; Macramé bags, tops and bikinis; silk scarves; cheesecloth clothes; Chunky hand knitted cardigans and ponchos; dyed unisex T-shirts; chokers; sequined paperboy caps; small circular John Lennon-style reading and sun glasses; wraparound sun glasses; ID bracelets; smiley face buttons.

Hairstyles


Farrah Fawcett - feathered	Hippies - afro	Liberty spikes	Mohawk	Skinhead

By the turn of the decade, the dominant hairstlyes that personified the sixties had all but gone. Beehives and bouffants were out and the Pageboy style took on a more conservative shape with a total absence of the characteristic upsweep of the hair alongside the cheeks. The men's Beatle haircut or mop-top had gone out of fashion when the Beatles moved into their 'psychadelic' phase and the trend was towards long, thick hair (eg the Curllet) covering the ears, with bushy sideburns. Long hair was in; crew cuts were out. The musical Hair became the guiding light for teens and twenty-somethings and introduces the afro look into mainstream fashion. As the feathered look took over, hairdressers were kept busy conjuring up as many curls as possible - including more and more male customers, who are fast losing their bashfulness. Women's hairstyles of the late 1970s are best reflected in the styles seen by the three stars of the popular television series of the 1970s, Charlie's Angels.

Feathered - made popular by Farrah Fawcett, who was seen as the glamour Angel.
Afro - a varation of the way Jimi Hendrix wore his hair, were popular among men and women, and for those who went afro, it was a case of 'the bigger the better'.
Hippie - the hippie culture followed by the Jesus People movement in the early 1970s adopted a 'let it all hang out' approach to life, and this was reflected in their hair - there was even a musical written about it! Hippy hair was long (straight or curly), and was the forerunner to the Mullet, which is essentially hippie hair styled.
Pageboy - named after a drawing of a woman dressed as an English page boy. It involves straight hair hanging to below the ear where it usually turns under. Often there is a fringe (bangs) in the front.
Mohawk and Mohican - based on the traditional hairstyle of the Mohican Indians. A central stip of hair along the crown is grown long and straight, the rest of the head is shaved bald.
Shaven head, or "skinhead" - not just a description of the hairstyle, but the people who wore that style.
Spiked, including Liberty spikes - thus named because they resemble the Statue of Liberty - the hair is arranged into long, thick, upright spikes.

Fashion Icons


John Travolta	Cheryl Tiegs	ABBA	Kathy Ireland	Catherine Bach

Movers and Shakers in Entertainment


David Cassidy	Steven Spielberg	George Lucas	Linda Ronstadt	Jane Fonda

Movies that mirror the fashions of the 1970s

Motoring

The 1960s had been a decade of establishment, with many new and innovative models, design and concepts and a flood of new makes previously unavailable in Australia. The 1970s was very much a decade of consolidation for the car market down-under. Local manufacturers saw the need to tailor their cars more to the needs of the Australian driver rather than sell product that had been designed for different markets with different driving conditions, and the cars they produced reflected this.
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