The 1960s were not always rich in substance (welcome to Gilligan’s Island!), but the decade’s style was often unimpeachable. Before frumpy hippie non-fashions took over toward the end of the sixties, sharp lines, vivid colors, eccentric materials, and wild op-art patterns defined the decade. The sixties were also very notable for making a place for men on the runway. It seems like we’ve been shut out of genuinely exciting fashions ever since.
The sixties were so aesthetically rich that Daniel Milford-Cottam’s Fashion in the 1960s could never be called the definitive word on its topic. At 55 pages, the book is shorter than most magazines. It still manages to be a historically adequate and graphically electrifying introduction to the era of plastic macs, paper shifts, and Twiggy.
Milford-Cottam doesn’t just focus on the most audacious trends— the ones that might instantly conjure stereotypical images of the decade but were less visible in the real world. He deals with the more conservative work of Belinda Bellville and Coco Chanel in addition to the Mary Quant, Emilio Pucci, and John Bates designs that really made the sixties swing.
Milford-Cottam also discusses how style influenced pop culture, and since London was the mid-sixties fashion hub, the author focuses on things like Ready, Steady, Go and The Avengers. The mods and The Beatles are at the forefront of his concluding chapter on men’s fashion, which will make any aesthete salivate for a time when guys’ options were not limited to baggy T-shirts and sweatpants. Sigh.
