Dress as a statement
For people living the hippie lifestyle, clothing was a sign of belonging and a way to turn down mainstream expectations. Short hair, suits and neat dresses stood for the office and the military; their opposite was soft, loose and colourful. Because the look was a deliberate contrast with convention, even small choices, such as bare feet or a headband, were read as statements by parents, employers and police.
That meaning is why hippie fashion deserves to be treated separately from the politics of the movement. Many people adopted the clothes without sharing any particular creed, and many committed participants wore them simply because they were cheap and comfortable.
The main elements
Styles varied by place and year, but the common items were:
- Tie-dye. Binding fabric before dyeing it to produce swirling patterns is an old technique found in several cultures, including Japan and India. In the United States it became popular in the late 1960s, helped by cheap commercial dyes and its appeal as a do-it-yourself craft. It gained wider fame by around 1969.
- Beads, bells and jewellery. Necklaces, leather cords, peace symbols and handmade jewellery were widespread, often influenced by Native American and Indian designs.
- Flared trousers and denim. Bell-bottoms and worn jeans, sometimes embroidered or patched, were common.
- Secondhand and ethnic clothing. Army surplus jackets, Afghan coats, Indian cotton shirts and peasant blouses were often bought secondhand or from importers, which kept costs low and signalled distance from fashion stores.
- Long hair and beards. For men, long hair was the most provocative item, and it led to arguments in schools and workplaces. Women often wore their hair long and loose, with flowers or headbands.
- Bare feet and sandals. Footwear was minimal or handmade.
Not everyone dressed this way all the time. Photographs of the Haight in 1967 show plenty of people in ordinary clothes, and the full costume was often worn by visitors and by the young. The look was also notably different from the sharply tailored mod fashion of Britain, though London’s boutiques did have their own psychedelic phase, and Twiggy fashion at the other end of the style spectrum shows how many youth looks existed in 1967. Musicians helped spread the style. The singer Janis Joplin’s layered scarves and beads, and Jimi Hendrix’s military-style jacket and bright shirts, fixed the idea of stagewear that matched street wear.
The soundtrack
Music was woven into everyday life, from the record player in a shared house to coffeehouse performers and ballroom dances. The sound of the hippie subculture ran in a few connected lines:
- Folk. The acoustic folk revival of the early 1960s, and singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, set a tone of storytelling and dissent that many people later associated with the movement.
- Folk-rock and psychedelic rock. The Byrds and others added electric instruments to folk songs, and by 1966 and 1967 San Francisco and London bands extended the idea into longer, experimental pieces.
- Indian music. The sitar became a symbol of the period after the Beatles used it, and Ravi Shankar performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967.
- Blues, soul and country. These styles underlay many of the best bands, and Otis Redding’s set at Monterey showed that the audience was open to more than one approach.
Listening was often communal and attentive. Albums rather than singles mattered more to this audience, which helped drive interest in a new style of radio. Freeform stations on the FM radio dial played whole album tracks and talked at length between them, and by 1967 some in San Francisco had begun to experiment with the approach.
From street to shop window
Once the look was visible, businesses noticed. By 1967 and 1968, fashion magazines, boutiques and department stores were selling fringe vests, beads and tie-dyed shirts to people who had no wish to live on a commune. Some hippies complained that their symbols had been turned into products. The musical equivalent was the rapid release of “psychedelic” records by established artists. The musical theatre piece Hair, which opened off-Broadway in October 1967, brought the long-haired look to a theatre audience.
This process makes it hard to say where the genuine subculture ended and the commercial version began. A fair reading is that both existed at once: handmade clothes and thrift store finds were everyday practice for many, while the media and shops rapidly repackaged the same signs.
What lasted
Many hippie style elements disappeared from fashion and then returned in later revivals, and tie-dye, flared trousers and fringe have all come back more than once. The deeper legacy is the idea that clothing and music could express a set of values, and that young people could create their own culture instead of inheriting one. Whether the clothes made the values or only advertised them is a question worth leaving open.