A different kind of colour
Fashion in the early and middle 1960s was dominated by the clean, geometric lines of mod style: short skirts, crisp tailoring and a youthful but fairly controlled look. By 1967 a second current had joined it, driven by the psychedelic culture around rock music and, to a degree, by the experience of hallucinogenic drugs. Clothes became looser, more colourful and more decorative. This article is about that shift, while the mod fashion that dominated the high street is covered separately.
Swirling prints and bright colour
The defining feature of psychedelic fashion was pattern. Designers and wearers favoured swirling, melting shapes, clashing colours and dense floral and paisley designs, often influenced by the posters and light shows of the San Francisco ballrooms. Op art, the geometric optical illusions of the early 1960s, was another source, and Indian textiles and Victorian prints were raided for ideas. Fluorescent and “day-glo” colours appeared in clothing as well as in posters.
Typical items of the period included velvet jackets, kaftans, long printed shirts, beaded necklaces, bell-bottomed trousers, waistcoats and scarves worn as headbands. Men’s clothing in particular changed. Ruffled shirts, flowered ties and brightly coloured jackets became acceptable in a way that would have been hard to imagine a few years earlier, and the fuller beards and longer hair that went with them shocked many older people.
Tie-dye and handmade clothes
Tie-dyeing, in which fabric is tied or folded and then dyed to create bursts of colour, has ancient roots in several cultures, but it became widely associated with the counterculture in the late 1960s. Its appeal was partly practical: it was cheap, could be done at home, and made each garment unique. It fitted the ideals of people who wanted to avoid mass-produced goods. Secondhand clothing, military surplus jackets, embroidered Afghan coats and patched jeans were part of the same do-it-yourself approach. Exactly when tie-dye became common in each place is hard to fix, and it spread most widely in the years just after 1967.
Carnaby Street and London’s boutiques
In London, the centre of the new look was a cluster of shops around Carnaby Street and the King’s Road. Carnaby Street had been associated with mod menswear earlier in the decade and by 1967 had become a tourist attraction in its own right. More daring work came from boutiques such as I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, which sold antique military jackets, and Granny Takes a Trip on the King’s Road, which sold psychedelic and vintage clothing in a shop front that was repeatedly repainted. The Dutch design group known as The Fool decorated clothes and interiors in a flamboyant style, and the Beatles’ Apple Boutique, which opened on Baker Street in December 1967, was decorated with a bold mural.
The Beatles’ bandsmen uniforms for the Sgt. Pepper sleeve, made by a theatrical costume company, took the military-jacket trend and made it bright. The effect of famous musicians wearing such clothes was powerful: pop stars were fashion leaders, and boutique owners knew it.
San Francisco and the hippie style
On the American side, the Haight-Ashbury district had small shops that sold second-hand clothing, hand-made leather goods, and printed or dyed garments, many of them run by people who were part of the scene they served. Hippie fashion here was less a coherent style than a collection of choices that rejected the neatness of suburban dress: long skirts, jeans, beads, flowers in hair, and sandals or bare feet. The ideal was meant to be natural and unpolished, which sat oddly with the elaborate effort that many put into it. The press called it “flower power” and the term spread quickly.
How the high street caught up
Once the look attracted headlines, mainstream retailers moved quickly. Department stores, mail-order catalogues and chain shops put out cheaper versions of paisley shirts, kaftans, bell-bottoms and floral prints, often within months of the style appearing in magazines. Fashion magazines featured psychedelic photography and bright colour spreads. The result was a familiar pattern: an underground look that began as a rejection of consumerism was turned into a product. Some in the counterculture found this irritating, and some of the boutique owners who had started it all became commercially successful.
An uneven picture
It is worth remembering that most people in 1967 did not dress like hippies. Many adults wore the same sort of clothes they had worn for years, and even young people mixed new items with ordinary ones. Psychedelic style was most visible in big cities, on record sleeves and in magazines. What survived in the longer term was not the extremes but the general loosening: brighter colours, more casual dress for men and a wider sense that clothing could be a personal statement.