What is fashion? To define it as a general definition, it is a popular trend in which people define their physical appearance uniquely. Fashion has always shown what a culture looked like, and it surely was influential in the 1960s. This period was the beginning of industrialization and it surely didn't miss out fashion! The youth culture was in its moments of radical changes; due to the Baby Boom, these young people were growing up and constructing their own fashion trend.
The 1960s youth culture started to reject the conventions about how they should dress and wear. In fact, teens had a more liberate sense of fashion. They were developing a sense of self-identity through what they wore. Fashion was important for them because it was a way of expressing themselves. We see the emergence of untraditional, cheaper, and more convenient unisex clothing, the appealing miniskirt, long boots, more colourful patterns, and etc. For example, in Just Kids by Patti Smith, the author herself is seen wearing denim jeans and a simple t-shirt (p.201). The clothes she wear are unisex, and we clearly see that her taste in fashion isn't formal at all; it looks more like a street style outfit, which represents her as very carefree indeed. Men started to get a wider variety of clothes rather than their traditional plain and dull tailored clothing. The hippies also had their own sense of fashion: peace and love symbols or patterns (no war, only peace), long hairstyles, denim jeans, and unusual mix of colours.
Now, how about today's fashion? It could probably be defined as a whole mixture of different fashion styles. Our youth culture expresses their self-identity through fashion, meaning we have similar attitudes towards fashion, just like we did in the 1960s. We still see hippies fashion, denim jeans and street style outfits, elegant and expensive outfits, and other vintage styles. Old fashion trends are
coming back today, and new ones are invented. Every fashion trend expresses something unique and differently that defines who we are. Some of them define people as simple and casual, some of them define people as artistic and sophisticated, and others define people as rebel and dark.
Fashion was a way of expression and self-identity for the youth culture in the 1960s, and still is today. Like Mark Twain quotes it, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
No comments:
Post a Comment