Uncommon Threads Lecture:
“Hippie Chic”
Thursday, February 7,
2013, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m., Gleason Performing Arts Center; Free Admission
Guest Speaker: Lauren D. Whitley, curator in the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In the late 1960s and early
1970s new exuberant forms of dress, inspired by the emerging hippie culture,
openly challenged prevailing ideas about clothing. Hippies rejected
society’s values, and the minimalist geometric lines of “Mod” styles, in favor
of an eclectic, highly-personalized look that combined vintage clothes with
apparel inspired by contemporary art, nature, history, and ethnographic art.
Hippie style was all about self expression, and fun, and their “DIY” attitude
was taken up by hip boutiques and a wave of young designers, many of them fresh
out of art schools. As a result, fashion trends actually “trickled up” from the
streets to impact established ready-to-wear and haute couture, threatening the
hegemony of Paris for the first time.
This talk will explore the
revolutionary “hippie chic” fashions that emerged between 1967 and 1973, and
the inspirations - retro, fantasy, ethnic, and craft – that informed their
varied looks.
Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston