![]() Mary Quant’s most successful designs were her mini skirts and shift dresses, which almost always featured bright colors or graphic prints inspired by 60s pop art. Quant pioneered modern fast fashion by offering short runs of cheap, trendy clothing designed with a younger target market in mind. As a firm believer that fashion should be fun, she became frustrated with the lack of stylish, affordable clothing available to young women exploring their newfound financial freedom and decided to open her own boutique, Bazaar, in London. ![]() ![]() While 50s dress silhouettes like Dior’s New Look emphasized an hourglass shape, 60s dresses shifted attention away from women’s midsections and towards their legs.Īt the heart of the mod fashion movement was British designer Mary Quant. The loose fit and short hemlines of mod shift dresses allowed young women to ditch the uncomfortable girdles and restrictive undergarments their mothers had been wearing for decades. Like mini skirts, the popularity of shift dresses echoes the progress made during the second wave of the feminism movement. Mini skirts peaked in popularity mid-decade before hemlines dropped back to midi and maxi lengths during the late-60s hippie movement. Often paired with colored tights or go-go boots, the short skirts felt far more youthful than the full circle skirts worn by older women. Many demonstrated their newfound freedom by ditching the sophisticated housewife look of the past decade in favor of mod fashion.Ĭolorful school-girl-inspired mini skirts were a cornerstone of the increasingly popular mod style (short for modern style ICYMI) that emerged from London during the mid-60s. Instead, they sought to enjoy life as independent, single young women before settling down. Thanks to growing access to birth control and game-changing books like Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Frieden, women no longer aimed to be wifed up by their early 20s. Instead of following in their mothers’ footsteps and settling down in the suburbs, young women felt empowered to increase their economic and social independence, enjoy sex before marriage, pursue fulfilling careers outside the home, and wear skirts above the knee. Throughout the women’s liberation movement, the heightening of women’s hemlines directly correlated with their increasing sexual freedom. Hands down, the single most important trend in 60s women’s fashion was the introduction of the mini skirt. So to celebrate the pivotal decade in women’s fashion, we’ve dug through the archives and rounded up some iconic pics of Twiggy wearing the biggest 60s fashion trends. Truly, no one embodied the zeitgeist ( wink, wink) of 60s style quite like Twiggy. In April 1967 she graced the cover of American Vogue, gaining international recognition and securing her status as one of the biggest influences on 1960s fashion. She was soon declared “The Face of ’66” by The Daily Express and voted British Woman of the Year. In 1966, de Villeneuve launched Twiggy’s career by giving her one of the most famous haircuts of all time, her iconic blonde pixie cut. Unlike the bombshell blondes and glamour models of the 50s, Twiggy’s lanky body and girlish charm embodied the young, sexually liberated “Single Girl” that emerged from the feminist and youth movements of the 60s. Her boyish pixie cut, trend-setting mod style, and infamous eyelashes made her one of the most recognizable faces of the era and paved the way for the future Kate Mosses and Linda Evangelistas of the world.īorn Lesley Hornby, Twiggy earned her nickname from her hairdresser and soon-to-be-boyfriend Nigel Davies (later known as Justin de Villeneuve), who dubbed her “Twigs” because of her waif-like frame. ![]() While there were many notable fashion icons of the 60s (Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, and Jane Birkin, just to name a few), no one personified the decade quite like British supermodel Twiggy. From the Space Age to Woodstock hippies to the Youthquake to the British Invasion, 60s fashion trends directly correlated with social movements of the time.ĭuring the 60s, there were four overarching trends in women’s fashion: a continuation of the ladylike styles from the previous decade, the emergence of the Youthquake movement and It-Girls like Mary Quant and Twiggy, the growing influence of technology and the Space Age, and the hippie style that came to dominate the late 60s. The 1960s was a pivotal decade in modern women’s fashion. ![]()
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