A while ago I was watching a lecture series on the different decades of fashion, and then got to the 1970s. This was the first decade where I really noticed the lecturer having a extreme difference of opinion of the designer fashions (not talking about runway stuff) and the mass market material. I know how much many 70s fashions are hated and it sure shows up here. One section is heavily about the textile difference and polyester. Very negative opinions on the polyester, while enjoying the designer stuff that inspired the outfits. I’ve heard the negative before, but never the positive on the designer versions.
The video is over an hour, so I don’t expect anyone to watch all of it. But you can see the high fashion image at 18:00 to the mainstream one at 20:00. When they get later the mainstream of the deco look, it’s more what I associate with the 70s. But I definitely perceive both of those and hanging on until the mid 80s, at least (alongside things I think as more actively 80s). But then that seems to be common for a lot of a fashions (though, of course, there are also short-lived fads).
Or part 2 at 13:00 and and 14:30. BTW, it has a punk section that may be NSFW.
Anyway, I was curious to those who paid attention to fashion in the 1970s or even those who now pay attention to fashion history - do you like the high fashion of the era?
Also, this says that Mary Tyler Moore’s wardrobe in her show was really popular for working women. For those around at the time - does it sound right to you?
Also hits fashions connected to glam rock and punk - mostly British. While, of course, glamrock fashions don’t really go mainstream, being too extreme. I’ve long known that glamrock was part of the 70s, but I never really think about it associated withe time frame, for some reason. Maybe because the lack of mainstream fashion influence I remain thinking of as more separate?
I remember the clothes we were wearing in the mid to late 70’s, but for some reason I never thought of it in terms of high fashion. All those ribbons and gingham and lace - I had a Laura Ashley-type skirt I loved, and girls I knew whose moms sewed had them make prom dresses in the style. As for the Mary Tyler Moore style of work clothes, I got my first office job in the late 70’s, and that was totally the style among female office workers. All the blouses had those giant bows built into the neckline, and we wore them with polyester double knit suits, often in bright colors. Those of us who were feminists wore pantsuits instead of skirts, but if you wore a skirt, you wore tan pantyhose with it.
Same on the officewear of the time. And the technological breakthrough of the portable blow-dryer for setting hair really changed style expectations. Even I had one of those Farrah Fawcett “feathered” hairstyles in the late '70s, and I was by no means a fashionista. (The lecturer got the reconstruction wrong, though: it wasn’t a high-flip layer rising back off the forehead, it was more like long bangs and side layers that were curled back with a round brush, a style impossible to imitate without the newfangled blowdryer.)
Yes, it was the heyday of synthetic fabrics, and mistakes were made. But I think the lecturer also gets it wrong about the whole era being driven by “silly fads”, which I don’t think was any more prevalent in the '70s than it ever is in fashion.
Some trend inspirations that I think she missed or shortchanged were:
what was then called “Afro-American” culture and the “soul funk” and similar looks, including the natural “Afro” hairstyle, dashiki, African prints. This carried over into trends of natural hair abundance (including facial hair and body hair) among non-Black people too;
the “Annie Hall look” of menswear-inspired fashion, slouchy, layered, tweedy, booted (yes, I had corduroy button vests);
disco fashion, which was itself partly a spinoff of soul/funk;
the American crafts renaissance, which did partly come out of Bicentennial history consciousness, as she briefly mentions, but which was so much more than patchwork. Crochet, metalwork, macrame, beading, all kinds of handwork had a strong influence on those fashion trends.
That said, I really can’t speak to how haute couture and designer fashion of the day interacted with mass market fashion, I wasn’t particularly aware of high fashion at the time (or now, for that matter).