Sixties fashion

I’m going to be a hippie for Halloween this year, and I’m having trouble finding a site that shows true hippie fashion…I get a lot of the typical tie-dye, Lennon glasses, headband stuff but I want to be true to life as possible. I’ve browsed pics from Woodstock, but no inspiration there. I have long brown hair, so I can theoretically pull it off, but painting flowers on my face and wearing a tie-dye skirt seems so…boring.
Are there any photo archive sites someone can point me to?

Oh, and I’ve browsed Etsy but I’m having trouble telling the difference between bohemian, hippie and peasant-type stuff.

Try your local library. If they use the Dewey system, fashion history books will be at 391 and books on the history of the 1960s in America will be at 973.923.

Just going from childhood memories…

Jeans. Suede jackets with fringe. Paisley shirts. Big belt buckles. (Not ‘cowboy’ or ‘rodeo’ ones.) Fairly wide belts, often with rivets showing. Leather or suede hats with floppy brims.

Sadly, leather is out as I’m vegan. I know that takes away a lot of potentials but I can find other stuff to substitute.

Library is a great idea! I’ll check that out.

Excellent. And I’ll be counting this as a reference question in my statistics. :slight_smile:

I see your Dewey and raise you one Google

I took the OP’s “having trouble finding a site that shows true hippie fashion” to imply that Google had been tried and found wanting.

Yes, Google has a problem with words with multiple meanings, like “fashion”.

Hippies.

ISTM there were a few things happening in the '60s, and ‘hippie’ evokes different images. One image is of ‘flower children’ with painted faces. Another is of the ‘mod’ types you’d see on Laugh In. Some hippies were portrayed on TV shows as being a conglomeration of styles. The costumes seen nowadays seem to be cartoonish stereotypes. Going by my memories as a small child – my sister was a hippie, and she is eight years older than I – hippies tended to look like the people in the above-linked image. Which is to say they simply dressed in casual clothes. Jeans, T-shirts… that sort of thing. If they were going to a party they were more likely to add accessories that we now associate with them, but in everyday life it was just casual clothes. Unfortunately (for you), leather was popular for ‘dressing up’.

I think it was more about the hair. And beards. (I assume that’s out for you as well, :stuck_out_tongue: ) My sister wore her hair long and straight. No ‘hair-dos’. She also tended to wear ‘granny dresses’ and ‘granny glasses’.

Maybe that’s why I’m having such trouble…those people look completely normal. :smiley:

I do have mixed ideas of ‘hippie’ style, much of it coloured by the recent trend in boho chic. Google was indeed found wanting…although it gave me a place to start, there’s not definitive hippie look seen there.

Once I hit the library, I’ll report back.

It’s true. Back in the '60s people wore slacks and had their shirts tucked in. Things are more casual now, and many people dress like hippies did – not the cartoon version, but just casual things like jeans and such.

The World Of Hippies has some period photos. (WARNING: NSFW ads and links on the page, and pop-up pages)

This photo (not drawn from the above link, but from a blog – so you may have to C&P the URL) shows a man and a woman who are dressed as my sister and her boyfriend dressed.

EDIT: Put NSFW link in spoiler box.

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I’d check if there is a costume rental near you. The best cater, not to theme parties, but to amateur theater companies.

One of the problems is that hippy fashion has completely been subsumed by our everyday lives. Back then, jeans were for hard labor and t-shirts were underwear. So wearing a t-shirt and jeans was informality taken to an almost offensive extreme. Now, some people think you’re dressing up if you’re not in pajamas. Same with the hair. Nobody bats an eye at beards or unfixed hair now, but back then it was almost bizarre.

It is said “If you can remember the sixties ya weren’t there”, but here are some elements of sixties dress that I seem to recall…

Hip-hugger jeans with bell bottoms (good luck finding those at Wal-mart)

Tie-dyed T-shirt

Long hair, worn down

granny glasses, or at least wire frames

Beads

Flowers in your hair

Sandals (or sometimes tennis shoes. Western boots were popular too)

Red eyes :cool:

Mod is NOT Hippie. The two styles coexisted but they were polar extremes.

The people who are saying, “eh, it’s just casual clothes, jeans and tshirts” are only partially right.

Jeans & pants were often snug, hip-hugger (low-cut) and usually bell-bottom, the bigger the bell the better. What are called “flare” jeans in this year’s current fashion start to approach the idea, but don’t come close. If the jeans were embroidered, so much the better. Tie-dye, yes. Beads, peace sign jewelry. Macrame & crochet – belts, vests, headbands, etc. Vests of leather, suede, or fabric, often worn by men without a shirt underneath. Floral and paisley fabrics, even for men’s shirts. Pants with wide vertical stripes, plaids, or patterns. You can also get into the ethnic wear, especially African & Indian – dashiki, Nehru jackets, those pullover shirts that have a mandarin collar and split placket in front. Mutton chop sideburns, beards, mustaches on the men. Unkempt hair on men and women (although some women sported the long, stick-straight look). Afros on people of all ethnicities.

But, as someone who was a child in that era, I will say that a major component of true hippie style – not just what your average teen would purchase at Sears – was sloppy, ragged, dirty, smelly. The true hippie did not care about personal hygiene as much as one might have wished.

Take a look at the movie Hair, for example. Also pictures of The Beatles in the late '60s / early 70’s.

This might be high school hippie, but I remember regular jeans being turned into bell bottoms by cutting out the side seams from the bottom up and then sewing in triangles of brightly patterned cloth. I also remember the hems being taken out of jeans and the cloth unravelled to make a bottom fringe.

If embroidery was too much bother, there were patches with bumper-sticker-like slogans or rainbows or flowers. Paint or ink could also be used. Fatigue jackets could also be decorated.

Not wearing makeup was one of the shocking things that a female hippy could do.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

You misspelled “a bra.” :wink:

Well, both would have been considered “letting herself go” for older women and “not supporting society” for younger.

Love beads are the definitive hippie accessory. Nothing says hippie like piling on those strands.

1960s counterculture fashion was diverse. A lot of other styles existed mingled in among the hippie styles. Men appropriated a lot of Old West-looking stuff, including broad-brimmed hats, handlebar mustaches, fringed leather jackets, and the aforementioned cowboy boots; they also repurposed military surplus clothes. They were seen by others as hippies the same as the core hippie styles, which were often unisex. Mod styles (Edwardian jackets for men, miniskirts for women), though very different from the core hippie look, got mingled in countercultural settings along with hippie looks too, and became indistinguishable from the point of view of squares looking from outside. Nothing says 1960s fashion like a pink and purple psychedelic print long-sleeved A-line minidress with a big floppy-brimmed hat, oversized sunglasses, and bold makeup. But that isn’t the core hippie style.

It sounds like what the OP is after is the core hippie style: Love beads, headbands, sandals, bell bottom jeans, and tie-dyes are unisex. Broomstick skirts and braless tank tops or flowing kurtas for women. One important feature of hippie aesthetics was do-it-yourself embroidery, appliqués, and any other kind of decorating plainer clothes like jeans and jackets to make them elaborate, colorful, and individualistic. Especially lots and lots of colors all over the place.

The key characteristics of hippies was that they had dropped out of conventional society, didn’t attend college, didn’t work in square employment. Hippies highly valued handicrafts and homemade items, and shunned mass-produced things as much as possible. Since they didn’t earn a lot of money, a lot of their styles were thrown together from whatever could be scrounged from thrift shops, then individually redecorated with colorful handicrafts.