Fashion of the 70s

The 1970s ran from January 1, 1970 to December 31, 1979, and historians increasingly describe the decade as a pivot of change, marked by economic upheaval and the continued growth of the social values that began in the 1960s. Fashion in the 1970s was about individuality: hippie continuity, glamour, disco shine and casual chic all coexisted, often in the same wardrobe.

From Hippie Continuity to Casual Chic

The decade began with the hippie look carried over from the 1960s: tie-dye shirts, Mexican peasant blouses, folk-embroidered Hungarian blouses, ponchos, capes and military surplus clothing, worn with bell-bottoms, gauchos, frayed jeans, midi skirts and ankle-length maxi dresses in bright colours and Indian, Native American and floral patterns. Accessories were handcrafted — chokers, neck ornaments and pieces made from wood, shells, stones, feathers, beads and leather.

By the mid-1970s the hippie look had nearly disappeared, although casual dressing continued and deepened. New production technology and mass production flooded the market with inexpensive synthetic clothing. Women wore sweaters, cardigans, kimonos, graphic T-shirts, jeans and khakis; by 1974 the T-shirt was no longer underwear but a designed garment in its own right. Around 1976 a Parisian peasant look arrived, clean-cut American activewear grew from 1975, and the jumpsuit became a phenomenon.

Disco, Platforms and the Famous Silhouette

The most famous silhouette of the mid and late 1970s, for both sexes, was tight on top and loose on the bottom. Bell-bottomed trousers remained popular throughout the decade, platform shoes added three to ten centimetres of sole, and the leisure suit — a shirt-like jacket with matching trousers — turned the suit casual, helped by newly cheap synthetic materials. Late in the decade the three-piece suit returned, in large part because of the film Saturday Night Fever.

Disco created its own fashion craze in the mid to late 1970s: clothes designed to show off the body and shine under dance-floor lights. The most famous disco garment for women was the jersey wrap dress, a knee-length dress with a cinched waist that flattered many body types and worked at the office by day and the nightclub by night. Tube tops, sequined halter shirts, spandex, maxi skirts with long slits and ball gowns filled the clubs, and hairstyles ran from long and straight to Farrah Fawcett's feathery cut.

Individuality as the Decade's Rule

The 1970s are sometimes treated as a decade without a single look, and that is precisely its look. Hippie remnants, 1940s-inspired glamour, Parisian peasant dress, American activewear, punk's first mohawks and disco's sequins all ran at once, because the decade's real trend was permission: mass production made styles cheap, and cheap styles made experimentation safe. A wardrobe in 1975 could hold a jumpsuit, a wrap dress and a pair of platform boots without contradiction — the wearer, not the fashion system, supplied the coherence.